EPISTLES PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL.

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LONDON: Printed for T. WILCOX, opposite the New-Church, in the Strand, M.DCCLIX.

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To The First Minister of STATE, for the Time being.

HAIL mighty Pam! if song without offence
Thus hail the first court card in eminence,
Thou in whom kings find oft the sov'reign sway;
[Page vi]For kings at loo the leading knave obey:
Or if, content to play an humbler game,
Plain Jack we stile thee, more familiar name,
Thou, whose sly blows the lower party feels,
While bent the high to catch thy tripping heels;
Great in thyself, whatever thou art call'd,
Nations by thee enfranchis'd or inthrall'd,
Holla'd to day to Palace-yard along,
Flatter'd at once in metzotint and song;
Or piqu'd, perhaps, while chimes the present line,
Ere yet turn'd out, as usual, to resign;
Branded by th' honest satire of the times
With all a minister's mysterious crimes!
[Page vii]To thee I pay my court, till in disgrace,
And then as humbly to the next in place.
For know, what private worth soe'er thy boast,
I not address thy person, but thy post;
Is there a time when statesmen, good or great,
Look down with pity on the toils of state;
Superiour to the boast of boasted things,
The pomp of titles, and the smile of kings:
When, in the private hour of social ease,
Ambition sleeps, and truth itself may please?
At such an hour, when ev'n politeness deigns
To taste the rudeness of familiar strains,
[Page viii]Presuming thou, in honour to the muse,
Indulgent once her labours may peruse,
To thee those honest labours she commends:
At court while honest doubtless finding friends.
But, through thy levee if forbid to press,
In freedom's plain and anti-courtier's dress,
Light of her rhimes as of petitions made,
Should they be lost, forgotten or mislaid,
If not so vain to think thou shouldst commend,
In either case permit me to defend.
Too well I know imputed as a crime
The gift of reason to the man of rhime;
[Page ix]To childish Fiction gingling numbers tied,
As bells that dangle by its infant side;
To useless whims poetick worth confin'd,
To strike the sense but not improve the mind.
Should on the daring verse, then, censure fall,
From priest or prelate, waken'd in the stall;
Or should the learned jurors take in hand
To burn the books they may not understand;
Scorn'd the loud torrent of the mob's abuse,
With thee I leave my errour and excuse.
Know then, my patron, once upon a time,
While yet a boy, I caught the itch of rhime:
[Page x]But, born with hatred to the sing-song train,
Whose numbers charm, like empty notes, in vain,
While strange to themes t' employ the muse about,
The peccant humour broke but little out;
Till late, in waking dreams that trouble youth,
On one side prudence urg'd, on t'other truth:
Prudence, a worldly-minded dame, and sly,
Who fix'd on earth still kept her cautious eye;
While truth, whose open breast did mine inflame,
Look'd up to Heav'n; to heav'n, from whence she came.
When now my eager heart her pow'r confess'd,
And thus her willing captive truth address'd.
"Art thou, my friend, that enterprizing youth
[Page xi]"Who make pretensions to the song of truth;
"By reason taught to leave, in early life,
"The wanton mistress, for the faithful wife?
"Among the sciences thy subject chuse.
"Philosophy's the sister of the muse.
Prudence, who heard, made various hems and haws;
And, after due, deliberating pause,
Shaking her head, "beware rash youth," she cried,
"Let prudence here your early footsteps guide.
"Art thou so ignorant as not to know
"Truth leads us oft to poverty and woe?
"Let me advise—wouldst thou succeed in rhime?
[Page xii]"Mark, at the proper season, well thy time;
"Taking this maxim as a gen'ral rule,
"The knave is honest till he plays the fool:
"For times there are of such malignant face,
"That sharpers only rise to pow'r and place;
"Times, when the mere huzza for publick good
"Breaks down all ranks of honour and of blood;
"When sacred characters like bawds are us'd,
"And princes with impunity abus'd:
"The throne of majesty a vulgar thing;
"While George, the cobler, damns great GEORGE, the king.
"In times like these, behold on ev'ry side
[Page xiii]"What pains we take offensive truth to hide:
"Asham'd to show her bashful face at court,
"See her simplicity the mob's rude sport;
"Her lovers stigmatiz'd by gen'ral hate,
"As bold disturbers of the church and state.
"Wouldst thou to this abandon'd tribe belong?
"What bard e'er heeded yet the TRUTH of song!
"Again, 'tis certain there may come a time,
"When impudence finds no excuse in rhime;
"When even prudence may herself be just;
"Her int'rest more to keep than break her trust;
"When crowns are honour'd, and, in proper season,
" Sh-bb-re, dread patriot, may be hang'd for treason:
[Page xiv]"A time, perhaps (years work the strangest things)
"When the brave Scots may love their best of kings;
"When slighted science may approach the throne;
"And Britons make true policy their own.
"What tho' their patriot hearts are known to fail,
"When dearth of barley threatens want of ale
"What tho' religion, arm'd by common-sense,
"Breaks but its weapons in its own defence;
"Ev'n yet may piety be kept alive,
"And half expiring patriotism revive.
"At such a season, should the muse inspire,
"If touch'd with caution, mayst thou strike the lyre,
"Perhaps uncensur'd; but to look for praise!
[Page xv]"Know these, young bard, are no poetick days.
"But should the age, as probably it may,
"Turn its loose politicks another way;
"While, in religious mood, far push'd the schemes
"Of true born Britons, always in extremes,
"The times may yet return when frantick zeal
"Shall give its wooden sword an edge of steel;
"When convocations shall in judgment sit,
"To canvass th' infidelity of wit;
"On wicked KNOWLEDGE Britain's guilt to lay,
"And drive the destin'd victim far away.
"O, thus if ignorance should rule, in turn,
"Bards lose their ears, and martyr theists burn;
[Page xvi]"Ready reforming constables, at hand,
"Of scientifick vice to cleanse the land;
"Have thou with truth nor morals aught to do.
"Things are not always fit that may be true."
Here Prudence ended—her advice was good:
But Truth had charms that could not be with stood.
Hers then the muse—how far success will show
In times like ours her song be à propos.
So much indeed of prudence did I learn,
My fingers ne'er in politicks to burn.
Silent I sat, amidst the party rout,
When late the ministry turn'd in and out;
[Page xvii]When rag'd the furious goose-quills of the times,
To shame their country with their shameless rhimes.
Careless what turtle-eating son of White's
Might set the blunders of the state to rights,
If Pollio, Gallus, Tully, or his grace,
Should all keep out, or who get into place.
I car'd not, I, tho' these, or none of these,
The king, the house, or mightier mob might please.
Blam'd I the peer, whom adverse winds had blown
Round the wide world, to prop a monarch's throne;
Taught, in the hurricanes of southern seas,
The statesman's wisdom and the courtier's ease;
By plunder'd Spaniards, the consummate skill
[Page xviii]To steer a kingdom, like a bark, at will?
Tho' made too plain the lee-way of the realm,
Did I presume to bid him mind the helm?
Nay, when the guardian genii of the land
To save our desp'rate fortunes took in hand;
I sung them not, tho' crown'd, by half the nation,
With civick wreaths, from town and corporation.
I ne'er, officious, crack'd my brains t'amend
Errours, the great alone might comprehend;
Plagu'd, with no songs of praise, our Lord the King;
Nor gave one faggot to the blaze of Byng:
But, free from panegyrick as abuse,
Put all my little wit to private use.
[Page xix]Thus far of temp'ral politicks I'm clear;
Nor has the spiritual had more to fear.
Since gospel witnesses in form were tried,
Their valid evidence I ne'er denied;
Ne'er intermeddled with the jury's quest,
Nor contradicted Littleton or West.
When church and state learn'd Warburton would join,
Tho' sad th'affair, I made it none of mine:
Nor did I e'er, 'gainst Leland's pen, presume
To vindicate Lord Bolingbroke or Hume:
Made no pretence to freedom of debate;
Nor risk'd, like harmless —n—t, Woolston's fate.
And tho' for once, in this, a trick of youth,
[Page xx]Prudential views are sacrific'd to truth;
Could I shake off those vices rhime and sense;
This first might likely prove my last offence;
Or, in thy cause enlisted once my pen,
I never more might trouble truth agen:
But to thy purpose turn my ready hand,
True to the law and gospel of the land.
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ADVERTISEMENT.

