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All poison'd into pains. First, knowledge, once
My soul's ambition, now her greatest dread.
To know myself, true wisdom ?—No, to shun
That shocking science, parent of despair!
Avert thy mirror; if I see, I die.

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Know my Creator? Climb his blest abode
By painful speculation, pierce the veil,
Dive in his nature, read his attributes,
And gaze in admiration-on a foe,
Obtruding life, withholding happiness!
From the full rivers that surround his throne,
Not letting fall one drop of joy on man;
Man gasping for one drop, that he might cease
To curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more!
Ye sable clouds! ye darkest shades of night!
Hide him, for ever hide him, from my thought,
Once all my comfort; source, and soul of joy!
Now leagu'd with furies, and with thee,* against me.
Know his achievements? Study his renown?
Contemplate this amazing universe,

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Dropt from his hand, with miracles replete!
For what? 'Mid miracles of nobler name,
To find one miracle of misery?

To find the being, which alone can know
And praise his works, a blemish on his praise?
Through Nature's ample range, in thought to
stroll,

And start at man, the single mourner there,

Theirs that serene, the sages sought in vain:
'Tis man alone expostulates with Heaven,
His, all the power, and all the cause, to mourn.
Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears?
And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts!
The wide-stretch'd realm of intellectual woe,
Surpassing sensual far, is all our own.
In life so fatally distinguish'd, why
Cast in one lot, confounded, lump'd, in death?

“Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt?
Why thunder'd this peculiar clause against us,
All-mortal and all-wretched?-Have the skies
Reasons of state, their subjects may not scan,
Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh?
All-mortal and all-wretched!-'Tis too much:
Unparallel'd in Nature: 'tis too much
On being unrequested at thy hands,
Omnipotent! for I see nought but power.

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Breathing high hope! chain'd down to pangs, and Such are thy bounties!--Was it then too much

death?

"Knowing is suffering: and shall virtue share

The sigh of knowledge?-Virtue shares the sigh.
By straining up the steep of excellent,

By battles fought, and, from temptation, won,
What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth,
Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark
With every vice, and swept to brutal dust?
Merit is madness; virtue is a crime;

A crime to reason, if it costs us pain

:

Unpaid what pain, amidst a thousand more,
To think the most abandon'd, after days
Of triumph o'er their betters, find in death
As soft a pillow, nor make fouler clay!

"Duty! religion! These, our duty done,
Imply reward. Religion is mistake.
Duty! There's none, but to repel the cheat.
Ye cheats! away: ye daughters of my pride!
Who feign yourselves the favorites of the skies:
Ye towering hopes, abortive energies!
That toss and struggle, in my lying breast,
To scale the skies, and build presumptions there,
As I were heir of an eternity.

Vain, vain ambitions! trouble me no more.
Why travel far in quest of sure defeat?
As bounded as my being, be my wish.
All is inverted, wisdom is a fool.

Sense! take the rein; blind passion! drive us on;
And ignorance! befriend us on our way;
Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace!
Yes; give the pulse full empire; live the brute,
Since, as the brute, we die. The sum of man,
Of godlike man! to revel, and to rot.

"But not on equal terms with other brutes: Their revels a more poignant relish yield,

And safer too; they never poisons choose.

For me, to trespass on the brutal rights?
Too much for Heaven to make one emmet more!
Too much for chaos to permit my mass
A longer stay with essences unwrought,
Unfashion'd, untormented into man?
Wretched preferment to this round of pains!
Wretched capacity of frenzy, thought!
Wretched capacity of dying, life!
Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (O foul revolt!)
Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe.

