'Tis nobly done, a layman's creed profest,
When all our faith of late hung on a priest;
His doubtful words, like oracles received,
And, when we could uot understand, believed.
Triumphant faith now takes a nobler course,
'Tis gentle, but resists intruding force.
Weak reason may pretend an awful sway,
And consistories charge her to obey;
(Strange nonsense, to confine the sacred Dove,
And narrow rules prescribe how he shall love,
And how upon the barren waters move.)
But she rejects and scorns their proud pretence,
And, whilst those grovling things depend on sense,
She mounts on certain wings, and flies on high,
And looks upon a dazzling mystery,
With fixed, and steady, and an eagle's eye.
Great king of verse, that dost instruct and please,
As Orpheus softened the rude savages;
And gently freest us from a double care,
The bold Socinian, and the papal chair:
Thy judgment is correct, thy fancy young,
Thy numbers, as thy generous faith, are strong:
Whilst through dark prejudice they force their way,
Our souls shake off the night, and view the day.
We live secure from mad enthusiasts' rage,
And fond tradition, now grown blind with age.
Let factious and ambitious souls repine,
Thy reason's strong, and generous thy design;
And always to do well is only thine.
THO. CREECH.
DIM as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as, on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's sacred head,
And found that one First Principle must be:
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether some soul encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leaped into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great All was from eternity,-
Not even the Stagyrite himself could see,
And Epicurus guessed as well as he.
As blindly groped they for a future state,
As rashly judged of providence and fate;
But least of all could their endeavours find
What most concerned the good of human kind;
For happiness was never to be found,
But vanished from them like enchanted ground.
One thought content the good to be enjoyed;
This every little accident destroyed:
The wiser madmen did for virtue toil,
A thorny, or, at best, a barren soil:
In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep;
But found their line too short, the well too deep,
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.
Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:
In this wild maze their vain endeavours end :--
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than he.
The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground;
Cries upexa! the mighty secret's found:
God is that spring of good, supreme and best,
We made to serve, and in that service blest;
If so, some rules of worship must be given,
Distributed alike to all by heaven;
Else God were partial, and to some denied
The means his justice should for all provide.
This general worship is to praise and pray;
One part to borrow blessings, one to pay;
And when frail nature slides into offence,
The sacrifice for crimes is penitence.
*The author applies the same simile to the use of rhyme in tragedy;
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And nature flies him like enchanted ground.
Yet since the effects of providence, we find,
Are variously dispensed to human kind;
That vice triumphs, and virtue suffers here,
A brand that sovereign justice cannot bear;
Our reason prompts us to a future state,
The last appeal from fortune and from fate,
Where God's all righteous ways will be declared ;
The bad meet punishment, the good reward.
Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar,
And would not be obliged to God for more.
Vain wretched creature, how art thou misled,
To think thy wit these god-like notions bred!
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropt from heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Revealed religion first informed thy sight,
And reason saw not till faith sprung the light.
Hence all thy natural worship takes the source;
"Tis revelation what thou think'st discourse.
Else how com'st thou to see these truths so clear,
Which so obscure to heathens did appear?
Not Plato these, nor Aristotle found,
Nor he whose wisdom oracles renowned.
Hast thou a wit so deep, or so sublime,
Or canst thou lower dive, or higher climb ?
Canst thou by reason more of godhead know
Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero ?
Those giant wits, in happier ages born,
When arms and arts did Greece and Rome adorn,
Knew no such system; no such piles could raise
Of natural worship, built on prayer and praise
To one sole God;
Nor did remorse to expiate sin prescribe,
But slew their fellow-creatures for a bribe:
The guiltless victim groaned for their offence,
And cruelty and blood was penitence.
If sheep and oxen could atone for men,
Ah! at how cheap a rate the rich might sin!
And great oppressors might heaven's wrath beguile,
By offering his own creatures for a spoil!
Darest thou, poor worm, offend Infinity ?
And must the terms of peace be given by thee?
Then thou art justice in the last appeal;
Thy easy God instructs thee to rebel
And, like a king remote and weak, must take
What satisfaction thou art pleased to make.
But if there be a Power too just and strong,
To wink at crimes, and bear unpunished wrong;
Look humbly upward, see his will disclose
The forfeit first, and then the fine impose;
A mulct thy poverty could never pay,
Had not Eternal Wisdom found the way,
And with celestial wealth supplied thy store;
His justice makes the fine, his mercy quits the score.
See God descending in thy human frame;
The offended suffering in the offender's name;
All thy misdeeds to him imputed see,
And all his righteousness devolved on thee.
For, granting we have sinned, and that the offence Of man is made against Omnipotence,
Some price that bears proportion must be paid,
And infinite with infinite be weighed.
See then the Deist lost: remorse for vice
Not paid, or paid inadequate in price:
What farther means can reason now direct,
Or what relief from human wit expect?
That shews us sick; and sadly are we sure
Still to be sick, till heaven reveal the cure:
If then heaven's will must needs be understood,
Which must, if we want cure, and heaven be good,
Let all records of will revealed be shown;
With scripture all in equal balance thrown,
And our one sacred Book will be that one.
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