THE ground work of the following Epistles being the fruit of a private correspondence, it was found necessary, in preparing them for the press; to adapt them to more general use and a­musement. It may not, therefore, be improper to observe that, whatever theological subjects have fallen in the author's way, he hath purposely avoid­ed taking part with divines of any sect or party: leaving it to the ingenuous, of every persuasion, to determine how far their particular sentiments may be supported by authorities, superior to com­mon-sense and simple demonstration. — As to his poetry; having no reputation to lose, he is little anxious about what he may acquire. Indeed, it must be confess'd that perspicuity and argument have been frequently consulted, at the expence both of the dignity and harmony of his numbers, Elegance, however, would have been more at­tended [Page xxii] to, had the author's leisure permitted; or, had his design been to distinguish himself as a poet; a character he is much less ambitious of than that of a philosopher. —

Unmov'd by sophistry, unaw'd by name,
No dupe to doctrines, and no fool to fame.
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CONTENTS.
  • EPISTLE THE FIRST — Page 5—42
    • OF truth in general.
    • Its criterion.
    • Its re­lation to opinion.
    • The uncertainty of the latter.
    • Necessary that both should concur in Science.
  • EPISTLE THE SECOND — page 47—88
    • On Science, as our guide to truth.
    • The criterion best adapted to the opinion of indivi­duals.
    • The absurdity of persecution.
    • Our pretensions to divine, and the bounds of human knowledge.
  • EPISTLE THE THIRD — page 93—126
    • On the infatuation of mankind, respecting paradox and mysteries.
    • The effects and causes of such infatuation.
    • The absurdity of suppo­sing ignorance and folly the means to promote the cause of truth; or that the freedom of scien­tifick inquiry is incompatible with the political welfare of society.
  • [Page xxiv]EPISTLE THE FOURTH — Page 131—154
    • On the weakness of the human understanding
    • The abstract existence of the Deity
    • The incomprehensibility of the divine nature, and the incongruity of pretended atheism.
  • EPISTLE THE FIFTH — page 159—202
    • On happiness.
    • The apparent incapacity of mankind for its enjoyment.
    • The comparative pain and pleasure of human sensations; and their relation to our physical and moral constitution.
  • EPISTLE THE SIXTH — page 209—256
    • On abstract good and evil.
    • The physical perfection of the material universe, and the mo­ral harmony observable in the dispensations of Providence.
  • EPISTLE THE SEVENTH — page 263—298
    • On moral principles
    • The respective influ­ence of reason and the passions
    • The immorality of ignorance and the indispensable duty of seek­ing knowledge.
  • EPISTLE THE EIGHTH — page 303—336
    • On the immortality of the soul; and the ar­ments for, and against, a future state.

EPISTLE THE FIRST.

ARGUMENT.

Of truth in general. —Its criterion. —Its relation to opinion. —The uncertainty of the latter. — Necessary that both should concur in Science.

SUMMARY.

UNiversal belief being, in fact, an undisputed criterion of truth, and all mankind necessarily believing those posi­tions which they conceive demonstrable; science, or demonstra­tive knowledge, is supposed to be the least exceptionable test of what is true or false, in general. —The abstract certitude of the schools is, therefore, exploded. But, as particular opinions are not always the effect of knowledge, nor are systems con­stantly founded on scientifick principles, it is inquired if there be no other criterion, sufficiently obvious to relieve the doubts and reconcile the opposite sentiments of mankind. —The dispen­sations of providence, as well as the dictates of revelation, ap­pear inadequate to the purpose; theologists being found too un­succeessful, in clearing up the sacred page, and phisiologists too ignorant of the system of nature, for either to form opinions, equally adapted to the credulity of individuals. —Divines and philosophers are censured, indeed, rather as, mercenary wrang­lers, or bigots to particular systems, than fair inquirers after, or teachers of, the truth. —A fair and ingenuous inquirer characteriz'd. —Such not frequently to be found; few being capacitated for so arduous a task. —Fortitude and moderation the grand requisites: the scarcity of which in the minds of men, in general, serves to account for their want of success in the attempt; as well as for their promptitude either to embrace [Page 4] skepticism, as an antidote to errour, or conformity, to avoid the trouble of thinking. —Dogmatists and Skepticks censured: The former on account of their absurd dependance on tradition and futile authorities: the latter for superciliously rejecting, on the other hand, all authority and tradition, without dis­tinction. —In our inquiries after truth, however, our belief is to be suspended in regard to points beyond our knowledge. —In scientifick researches, also, the subtilty of metaphysical argu­ments should be with caution trusted, as insensibly leading us into errour and perplexity.