"Death, then, has chang'd his nature too: O Death
Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heaven!
Best friend of man! since man is man no more.
Why in this thorny wilderness so long,
Since there's no promis'd land's ambrosial bower,
To pay me with its honey for my stings?
If needful to the selfish schemes of Heaven
To sting us sore, why mockt our misery ?
Why this so sumptuous insult o'er our heads?
Why this illustrious canopy display'd?
Why so magnificently lodg'd despair?
At stated periods, sure returning, roll

These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute
Their length of labors, and of pains; nor lose
Their misery's full measure?-Smiles with flowers,
And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming Earth,
That man may languish in luxurious scenes,
And in an Eden mourn his wither'd joys?
Claim Earth and skies man's admiration, due
For such delights! Blest animals! too wise
To wonder; and too happy to complain!

"Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene
Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn'd?
Why not the dragon's subterranean den,
For man to howl in? Why not his abode
Of the same dismal color with his fate!

Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meal, A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expense

And sends all-marring murmur far away.
For sensual life they best philosophize;

* Lorenzo.

Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and adders,
As congruous, as, for man, this lofty dome
Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high

desire;

If, from her humble chamber in the dust,
While proud thought swells, and high desire inflames,
The poor worm calls us for her inmates there;
And, round us, Death's inexorable hand

Draws the dark curtain close; undrawn no more.
"Undrawn no more!-Behind the cloud of Death,
Once, I beheld the Sun; a Sun which gilt
That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold:
How the grave's alter'd! Fathomless, as Hell!
A real Hell to those who dreamt of Heaven.
Annihilation! How it yawns before me!
Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense,
The privilege of angels, and of worms,
An outcast from existence! and this spirit,
This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul,
This particle of energy divine,

Which travels Nature, flies from star to star,
And visits gods, and emulates their powers,
For ever is extinguisht. Horror! death!
Death of that death I fearless once survey'd!
When horror universal shall descend,

And Heaven's dark concave urn all human race,
On that enormous, unrefunding tomb,

How just this verse! this monumental sigh!

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Beneath the lumber of demolish'd worlds,

Deep in the rubbish of the general wreck,
Swept ignominious to the common mass
Of matter, never dignified with life,
Here lie proud rationals; the sons of Heaven!
The lords of Earth! the property of worms!
Beings of yesterday! and not to-morrow!
Who liv'd in terror, and in pangs expir'd!
All gone to rot in chaos; or to make

Their happy transit into blocks or brutes,
Nor longer sully their Creator's name."

Lorenzo! hear, pause, ponder, and pronounce. Just is this history? If such is man,

Mankind's historian, though divine, might weep.
And dares Lorenzo smile?-I know thee proud;
For once let pride befriend thee; pride looks pale
At such a scene, and sighs for something more.
Amid thy boasts, presumptions, and displays,
And art thou then a shadow? Less than shade?
A nothing? Less than nothing? To have been,
And not to be, is lower than unborn.

Art thou ambitious? Why then make the worm
Thine equal? Runs thy taste of pleasure high?
Why patronize sure death of every joy?
Charm riches? Why choose beggary in the grave,
Of every hope a bankrupt! and for ever?
Ambition, pleasure, avarice, persuade thee
To make that world of glory, rapture, wealth,
They lately prov'd,* the soul's supreme desire.
What art thou made of? Rather, how unmade?
Great Nature's master-appetite destroy'd,
Is endless life, and happiness, despis'd?

Or both wish'd, here, where neither can be found?
Such man's perverse, eternal war with Heaven!
Dar'st thou persist? And is there nought on Earth,
But a long train of transitory forms,
Rising, and breaking, millions in an hour?
Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up
In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd?
Oh! for what crime, unmerciful Lorenzo!
Destroys thy scheme the whole of human race?
Kind is fell Lucifer, compar'd to thee:
O spare this waste of being half-divine;
And vindicate th' economy of Heaven.

* In Night VI.

Heaven is all love; all joy in giving joy : It never had created, but to bless: And shall it, then, strike off the list of life, A being blest, or worthy so to be? Heaven starts at an annihilating God.

