Be insisted upon, why not also the rest, XI. The Disorders in Nature,-for none are in GOD,— 80 Are entitled "His Vengeance," "His Wrath," or "His Rod;" Like "His Ice," or "His Frost," "His Plague, Famine, or Sword," That the Love Which directs them may still be ador'd ;-Directs them, till Justice, call'd His or call'd ours, Shall regain, to our Comfort, Its Primitive Pow'rs, The True, Saving Justice, that bids us endure XII. By a Process of Love from the Crib to the Cross Did the Only-Begotten recover our Loss, And show in us Men how the Father is pleas'd, When the Wrath in our Nature by Love is appeas'd ;-- 80 With God, who.-B. Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, &c.' comes, 90 it comes as the Blessing and Happiness of every natural Life, as the Restorer of every lost Perfection, a Redeemer from 80. "Fury is not in Me." See note to all Evil, a Fulfiller of all Righteousness, 1. 4 of the previous piece. and a Peace of God which passeth all "His rod was upon understanding. Through all the Universe 82. "His Rod." the sea." (Isaiah, x. 26; et al.) 83. "His Ice." "He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?" (Psalm cxlvii. 17.) 89 seqq. By a Process of Love, &c. "Divine Love is perfect Peace and Joy. . . Love is the Christ of God; wherever it of Things, nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because it is not governed by Love, or because its Nature has not reached or attained the full Birth of the Spirit of Love." (The Spirit of Love, Part II. p. 179.) When the Birth of His Christ, being formèd within, THE TRUE GROUNDS OF ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE RECTITUDE. [In these lines Byrom is really discussing the conflict, which so largely occupied his age, between orthodox theologians and those thinkers who sought to establish a system of morality independent of sanctions derived from the revealed Divine Will. The solution indicated in the final stanza is in harmony with the argument of The Spirit of Love; and was evidently suggested to Byrom by Law's conception, so frequently put forth, that the Fall signified the loss of the Divine Nature in Man, and that Man was enabled to recover this Nature by obeying a Divine Will neither absolute nor arbitrary. Cudworth's Intellectual System (1678) was designed to show that the belief in One God was contained or implied even in pagan systems of religion. Byrom was particularly attracted by this line of argument, and by its developement in writers whose mysticism was akin to his own.] I. H' Eternal Mind, ev'n Heathens understood, TH Was Infinitely Pow'rful, Wise, and Good. In their Conceptions, who conceiv'd aright, 1. Ev'n HEATHENS understood. See Introductory Note. "[Bolingbroke] thinks that the first men were polytheists, or, perhaps, as he has learnt from Cudworth, theists and polytheists at once." (LESLIE STEPHEN, u.s., i. 180.) II. For Pow'r from Wisdom suff'ring a Divorce III. Yet some of old, and some of present Hour, An absolute Decree, a mere Command, Which Nothing causes, Nothing can withstand; IV. The verbal Question comes to this, in fine: V. Now, tho' 'tis Proof indisputably plain, That all is right which God shall once ordain,— 18. Resistless. Irresistible. "Master's commands come with a power resistless To such as owe them absolute subjection." -Samson Agonistes, 1404-5. 19. The verbal Question. The question which is after all only one of words. ΙΟ 20 Yet, if a Thought shall intervene between VI. From the Divine, Eternal Spirit springs Proofs of a Boundless Pow'r, a Wisdom's Aid, VII. Cudworth perceiv'd that what Divines advance For Sov'reignty alone is Fate, or Chance,— Fate, after Pow'r had made its forcing Laws; And Chance before, if made without a Cause. Nothing stands firm or certain in a State. Of fatal Chance or accidental Fate. 27 seqq. Yet, if a Thought, &c. Yet, if between the occasion for a command being given by God and the giving of the command there intervene a thought-or exercise of the will-in God, it is manifest that what He commands must be what is good or right. Men make an unnecessary distinction between what is right by its nature, and what is right by Divine command. 37 seqq. Cudworth perceived, &c. "The object" [of his Intellectual System] "was to establish the liberty of human actions against the fatalists. Of these he lays it down that there are three kinds : the first 30 40 atheistic; the second admitting a Deity, but one acting necessarily and without moral perfections; the third granting the usual moral attributes of God, but assert. ing all moral actions to be governed by necessary laws which he has ordained. The first book of the Intellectual System, which alone is extant, relates wholly to the proofs of the existence of a Deity against the atheistic fatalists." (HALLAM, Literature of Europe, Part IV. ch. iii.) 38. For Sovereignty alone. In favour of the dominion of an Absolute Will. 39. Forcing Laws. Obligatory laws. VIII. Endless Perfections after all conspire, But to plain Minds the Plainest Pow'r Above Is One Divine, Immutable Good Will. ON THE NATURE AND REASON OF ALL OUTWARD LAW. "The Sabbath was made for Man; not Man for the Sabbath." -St. Mark, ii. 27. I. ROM this true Saying one may learn to draw FRO The real Nature of all outward Law. In ev'ry Instance, rightly understood, Its Ground and Reason is the human Good; By all its Changes, since the World began, Man was not made for Law, but Law for Man. II. "Thou shalt not eat,"-the first Command of all— 7, 8. "Thou shalt not eat"-the first Tree, but the God of Love informs him Command of all- "Of Good and Ill," was to PREVENThis Fall, (See Genesis, ii. 17.) "But see now this Goodness and Compassion of God towards the mistaken Creature; for no sooner had Adam, by the Abuse of his Power and Free dom, given Occasion to the Birth of this evil of the dreadful Nature of it, commands him not to eat of it, assuring him that Death was hidden in it, that Death to his angelic Life would be found in the Day that he should eat of it." (The Spirit of Prayer, Part ii. pp. 95-6; Law's Works, vol. vii.) |