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EPISTLE THE FIRST.

WHILE zeal, beyond the grave, pursues
Whom priest and patriot abuse,
With some the foster-sire of lies,
Extoll'd by others to the skies,
[Page 6]St. John a, thus sav'd and damn'd by fame, 5
An honour'd and a blasted name!
Lorenzo asks, ingenuous youth,
What is, and who believes, the truth.
The truth my friend, wouldst learn of me?
'Tis that wherein mankind agree. 10
At least no safer truth we know
Than that the world will grant us so.
"But when and where?" —the sages tell,
Of yore 'twas buried in a well, b
So deep, that hid, for want of light, 15
From ev'ry peeping mortal's sight,
The more suspicious than the rest
[Page 7] Conceiv'd the story was a jest;
And, as no soul could find it out,
That truth itself was all a doubt. 20
Philosophizing train of thought!
Since by improving moderns caught;
Who tell us nature trick'd mankind,
When giving eyes she left us blind:
Heav'n making fools, and thinking fit c 25
To play upon their want of wit.
But sure we boldly may receive
As truth what all mankind believe:
Such universal faith a guide
In skepticism itself implied. 30
"Yet say in what the world unite,
[Page 8] "Else useless this our rule of right;
"Else still inquiry's at a pause;
"Still vague investigation's laws."
Lorenzo, all, with you and me, 35
In points demonstrable agree:
Conviction, right, or wrong, the test d
Of truth in ev'ry human breast:
While truths, demonstratively so,
Who once believe profess to know. 40
On Science hence our search must rest;
That universal rule confess'd.
Laid then those subtilties aside
Where human certitude's denied,
[Page 9] Inquiry safely may proceed 45
To form its scientifick creed.
Doth Solomon himself profess
His science all uncertain guess, e
Th'egregious sophister affirms
A contradiction, ev'n in terms. 50
Who can his ignorance suppose
Of that he's conscious that he knows? f
Sayst thou slow knowledge faith outflies;
Believers spurning at the wise;
Opinion, wing'd, feet, hand and head, 55
[Page 10] In haste, without her errand, sped;
Or driv'n, inactive, here and there,
With ev'ry vagrant breath of air.
Wouldst, therefore, know what systems err,
To whom opinions to refer, 60
Where trembling doubt and errour blind
At once a guard and guide may find;
At once successfully apply,
And give to falshood's face the lie?
No sect, alas! profess the rule 65
That reconciles the knave and fool;
Unites the ignorant and wise:
Revering these what those despise.
Whether from nature's general law
The outlines of our creed we draw, 70
Or think the truth be only given
[Page 11] In revelation pure from Heaven,
It matters not; unless we find
Some active index in the mind,
Some ray of Heaven's unerring light, 75
To point, or here or there, aright.
Let Christianity display
Its wond'rous volume to the day;
The sacred lines, however true,
Alike affect not me and you: 80
Th' accepted sense of holy writ
Still resting on th' accepting wit.
For who that read but comprehend
As taught by father, priest or friend,
Or tenets new, more nice than wise, 85
Peculiar to themselves, devise.
How then prevails the sacred text,
[Page 12] If by the comment thus perplex'd;
If hereticks, of ev'ry kind,
Their tenets in the gospel find; 90
If thus the spirit hide the flaw
That mars the letter of the law!
Let Nature's striking scenes engage
The letter'd and unletter'd age;
Various as ev'ry varied tribe 95
The notions hence the world imbibe.
When meteors glow and comets blaze,
How wond'ring ignorance doth gaze;
Foretelling, ev'n in errour wise,
The judgments gath'ring in the skies! 100
Th' aurora g streaming from the pole,
What groundless fear sthe weak control
[Page 13] Hear them address their angry God,
And take his mercies for his rod:
Whilst thine, or Bradley's curious, eyes 105
As calmly view the threat'ning skies,
The plagues, the famines, wars they yield,
As Colin drives his team a-field.
Rolls the big thunder o'er the plain,
Melt the fierce light'nings clouds to rain, 110
Ah me! how impious, Crito cries,
To lift thy hand against the skies;
Thy lines of magick steel to form,
To brave the fury of the storm;
With Franklin, h madly to defy 115
The thunderer's red right-arm, on high,
Bold Titan! to erect thy stand
[Page 14] To wrest the light'nings from his hand! i
Yet those in physicks better read
At honest Crito shake the head; 120
In pity, or derision, smile;
Nature and truth their guard the while.
Thus, by unlike experience taught,
Peculiar are our modes of thought;
Explain'd, by Custom's partial nod, 125
The voice of nature and of God.
Dost thou apply to saint or sage,
The guides of each believing age,
The truths, which mysteries conceal,
Or those of science to reveal? 130
[Page 15] From far and near, what tales absurd
Adulterate the written word!
How oft the pure, and perfect, text
Have base Theologists perplex'd!
What transcripts! what interpolation! 135
Eternal source of disputation!
Alas, Lorenzo, few believe,
In fact, the doctrines they receive.
How few of ev'n the reverend tribe
The very canons they subscribe! 140
Do such their mother-church defend?
On her pluralities depend:
The mitre and the sine-cure
Preserving best her tenets pure.
For, rob the priesthood of its gain, 145
What pillar will the church sustain.
[Page 16] What cement binds the crazy wall,
Whose sapt foundation threats its fall.
Do such profess to turn the key
On myst'ries, hid from you and me; 150
Or of the oracles of old
The dubious phrases to unfold;
To teach the truth to vulgar minds,
Which Heav'n's own blaze of rhetorick blinds?
Ah, think not these will e'er display 155
Their secrets to the eye of day.
Tell me what artist will impart
To thee th' arcanum of his art.
Not one—but all, reserv'd and sly,
Affect to cheat th' observer's eye: 160
Their slightest knacks important made,
To raise the wonder of their trade.
Thus oft the reverend tiro, taught
[Page 17] That none may serve their God for naught,
Casts o'er his ignorance a veil, 165
Or masks the moral of his tale;
Securely laughing in his sleeve,
When fools the tale itself believe.
To save his calling from abuse
His caution here, in fact, of use. 170
For once his art and mist'ry k known
Who church-authority would own?
As, when sublime conundrums hit,
We laugh to scorn the quibbler's wit;
So, in rever'd enigmas wise, 175
His riddling reverence we despise.
Sayst thou, since reformation's hand
From spiritual slav'ry freed the land,
The sacerdotal hydra chain'd,
[Page 18] By truth opinions are restrain'd? 180
Look round, believing friend, and see
How pious Protestants agree.
In what less fickle do we find
The daughter's than the mother's mind!