Is that, all Nature starts at, thy desire?
Art such a clod to wish thyself all clay?
What is that dreadful wish?-The dying groan
Of Nature, murder'd by the blackest guilt.
What deadly poison has thy nature drunk;
To nature undebauch'd no shock so great.
Nature's first wish is endless happiness;
Annihilation is an after-thought,

A monstrous wish, unborn till virtue dies.
And, oh! what depth of horror lies inclos'd!
For non-existence no man ever wish'd,
But, first, he wish'd the Deity destroy'd.

If so; what words are dark enough to draw
Thy picture true? The darkest are too fair.
Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour
Of desperation, by what fury's aid,
In what infernal posture of the soul,
All Hell invited, and all Hell in joy

At such a birth, a birth so near of kin,

Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme
Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown,
And deities begun, reduc'd to dust?

There's nought (thou say'st) but one eternal flux
Of feeble essences, tumultuous driven
Through time's rough billows into night's abyss.
Say, in this rapid tide of human ruin,

Is there no rock, on which man's tossing thought
Can rest from terror, dare his fate survey,
And boldly think it something to be born?
Amid such hourly wrecks of being fair,
Is there no central, all-sustaining base,
All-realizing, all-connecting power,
Which, as it call'd forth all things, can recall,
And force destruction to refund her spoil?
Command the grave restore her taken prey?
Bid death's dark vale its human harvest yield,
And earth and ocean pay their debt of man,
True to the grand deposit trusted there?
Is there no potentate whose outstretch'd arm,
When ripening time calls forth th' appointed hour
Pluck'd from foul devastation's famish'd maw,
Binds present, past, and future, to his throne?
His throne, how glorious, thus divinely grac'd,
By germinating beings clustering round!
A garland worthy the divinity!

A throne, by Heaven's omnipotence in smiles,
Built (like a pharos towering in the waves)
Amidst immense effusions of his love!
An ocean of communicated bliss!

An all-prolific, all-preserving god!
This were a god indeed.-And such is man,
As here presum'd: he rises from his fall.
Think'st thou Omnipotence a naked root,
Each blossom fair of Deity destroy'd?
Nothing is dead; nay, nothing sleeps; each soul,
That ever animated human clay,

Now wakes; is on the wing: and where, O where,
Will the swarm settle?-When the trumpet's call,
As sounding brass, collects us, round Heaven's throne
Conglob'd, we bask in everlasting day,
(Paternal splendor!) and adhere for ever.
Had not the soul this outlet to the skies,
In this vast vessel of the universe,
How should we gasp, as in an empty void!
How in the pangs of famish'd hope expire!

How bright my prospect shines! how gloomy The genuine cause of every deed divine:

thine!

A trembling world! and a devouring God!
Earth, but the shambles of Omnipotence!

Heaven's face all stain'd with causeless massacres
Of countless millions, born to feel the pang
Of being lost. Lorenzo! can it be?
This bids us shudder at the thoughts of life.
Who would be born to such a phantom world,
Where nought substantial but our misery?
Where joy (if joy) but heightens our distress,
So soon to perish, and revive no more?
The greater such a joy, the more it pains.
A world, so far from great, (and yet how great
It shines to thee!) there's nothing real in it;
Being, a shadow; consciousness, a dream;
A dream, how dreadful! Universal blank
Before it, and behind! Poor man, a spark
From non-existence struck by wrath divine,
Glittering a moment, nor that moment sure,
'Midst upper, nether, and surrounding night,
His sad, sure, sudden, and eternal tomb!

Lorenzo! dost thou feel these arguments?
Or is there nought but vengeance can be felt?
How hast thou dar'd the Deity dethrone?
How dar'd indict him of a world like this?
If such the world, creation was a crime;
For what is crime but cause of misery?
Retract, blasphemer! and unriddle this,
Of endless arguments above, below,
Without us, and within, the short result!
"If man's immortal, there's a God in Heaven."
But wherefore such redundancy? such waste
Of argument? One sets my soul at rest!
One obvious, and at hand, and, oh!-at heart.
So just the skies, Philander's life so pain'd,
His heart so pure; that, or succeeding scenes
Have palms to give, or ne'er had he been born.
"What an old tale is this "" Lorenzo cries.-
I grant this argument is old; but truth
No years impair; and had not this been true,
Thou never hadst despis'd it for its age.
Truth is immortal as thy soul; and fable
As fleeting as thy joys: be wise, nor make
Heaven's highest blessing, vengeance; O be wise!
Nor make a curse of immortality.