For know th' abandon'd scarlet whore l 185
Our present alma-mater bore;
Whose beauty, modesty and truth
Were all debauch'd in early youth,
While in seraglio, close confin'd,
Sly priests conceal'd her from mankind. 190
And tho', when zeal to hide her sin
[Page 19] Had almost stript her to the skin;
To skreen her batter'd charms from shame,
She laid to truth her artful claim;
Yet, once secure, the cunning jade 195
Gave up its temporary aid;
Playing again her mother's game
With priests of ev'ry church the same. m
For tho', in pure excess of grace,
Miss perk'd it in her mother's face, 200
Her disobedience felt the smart,
When stabb'd her int'rest to the heart.
What tho' she flaunt no longer gay;
[Page 20] Her tawdry trappings cast away;
Her trim simplicity, at best, 205
Is vanity but sprucely dress'd.
What tho' forbid to patch and paint,
And pass the sinner for a saint,
Yet still the holy dame, afraid
That truth and reason spoil her trade, 210
Her pulpit-trumpet sounds to arms,
And fills the zealot with alarms.
Awaken'd by her fearful cries,
Behold her doughty champions rise;
Arm'd cap-a-piè each mother's son, 215
To save their parent, roaring run;
Conscious how greatly to their cost
Might church-authority be lost.
While thus the orthodox in grain,
In spite of fate, their church maintain; 220
[Page 21] The truth, a term of meaning wide,
To all the priest affirms applied;
No less the het'rodox than they,
From pride or av'rice, go astray:
As motives similar prevail 225
With those who brew or broach the tale.
Say, else, if self-conviction true
The conscientious Henley knew;
Fir'd by a pure religious zeal,
That champion of the publick weal, 230
For pence, the primacy to slight, n
To jest with ev'ry sacred rite,
To trample, with avow'd design,
On laws both human and divine.
Say what his aim, whose dread rebukes 235
[Page 22] Craz'd his poor neighbours of St. Luke's; o
Who, godly warfare proud to seek,
In suff'rance turns the smitten cheek:
As knavish Jews, to sell their ware,
Abuse and insult tamely bear. 240
No worldly gain to Whitfield yields
The plenteous harvest of Moor-Fields;
While from the gift of sterling gold,
Like off'rings to the Lord of old, p
The coatless priest with Aaron vies, q 245
And modern tabernacles rise?
Or, are fanatick weavers led
Because his vanity is fed;
[Page 23] A tickling transport that he feels,
To find his thousands at his heels; 250
To hear the Io poeans ring,
Due to the hero, saint or king;
Which, ne'ertheless, the mob bestow,
On sainted pick-pockets, below.
If then, by poverty or pride, 255
The priest and parson led aside;
While these, th' instructors of mankind,
Our ignorance their interest find;
O shun, Lorenzo, shun the street
Where disputant theologues meet. 260
See the wing'd cork, from side to side
Rebound, the truant school-boy's pride,
With equal warmth, with equal noise,
So these, by turns, like truant boys,
Between what saint or father saith, 265
[Page 24] Bang the light shittle-cock of faith.
But hark! what jargon strikes our ear?
What hebrew madmen have we here?
What pen the frenzy shall describe
Of Hutchinson's or Behmen's tribe; r 270
Who, scorning reason's vain pretence,
Make war, a dire croisade, on sense?
If reason, then, reprizals make,
At once their cause and them forsake,
What wonder? yet, in truth, 'twere well 275
Might Bedlam spare one vacant cell;
Since no good christian, yet, for Law, s
Hath strown his darken'd room with straw.
Theologists so prone to err,
[Page 25] Dost thou philosophers prefer? 280
These oft, an interested sect,
Like poverty or pride affect.
Logicians, casuists by trade,
At random draw their furious blade;
Taking, in gladiatorial pride, 285
The cudgels up on either side.
To them indiff'rent wrong or right;
Swiss champions! theirs the task to fight:
And share, with venal art, the prey;
The golden gettings of the day. 290
So Broughton's t heroes bruis'd and bled,
At once for honour and for bread:
And Powel's u virtuous thirst of fame
Inur'd his iron lips to flame.
[Page 26]The learn'd, prodigious wise indeed 295
The man by Heav'n inspir'd to read!
Affecting merely to decide,
Indulge their magisterial pride,
And, deigning scarce on sense a look,
Profoundly dogmatize by book: 300
Save here those champions of the gown,
Meek w Warburton and modest Brown. x
To real merit ne'er allied
The pedant's, or the parson's pride,
By singularity of taste 305
Good sense and lit'rature disgrac'd,
See wrangling Sophisters, intent
On cross-grain'd paradoxes bent;
As if to truth they made pretence
By wand'ring but from common-sense. 310
[Page 27]Among the witty and the wise,
Hence oft in words their difference lies;
While empty terms, for years, engage
The scholar's and the skeptick's rage:
Till, wearied out, they stare to see 315
In fact how nearly all agree.
So, poiz'd between two empty scales,
Now here, now there, the beam prevails,
That, as their false vibrations cease,
In equilibrio rests in peace. 320
Nor seldom, when in fact dissent
These slashing sons of argument,
The subject-matter in debate
Beneath the pains t'investigate.
Philosophy at Arthur's y taught, 325
So Bond and Brag, disputing, fought,
[Page 28]Whether as near, from Change to Kew, z
To cross the old bridge or the new.
"Could neither wheel nor chain decide?"
Alas, my friend, they never tried. 330
For neither of these learned youth
Car'd one brass farthing for the truth:
But each, to make his judgment out,
Would drive full-speed ten miles about.
The first-philosophy aa in use 335
Thus argumentative abuse:
While truth and falsehood, right and wrong,
Serve as the burthen of a song:
With sophists, as with scolding wives,
Quarrel the business of their lives. 340
[Page 29]Leave then; Lorenzo, vain dispute.
Empty the triumph to confute.
Nor those for truth's defenders take,
Who cavil but for cavil's sake.
But is there, lay-man or divine, 345
In whom good sense and temper join;
A priest of honest bb Clogher's mould,
Or theist moderate as bold,
To whom indulgent Heav'n assign'd
A truly ethick turn of mind; 350
Who dares the mob in scorn to hold;
Hath weigh'd the happiness of gold;
Hath found the pond'rous cheat so light,
That avarice gets nothing by't;
Who rates the value of a name 355
[Page 30]From th' insignificance of same;
Not vainly seeking more to know
Than God, has giv'n to man, below;
Yet, wheresoe'er display'd her charms,
Embracing truth with open arms. 360
On such Lorenzo may depend,
For guide, philosopher and friend.
"But where such friend and guide" you cry.
Knowst thou no such? alas, nor I.
For O, the truth, in fact, how few 365
Have pow'r or talents, to pursue.
Alike th' abilities unfit
Of pedant dull or sprightly wit,
Of captious criticks, scholiasts vain,
Of ev'ry superficial brain. 370
Indeed too oft ev'n genius gains
Its labour only for its, pains:
[Page 31]Immortal bards not seldom here,
Dupes, from their mother's milk, to fear.
Tho' smoothly run the hackney'd lay 375
Along the beaten, moral way;
Should truth on custom turn its back,
Or deviate from the vulgar track,
Like crabs, with retrogressive feet,
Such temporizing bards retreat; 380
Humming, their credit to maintain,
To worn-out tunes th' old catch again.
Ev'n thus thy fav'rite bard retir'd,
Whom ev'ry muse at once inspir'd,
Whose strains immortalize the guide. 385
His scholiast piously decried,
Thy Pope, who, like a forward child,
In leading-strings, ran bold and wild;
But, fearful of himself to stand,
[Page 32]Seiz'd his old, tottering mother's hand. cc 390
Look back, Lorenzo, never thou,
When set thy hand unto the plough.
In vain we sacrifice to truth
The sportive giddiness of youth,
If falshood's painted charms engage 395
The doting levity of age.
Truth's thorny paths who fear to run,
Should e'er her dang'rous portal shun:
Nor set like heroes boldly out,
To founder in the deeps of doubt. 400
[Page 33]Yet ne'er forget—tho' boldness thine,
Temp'rance that boldness must refine.
True temp'rance, rational and brave;
To stoick pride no sullen slave:
Not such as, gently meek and mild, 405
Betrays the weakness of a child;
Nor that, without or fear or wit,
By chance, ev'n blunderers may get.
The rash, too angry to be bold,
By falshood oft are bought and sold. 410
The proud, too haughty to be wise,
See not where grov'ling errour lies.
The heedless counts without his host,
Or runs his nose against the post:
And oft their tim'rous indolence 415
The meek indulge, at truth's expence.
So hard to keep that middle way,
[Page 34]From which inquiry ne'er should stary;
While, for the task, as hard to find
A truly firm, capacious mind; 420
No wonder fools, the would-be-wise,
Suppose in doubt that wisdom lies:
Or that, because so short their sight,
Truth may be errour, wrong be right. dd
For ignorance, to sooth its pride, 425
Must seek its own defects to hide.
Affecting, hence, all unbelief,
Is Scoto infidel in chief;
His hand and heart, his ears and eyes
Confessing what his tongue denies? 430
To truth in ev'ry system blind,
Yet seeking it where none shall find;
Lorenzo, here his wit a cheat,
That mocks his judgment with deceit.
Where'er opinion gaily dress'd, 435
Runs gadding in her rainbow vest,
Among her sisterhood, a crew
Of motley wives black, red or blue;
See skeptick faith, the truth in chase,
Run giddily, from face to face; 440
Now this, now that, by turns, enjoy;
Nor find them false till found to cloy.
Thus, with the fair he most admires,
[Page 36]Full soon the wav'ring lover tires.
At morn, her smiles with joy he meets; 445
At night, affronts her in the streets;
By loose suspicion wand'ring led,
Or spider fancy's flimsy thread;
Till, on some lying whore, at last,
He lights, and holds her dogmas fast. 450
Oppos'd to these, nor strange to find,
In uniformity combin'd,
Believing thousands; who suppose
Truth with a mob for ever goes:
As if convinc'd the rabble rout, 455
Because too obstinate to doubt.
Yet customs old or fashions new
Are all th' unthinking herd pursue.
The orthodox in dress and song
[Page 37]As modish as to right and wrong. ee 460
Of custom born, to fashion bred,
Thus blind credulity is led:
While modes of faith, like modes of dress,
Mankind capriciously profess.
Yet all agreed, through shame or pride, 465
Nature's simplicity to hide,
Whate'er the fashion of the time,
It holds the naked truth a crime.
Thus, to a man, we find the crowd,
To doubt too bashful, or too proud, 470
In errour rather chuse to fall,
Than boast no scheme of faith at all.
Impatient, hence, of stop or stay,
They blunder on the broadest way;
[Page 38]Or make a guide, in ev'ry street, 475
Of fool or knave, the first they meet.
Authorities how blind and lame
Hence bring the credulous to shame;
While all revere the mould'ring page,
Where moths have spent their gothick rage. 480
Tales half destroy'd, the rest so true!
So much inspir'd the Lord-knows-who! ff
Couldst thou, Lorenzo, build thy hopes.
On muftis, patriarchs or popes;
On names implicitly depend, 485
And mere authorities defend?
Split on this rock, mistaken youth,
Lost were thy voyage to the truth:
'Twere best to give thy labour o'er,
[Page 39]Nor urge in vain thy genius more. 490
Lorenzo, credit not too soon
Fine tales and tidings from the moon:
Nor, howsoever learn'd or just;
In priest or prophet put thy trust.
By Paul or by Apollos taught, 495
Still to one test their tenets brought,
Their doctrines, howsoever true,
Adopt not till they're so to you.
For oft, when stript of its disguise,
Folly the wisdom of the wise. 500
Yet superciliously reject
No dogmas that the world respect.
'Gainst such too rashly ne'er inveigh;
Nor cast thy grandsire's wit away.
Disdaining at the lamp to pore, 505
That lights us to the classick lore,
[Page 40]The half-taught deist thus exclaims
At texts rever'd and hallow'd names,
Damning profane or sacred writ,
That squares not with his shallow wit. 510
But while, through ignorance or pride,
Opinions thus the world divide;
Faith made the priest's and statesman's tool;
By turns while truth and falshood rule,
Or, with some temporizing view, 515
Nonsense, that's neither false nor true;
Canst thou, at ease in doubt, my friend,
On points too dark thy faith suspend?
Canst thou the world's esteem forego;
And burns thy bosom but to know? 520
Is truth thy only creed profess'd?
Canst leave to providence the rest?
Throw partial systems all aside,
[Page 41]And take thy knowledge for thy guide.
See where the stream of Science flows 525
From nature's fountain, whence it rose;
Through hills and dales meand'ring led,
As clear as at the fountain head.
Stand thou not shiv'ring on the brink,
Once well embark'd thou canst not sink: 530
Nor can the current falsely guide,
While reason's banks inclose the tide;
Whence truth, in sight, on either hand,
Smiles on thy voyage through the land.
But, O, with caution, hoist thy sail, 535
To court the metaphysick gale;
Lest, hurried on, thy heedless youth
Should lose, with land, the sight of truth:
Turn'd forth adrift, thy lot to take,
On errour's broad unfathom'd lake; 540
[Page 42]'Mong struck leviathans, in vain,
To plunge and flounder through the main:
Where tides nor set, nor currents steer;
But winds all round the compass veer;
While floating isles, that cheat the sight, 545
To faithless anchorage invite:
Hobbes, St. John, Hume and hundreds more,
Rich barks! all wreck'd upon the shore.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE SECOND.