Say, know'st thou what it is, or what thou art?
Know'st thou the importance of a soul immortal?
Behold this midnight glory: worlds on worlds!
Amazing pomp! redouble this amaze;

Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more;
Then weigh the whole; one soul outweighs them
all;

And calls th' astonishing magnificence
Of unintelligent creation poor.

For this, believe not me; no man believe;
Trust not in words, but deeds; and deeds no less
Than those of the Supreme; nor his, a few:
Consult them all; consulted, all proclaim
Thy soul's importance: tremble at thyself;
For whom Omnipotence has wak'd so long:
Has wak'd, and work'd, for ages; from the birth
Of Nature to this unbelieving hour.

In this small province of his vast domain,
(All Nature bow, while I pronounce his name!)
What has God done, and not for this sole end,
To rescue souls from death? The soul's high price
Is writ in all the conduct of the skies.
The soul's high price is the Creation's key,
Unlocks its mysteries, and naked lays

That is the chain of ages, which maintains
Their obvious correspondence, and unites
Most distant periods in one blest design:
That is the mighty hinge, on which have turn'd
All revolutions, whether we regard
The natural, civil, or religious, world,
The former two but servants to the third:
To that their duty done, they both expire,
Their mass new-cast, forgot their deeds renown'd:
And angels ask, “Where once they shone so fair?"
To lift us from this abject, to sublime;
This flux, to permanent; this dark, to-day;
This foul, to pure; this turbid, to serene;
This mean, to mighty!-for this glorious end
Th' Almighty, rising, his long sabbath broke!
The world was made; was ruin'd; was restor'd ;
Laws from the skies were publish'd; were repeal'd;
On Earth kings, kingdoms, rose; kings, kingdoms,
fell;

Fam'd sages lighted up the Pagan world;
Prophets from Sion darted a keen glance
Through distant age; saints travel'd; martyrs bled;
By wonders sacred Nature stood controll'd;
The living were translated; dead were rais'd;
Angels, and more than angels, came from Heaven
And, oh! for this, descended lower still:
Guilt was Hell's gloom; astonish'd at his guest,
For one short moment Lucifer ador'd:
Lorenzo! and wilt thou do less -For this,
That hallow'd page, fools scoff at, was inspir'd,
Of all these truths-thrice-venerable code!
Deists! perform your quarantine; and then
Fall prostrate, ere you touch it, lest you die.

Nor less intensely bent infernal powers
To mar, than those of light, this end to gain.
O what a scene is here!-Lorenzo! wake!
Rise to the thought; exert, expand thy soul,
To take the vast idea: it denies

All else the name of great. Two warring worlds!
Not Europe against Afric; warring worlds!
Of more than mortal! mounted on the wing!
On ardent wings of energy and zeal,
High-hovering o'er this little brand of strife!
This sublunary ball-But strife, for what?
In their own cause conflicting? No; in thine,
In man's. His single interest blows the flame;
His the sole stake; his fate the trumpet sounds,
Which kindles war immortal. How it burns!
Tumultuous swarms of deities in arms!
Force, force opposing, till the waves run high,
And tempest Nature's universal sphere.
Such opposites eternal, stedfast, stern,
Such foes implacable, are good and ill;
Yet man, vain man, would mediate peace between
Think not this fiction," There was war in Heaven."
From Heaven's high crystal mountain, where it hung,
Th' Almighty's out-stretch'd arm took down his bow,
And shot his indignation at the deep:
Re-thunder'd Hell, and darted all her fires.
And seems the stake of little moment still?
And slumbers man, who singly caus'd the storm?
He sleeps. And art thou shock'd at mysteries!
The greatest, thou. How dreadful to reflect,
What ardor, care, and counsel, mortals cause
In breasts divine! how little in their own!