ARGUMENT.

On Science, as our guide to truth—The criterion best adapted to the opinion of individuals— The absurdity of persecution—Our preten­sions to divine, and the bounds of human knowledge.

SUMMARY

SCience, though admitted as the rule of faith in matters re­lating to the investigation of truth, is neither exclusive nor universal, affecting only our opinion in speculative points. For, however refin'd are our credenda, we insensibly join, in our practical notions, with the rest of mankind. —Whatever objection, therefore, scientifick inquirers may make to the systems of others, none can be made to their fixing the criterion of truth on knowledge: the certainty of which is, by implication, ad­mitted in the general pretensions of mankind to common-sense. —This is the privilege of ev'ry mind, without distinction; e­nabling us equally to draw like conclusions from like premises. —All actual dispute, therefore, arises from some misunder­standing, or different acceptation, of the matter in question: as the most ignorant peasant is equally certain of the proofs he comprehends with the greatest philosopher. —For the same rea­son, nevertheless, those would be engag'd in a desperate under­taking, who should attempt to reconcile mankind to any one system of opinion; the capacity and credulity of individuals being so very different, in consequence of their diversity of temperament, education and experience. —It is injurious and ridiculous, therefore, to insult others, for thinking in the manner we ourselves should have done, under the same circum­stances. —It is still more absurd to reprobate the rest of man­kind for not believing what we ourselves do not, nor can pos­sibly [Page 46] be made to, believe: as is the case when we would im­pose tenets, that either contradict themselves, or are, in fact, downright nonsense—For it is impossible to believe apparent falshood, or to be convinc'd of any thing, by a set of words, that convey no determinate meaning—Mysterious or unin­telligible propositions cannot, therefore, be believ'd—If the truth of revelation, in general, be admitted, as what is re­veal'd from Heaven must undoubtedly be true, the difficulty of knowing what is particularly so, or who are the truly in­spir'd, is yet inexplicably great. —Tho' the power of working miracles also be allow'd a proof of inspiration, in the agent; the fallacy of pretended ones, and the suppos'd inspiration of im­postors, are almost invincible obstacles to our discovery of the truth. —The supposition, also, that real miracles are trans­gressions of the laws of nature is not at all necessary to sup­port their veracity; but argues the contrary; and implies an in­jurious reflection on the omnipotence and prescience of the Deity. —Whatever reasonable objections, however, we may have a­gainst putting implicit faith in either pretended miracles or re­velation; yet as the utmost extent of scientifick discovery falls so infinitely short of a perfect knowledge of the designs and opera­tions of Nature; we cannot philosophically deny that God sometimes produces effects, for ends best known to himself, by means wholly unknown to us. —To proceed, nevertheless, in our inquiries on the most certain grounds, the criterion of Science is to be neglected only in points indisputably and intelligibly re­veal'd.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE SECOND.

NOR to the fount of Hippocrene,
Nor groves of laurel ever green,
Nor where the wanton graces stray,
With flow'rs is strown the muse's way.
[Page 48] Lorenzo, no, I more rejoice 5
At reason's bold, and manly, voice
Than at the softest, sprightliest air
Mirth ever sung to lighten care:
Truth's sober tale more pleas'd to hear
Than all that tickle fancy's ear; 10
Tho' such, to babbling echo sweet,
Aloud the publick voice repeat.
Our numbers, then, let truth excuse,
If rudely sing th' unpolish'd muse;
Careless of ornament, and proud 15
To differ from the sing-song crowd,
So boastful of their poor pretence
To swell with sound their starveling sense.
Truth hopes not for poetick praise:
To fiction sacred are the bays. 20
Dost thou, Lorenzo, still demur:
[Page 49]So fearful in thy search to err,
If plac'd thy faith on points alone
Whose truth demonstratively known;
These much too few, and too confin'd, 25
To serve the purpose of mankind.
Let a trite moral here advise.
"Be not more credulous than wise."
Whatever doubts thy course impede,
Seek not to amplify thy creed, 30
By myst'ries dark or dogmas old,
Because to son from father told;
Severely to known truth confin'd,
Of little faith were all mankind.
Thy present, arduous task, my friend, 35
No vague determinations end.
Of practice speculation wide,
Demands for thee a surer guide,
[Page 50]If in the former prone to stray,
The justling world oppose our way: 40
While, in the last, are thousands flown
Past the world's knowledge or their own.
"But hath this scientifick choice
"The suffrage of the general voice:
"The means consistent with the end; 45
"That truth which you, yourself, commend? a
Lorenzo, see to common-sense b
How just, how gen'ral the pretence.
To nation, climate, age or sect,
Unlimited without respect: 50
Whence, howsoever wide we stray,
[Page 51]When church, or system, lead the way,
All, of necessity, agree
In what, alike, they hear and see.
For not a son of Adam's race 55
Innate conviction can efface
The highland loon, the lowland lout,
Wild Irish fierce, and Cambrian stout,
The boor that Rhynland's polder drains,
Tho' reason slumber in his brains, 60
All, all, like premises in view, c
The like conclusions ever drew.
For know that like our mother earth
Its human offspring, at its birth.
Where fertile clay and barren sand 65
Compose the variegated land,
[Page 52]Th' unequal strata of the soil
Unequally demand our toil:
The rich that toil with gain repay;
Thrown on the poor our pains away. 70
In man's uncultivated mind
So varied is the soil, in kind.
The flow'rs of science, fresh and fair,
On some expand, without our care;
On others scarce, by culture, grow 75
The buds, that wither as they blow.
Yet here essentially allied,
However else diversified.
The fertile marl, the steril sand
Alike the seed or plant, demand: 80
Denied no more spontaneous grain
To Bergen's rocks than Baioe's plain d
[Page 53]So, not a truth innate our own, e
The seeds of knowledge must be sown.
Experience slow must swell the root, 85
And tend the fibres as they shoot;
Or speedier aid instruction grant,
And slips of foreign growth implant.
The mental and material claim
Here too essentially the same: 90
Grow seed or plant where'er it will
In kind 'tis propagated still.
[Page 54]No soil nor climate can produce
In tares the barley's potent juice:
To thorns no culture can assign 95
The purple honours of the vine.
Thus when, by simple nature's aid,
Put forth sensation's tender blade;
If, to perfection nearer brought,
It bloom and ripen into thought, 100
Wherever situate the root;
The same its intellectual fruit.
Its taste, its form, perhaps, we blame,
But still its genus is the same:
In this no poverty of soil, 105
No dullness ever mock'd our toil.
If vainly, then, in letter'd pride,
The scholar deep is dignified;
So false, so empty the pretence
[Page 55]Of wits to more than common-sense; 110
If plain to th' idiot as to you
Th' immediate object of his view;
While ev'n the blockhead truly knows
Far as his little science goes;
Consistent, sure our confidence, 115
In search of truth, on common-sense:
That gen'ral index to mankind, f
To taste and genius unconfin'd;
Pointing in all one common way;
By dullness shorten'd but its ray; 120
Of wit and knowledge all the end
In length that radius to extend:
In stubborn age, or pliant youth,
Its bearing in the line of truth;
[Page 56]A needle constant to the pole, 125
Whence beams true faith upon the soul.
Dost thou object "if common-sense
"So plausible an evidence,
"And all mankind of this possess'd,
"That any differ from the rest." 130
Know thou when honest minds dissent,
Misunderstood their argument:
Diff'rent the premises appear,
Else were the fix'd deduction clear.
Hence half our num'rous quarrels rise. 135
We see not with each others eyes:
So that precisely all alike
Nor terms, nor things conception strike.
For ev'ry individual draws
His plan by mere perspective laws; 140
Fix'd to one station, time and place,
[Page 57]In pow'r no full survey to trace;
The false mistaking oft for true,
Observ'd at diff'rent points of view.
So, when to cheat the partial sight, 145
And prove in mirth that black is white,
With lights dispos'd the shades between,
In folds is spread the artful scene;
Oppos'd, the colours strike the eye,
And he affirms what you deny. 150
Here spotless all appears and fair;
Perceiv'd a total blackness there.
The demonstration of his sight
Who doubts? who knows not black from white?
Thus evidence supports dispute; 155
Nor one the other can refute.
And yet is common-sense to blame?
The premises were not the same.
[Page 58]Were these alike, tho' say you err,
Both would infallibly concur: 160
For take each others point of sight,
And set, at once, the matter right. g
Conceive not, then, because we find
One source of truth in ev'ry mind,
We individuals think to see, 165
At ev'ry time and place, agree.
As well, amidst yon grove of trees
While plays a constant eastern breeze,
[Page 59]Each single spray we hope to find
In one direction, west, reclin'd. 170
For, tho' to truth alike our claim,
Our taste nor sentiments the same.
For dusky green the jaundic'd eye
Mistakes the clear-blue summer sky;
The distant scene, however bright, 175
Is darkness to the short of sight;
To loaded ears as whispers still
The clack and thunder of the mill.
Thus lost, as colours on the blind,
On dullness qualities refin'd; 180
Than musick to the deaf no more,
To ignorance th' abstracted lore.
Hence oft objection calls us out,
To satisfy the blockhead's doubt;
Who not one proof, whereon depends 185
[Page 60]His sought solution, comprehends: h
The tritest arguments, of yore,
In vain repeated o'er and o'er,
Proving how fruitless were the toil,
The jarring world to reconcile. 190
And yet, as but from time and place
Our sev'ral modes of thought we trace,
Alas! how blindly do we run
Each others heresy to shun;
Our own our glory and our pride, 195
While curses all the rest betide:
By pious children doom'd their sire,
By sires, their children to hell-fire:
Heirs to salvation's brighter sphere
[Page 61]So strangely damn'd, and damning here! 200
Thus Calvin ignorantly raves
At souls which, therefore, Luther saves;
To both denied Lord Peter's keys;
Who shuts out hereticks like these.
And yet ev'n those, who boast to feel 205
Their bosoms burn with christian zeal;
Who dooming mussulmen to hell,
With pride uncharitable swell;
In Naz'reth bred, or Bethle'm born,
Had laugh'd our Saviour's birth to scorn; 210
Mere Turks, denounc'd for you and me,
The bitter fruit of Zacon's tree
To eat with fiends below: the doom
Of Anti-Mahomet and Rome!
Yet, blind as Sampson, when despair 215
Had sunk his life below his care,
[Page 62]The numbers wanton Gaza lost
Destroy'd but at his proper cost,
Half-witted Zeal, of all the test,
Itself condemns among the rest; 220