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Where'er I turn, how new proofs pour upon me!
How happily this wondrous view supports
My former argument! How strongly strikes
Immortal life's full demonstration, here!

Why this exertion? Why this strange regard
From Heaven's Omnipotent indulg'd to man?———
Because, in man, the glorious dreadful power,
Extremely to be pain'd, or blest, for ever.
Duration gives importance; swells the price.
An angel, if a creature of a day,
What would he be? A trifle of no weight;
Or stand, or fall; no matter which; he's gone.
Because immortal, therefore is indulg'd
This strange regard of deities to dust.

Hence, Heaven looks down on Earth with all her eyes:
Hence, the soul's mighty moment in her sight:
Hence, every soul has partisans above,
And every thought a critic in the skies:
Hence, clay, vile clay! has angels for its guard,
And every guard a passion for his charge:
Hence, from all age, the cabinet divine
Has held high counsel o'er the fate of man.

Nor have the clouds those gracious counsels hid:
Angels undrew the curtain of the throne,
And Providence came forth to meet mankind:
In various modes of emphasis and awe,
He spoke his will, and trembling Nature heard;
He spoke it loud, in thunder and in storm.
Witness, thou Sinai! whose cloud-cover'd height,
And shaken basis, own'd the present God;
Witness, ye billows! whose returning tide,
Breaking the chain that fasten'd it in air,
Swept Egypt, and her menaces, to Hell:
Witness, ye flames! th' Assyrian tyrant blew
To sevenfold rage, as impotent, as strong:
And thou, Earth! witness, whose expanding jaws
Clos'd o'er presumption's sacrilegious sons:*
Has not each element, in turn, subscrib'd
The soul's high price, and sworn it to the wise?
Has not flame, ocean, ether, earthquake, strove
To strike this truth through adamantine man?
If not all adamant, Lorenzo! hear;
All is delusion; Nature is wrapt up
In tenfold night, from reason's keenest eye;
There's no consistence, meaning, plan, or end,
In all beneath the Sun, in all above
(As far as man can penetrate,) or Heaven
Is an immense, inestimable prize;
Or all is nothing, or that prize is all-

And shall each toy be still a match for Heaven,
And full equivalent for groans below?
Who would not give a trifle to prevent
What he would give a thousand worlds to cure?
Lorenzo! thou hast seen (if thine to see)
All Nature, and her God (by Nature's course,
And Nature's course controll'd) declare for me:
The skies above proclaim, " immortal man!"
And, “man immortal!" all below resounds.
The world a system of theology,

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Read by the greatest strangers to the schools;
If honest, learn'd; and sages o'er a plow.
Is not, Lorenzo! then, impos'd on thee
This hard alternative; or, to renounce
Thy reason, or thy sense; or, to believe?
What then is unbelief? "Tis an exploit ;
A strenuous enterprise: to gain it, man
Must burst through every bar of common sense;
Of common shame, magnanimously wrong;
And what rewards the sturdy combatant?
His prize, repentance; infamy, his crown.

But wherefore, infamy?-For want of faith,
Down the steep precipice of wrong he slides;
*Korah, &c.

There's nothing to support him in the right.
Faith in the future wanting is, at least
In embryo, every weakness, every guilt;
And strong temptation ripens it to birth.
If this life's gain invites him to the deed,
Why not his country sold, his father slain?
"Tis virtue to pursue our good supreme;
And his supreme, his only good is here.
Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd,
Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools,
And think a turf, or tomb-stone, covers all :
These find employment, and provide for sense
A richer pasture, and a larger range;
And sense by right divine ascends the throne,
When virtue's prize and prospect are no more;
Virtue no more we think the will of Heaven.
Would Heaven quite beggar virtue, if belov'd?
"Has virtue charms?"-I grant her heavenly

fair;

But if unportion'd, all will interest wed;
Though that our admiration, this our choice.
The virtues grow on immortality;
That root destroy'd, they wither and expire.
A deity believ'd, will nought avail;
Rewards and punishments make God ador'd;
And hopes and fears give conscience all her power.
As in the dying parent dies the child,
Virtue, with immortality, expires.

Who tells me he denies his soul immortal,
Whate'er his boast, has told me, he's a knave.
His duty 'tis, to love himself alone;

Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles.
Who thinks ere long the man shall wholly die,
Is dead already; nought but brute survives.

And are there such?-Such candidates there are
For more than death; for utter loss of being,
Being, the basis of the Deity!

Ask you the cause?—The cause they will not teli
Nor need they: O the sorceries of sense!
They work this transformation on the soul,
Dismount her, like the serpent at the fall,
Dismount her from her native wing, (which soar'd
Erewhile ethereal heights.) and throw her down,
To lick the dust, and crawl in such a thought.

Is it in words to paint you? O ye fall'n!
Fall'n from the wings of reason, and of hope!
Erect in stature, prone in appetite!
Patrons of pleasure, posting into pain!
Lovers of argument, averse to sense!
Boasters of liberty, fast bound in chains!
Lords of the wide creation, and the shame!
More senseless than th' irrationals you scorn!
More base than those you rule! Than those you pity
Far more undone! O ye most infamous
Of beings, from superior dignity!

Deepest in woe from means of boundless bliss!
Ye curst by blessings infinite! because
Most highly favor'd, most profoundly lost!
Ye motley mass of contradiction strong!
And are you, too, convinc'd, your souls fly off
In exhalation soft, and die in air,
From the full flood of evidence against you?
In the coarse drudgeries and sinks of sense,
Your souls have quite worn out the make of Heaven
By vice new-cast, and creatures of your own:
But though you can deform, you can't destroy;
To curse, not uncreate, is all your power.

Lorenzo! this black brotherhood renounce;
Renounce St. Evremont, and read St. Paul.
Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd,

His mounting mind made long abode in Heaven.
This is free-thinking, unconfin'd to parts,
To send the soul, on curious travel bent,
Through all the provinces of human thought;
To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;
Of this vast universe to make the tour;
In each recess of space, and time, at home;
Familiar with their wonders; diving deep;
And, like a prince of boundless interests there,
Still most ambitious of the most remote;
To look on truth unbroken, and entire;
Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths
By truths enlighten'd, and sustain'd, afford
An arch-like, strong foundation, to support
Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete
Conviction; here, the more we press, we stand
More firm who most examine, most believe.
Parts, like half-sentences, confound; the whole
Conveys the sense, and God is understood;
Who not in fragments writes to human race:
Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply.

This, this, is thinking free, a thought that grasps
Beyond a grain, and looks beyond an hour.
Turn up thine eyes, survey this midnight scene;
What are Earth's kingdoms, to yon boundless orbs,
Of human souls, one day, the destin'd range?
And what yon boundless orbs, to godlike man?
Those numerous worlds that throng the firmament,
And ask more space in Heaven, can roll at large
In man's capacious thought, and still leave room
For ampler orbs, for new creations, there.
Can such a soul contract itself, to gripe
A point of no dimension, of no weight?

It can; it does: the world is such a point:
And, of that point, how small a part enslaves!
How small a part-of nothing, shall I say?
Why not?-Friends, our chief treasure! how they
drop!

Lucia, Narcissa fair, Philander, gone!
The grave, like fabled Cerberus, has op'd
A triple mouth; and, in an awful voice,
Loud calls my soul, and utters all I sing.
How the world falls to pieces round about us,
And leaves us in a ruin of our joy!
What says this transportation of my friends?
It bids me love the place where now they dwell,
And scorn this wretched spot they leave so poor.
Eternity's vast ocean lies before thee;
There; there, Lorenzo! thy Clarissa sails.
Give thy mind sea-room; keep it wide of Earth,
That rock of souls immortal; cut thy cord;
Weigh anchor; spread thy sails; call every wind;
Eye thy Great Pole-star; make the land of life.
Two kinds of life has double-natur'd man,
And two of death; the last far more severe.
Life animal is nurtur'd by the Sun;
Thrives on his bounties, triumphs in his beams.
Life rational subsists on higher food,
Triumphant in his beams, who made the day.
When we leave that Sun, and are left by this,
(The fate of all who die in stubborn guilt,)
"Tis utter darkness; strictly double death.
We sink by no judicial stroke of Heaven,
But Nature's course; as sure as plummets fall
Since God, or man, must alter, ere they meet,
(Since light and darkness blend not in one sphere,)
"Tis manifest, Lorenzo! who must change.

If, then, that double death should prove thy lot,
Blame not the bowels of the Deity;
Man shall be blest, as far as man permits.

Not man alone, all rationals, Heaven arms
With an illustrious, but tremendous, power
To counteract its own most gracious ends;
And this, of strict necessity, not choice;
That power denied, men, angels, were no more
But passive engines, void of praise or blame.
A nature rational implies the power
Of being blest, or wretched, as we please;
Else idle reason would have nought to do;
And he that would be barr'd capacity
Of pain, courts incapacity of bliss.
Heaven wills our happiness, allows our doom;
Invites us ardently, but not compels;
Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees;
Man is the maker of immortal fates.
Man falls by man, if finally he falls;
And fall he must, who learns from death alone
The dreadful secret-That he lives for ever.

Why this to thee?-Thee yet, perhaps, in doubt
Of second life? But wherefore doubtful still?
Eternal life is nature's ardent wish:
What ardently we wish, we soon believe:
Thy tardy faith declares that wish destroy'd:
What has destroy'd it ?-Shall I tell thee what?
When fear'd the future, 'tis no longer wish'd;
And, when unwish'd, we strive to disbelieve.
"Thus infidelity our guilt betrays."

Nor that the sole detection! Blush, Lorenzo!
Blush for hypocrisy, if not for guilt.
The future fear'd?—An infidel, and fear?
Fear what? A dream? A fable ?-How thy dress
Unwilling evidence, and therefore strong,
Affords my cause an undesign'd support!
How disbelief affirms what it denies!

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It, unawares, asserts immortal life."
Surprising infidelity turns out

A creed, and a confession of our sins:
Apostates, thus, are orthodox divines.

Lorenzo! with Lorenzo clash no more;
Nor longer a transparent vizor wear.
Think'st thou, religion only has her mask?
Our infidels are Satan's hypocrites,
Pretend the worst, and, at the bottom, fail.
When visited by thought (thought will intrude.)
Like him they serve, they tremble and believe.
Is their hypocrisy so foul as this;
So fatal to the welfare of the world?
What detestation, what contempt, their due!
And, if unpaid, be thank'd for their escape
That Christian candor they strive hard to scorn:
If not for that asylum, they might find
A Hell on Earth; nor 'scape a worse below.

With insolence, and impotence of thought, Instead of racking fancy, to refute, Reform thy manners, and the truth enjoy.But shall I dare confess the dire result? Can thy proud reason brook so black a brand? From purer manners, to sublimer faith, Is Nature's unavoidable ascent; An honest Deist, where the Gospel shines, Matur'd to nobler, in the Christian ends. When that blest change arrives, e'en cast aside This song superfluous; life immortal strikes Conviction, in a flood of light divine. A Christian dwells, like Uriel,* in the Sun; Meridian evidence puts doubt to flight; And ardent hope anticipates the skies. Of that bright Sun, Lorenzo! scale the sphere;

* Milton.

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