For, if requir'd by gracious Heaven
Our service but as knowledge given,
Should I in Pope or Mufti, trust;
For proving to their tenets just,
Your rule to censure me, or mine, 225
Holds the like condemnation thine. i
Yet still more wicked, weak and blind
This reprobating, zeal we find;
When, void of truth, absurd and vain
The tenets zealots thus maintain. 230
Oh! how ridiculous and odd
[Page 63]That zeal precipitate for God,
So short of knowledge, k that, indeed,
It understands not ev'n its creed.
For know, whate'er the world pretend, 235
But few believe what they defend.
In modes of faith, tho' falsehood taught,
Nonsense is equally their fault:
Thousands by forms of speech deceiv'd
Ne'er yet by mortal man believ'd; 240
Creeds penn'd, as said, at Heaven's command,
In terms no soul can understand;
Or such, tho' thunder'd from on high,
That plainly give themselves the lie.
But sure, if words no sense convey, 245
[Page 64]Faith in their utt'rance dies away;
Nor can a single son of Eve
Apparent falsehood e'er believe. l
Belief no vague declaimer's rant,
No bigot's creed, no sophist's cant; 250
'Tis not the scripture text to quote;
To get our catechism by rote;
O'er homilies to spend the day;
At midnight, half asleep, to pray;
To chatter matins at the dawn, 255
[Page 65]Or gabble with the man of lawn:
True faith that consciousness of soul,
That times nor accidents control;
Save those adapted and combin'd
To root conviction from the mind. 260
For know that neither threats nor blows
Sincere belief can e'er impose.
The monk's hot zeal, the jesuit's skill
Lead not conviction as they will.
Go, turn inquisitor and burn 265
The hereticks, all round, in turn;
The Turk, refusing to resign
His sensual paradise for thine;
The Indian, that in death pretends
To visit but his former friends; 270
Unless his faith what you may tell,
Of joys in Heav'n and pains in Hell.
[Page 66]Not one of all the suffering tribe
Thy sentiments per-force imbibe.
Howe'er induc'd by hope or fear, 275
The mind is no free agent here:
To change their faith beyond the power
Of martyrs at their dying hour.
How idly, then, enthusiasts rave
Of systems, that will damn or save; 280
Or think true proselytes to gain
By torture, gallows, whip or chain:
Since, ever constant to its cause,
True faith depends on nature's laws;
By nonsense nor caprice misled, 285
The honest heart and sober head.
How idly wild fanaticks preach,
While ignorant of what they teach.
The spirit ne'er affects the mind,
[Page 67]Unless with th' understanding join'd; 290
Nor hath the word, if void of sense,
To gospel pow'r the least pretence. m
Some certain meaning, hence, and plain
A saving faith must needs contain:
If fix'd its object, sure, no less 295
The sense of terms our creed express:
A parrot, else, if none deceive her,
A sound and orthodox believer;
Convinc'd as much as ever yet
The Athanasian paroquet. n 300
Let not fanaticism deceive.
[Page 68]None can a mystery believe. o
Tho' plung'd by zeal in errour deep,
While common-sense lies fast asleep,
Their faith rash bigots strangely boast; 305
The strongest his who's cheated most;
Who least for truth presumes to search;
But headlong runs into the church.
For, laid thy hand upon thy heart,
The formule of thy creed impart; 310
Dost thou its substance comprehend?
[Page 69]Lo! all its mystery's at an end.
In spite of their misguiding zeal,
Here to their hearts let all appeal:
Enough if just be their pretence 315
To honesty and common-sense:
Here rests that umpire of mankind,
Conscience, the God within the mind.
At eastern temples as, of yore,
Without the threshold of the door, 320
In reverence, did the zealot use
To doff, and leave, his dirty shoes:
Like him, the modern faithful, taught
That reason is a thing of naught,
Lest they should soil the church with doubt, 325
Their understandings leave without.
For ask who thus in mystery trust,
If Euclid's demonstration's just;
[Page 70]If truth the geometrick art,
Or subtile algebra, impart. 330
Unknowing what precisely meant,
They honestly resuse assent;
Consess they first must comprehend,
Before they credit or contend.
O self condemn'd! O dead to shame! 335
Have these a conscience void of blame;
Who take no worldly points on trust,
But scruple till they know them just;
Yet their supreme concerns will rest
On tenets half the world contest; 340
Conviction openly defie,
And with their tongues their hearts belie!
These the true faithful shall we call?
These have, alas, no faith at all.
For, howsoe'er with art they strive 345
[Page 71]To keep absurdity alive,
Cloath'd in equivocal disguise,
Or garb of truth, their specious lies,
Still common-sense, unrooted out,
Will find a flaw to fix a doubt: 350
And where one doubt is left behind
No firm belief informs the mind.
Yet is there whose officious zeal
Pretends a consciousness to feel,
A fix'd internal evidence 355
Of axioms, hid from common-sense;
A stronger testimony given,
By inspiration breath'd from Heaven?
Lorenzo, neither you, nor I,
What God reveals can e'er deny. 360
But here how needful to be wise
To know where revelation lies.
[Page 72]Art thou thyself inspir'd by Heav'n?
Tell me what certain proof is given.
Dost thou intuitively view 365
What reason tells thee must be true?
No revelation here requir'd;
How proves such truth that thou'rt inspir'd?
For why inspir'd, if but to tell
What reason might have told as well. 370
As truth beholds thy mental eye
What seems to all the world a lie;
Thy proof imagination strong?
Here also mayst thou still be wrong.
From Heav'n if ever fir'd conceit, 375
Brandy has also done the feat.
Nay oft th' infatuate of brain,
Of Heav'n's presum'd injunctions vain,
Have madly broke its dread commands.
[Page 73]And dipt in blood their murd'ring hands. 380
If God or devil then inspire,
Of reason still we must inquire:
And reason doubtless would reply,
"Heav'n never yet reveal'd a lie."
On others gifts confiding more, 385
Dost give thine own pretensions o'er?
Dost from th' inspir'd thy faith receive,
And pin it on thy neighbour's sleeve?
Reason or Heav'n must tell thee too,
If such be more inspir'd than you. 390
"Where then the proof?" I frankly own,
To me, yet uninspir'd, unknown:
Such guides, to me, by madness fir'd,
As madmen, p with the Turks, inspir'd.
In spite of Middleton and Hume, 395
Dost thou on miracles presume?
To revelation these thy guide;
Thy faith by wonders verified.
Go thou, and, easy of belief,
My comrade ask if I'm a thief. 400
If inspiration false and true,
Sure miracles suspicious too:
And, hence, thy conduct most absurd,
To take for one the other's word.
Our souls how long to damn and save, 405
Hath subtile priestcraft play'd the knave!
Its pupils train'd, from early youth,
T'equivocate and hide the truth;
To practise the deception nice,
Of tricking hand, or quaint device; 410
To cheat the palate, nose and eye;
[Page 75]And gild that dirty pill, a lie.
Yet dost thou miracles maintain?
Be here thy definition plain:
The muse disdaining to reply 415
To such as shock the naked eye. q
Events as miracles dost own,
Whose cause immediate is unknown;
Or is thy faith establish'd more
On actions ne'er perform'd before? 420
Alas, my much believing friend,
The times of yore might these defend;
When heretick free-thinkers rose,
That dar'd the holy church oppose;
For infidelity renown'd, 425
Asserting that the globe was round;
Vile heresy! whence, doom'd to hell,
[Page 76] Upsal's good bishop martyr fell:
Wretches, so impious as to hold,
The earth about its axis roll'd, 430
And, as the years their courses run,
Still took its journeys round the sun;
Vile heresy! for which, 'tis said,
Old Galileo too had bled,
Had not the sage, more loth to die, 435
Recanting, damn'd it for a lie. r
In days of ignorance like these,
When legends had the pow'r to please;
While love of wonder salv'd deceit,
And gudgeons swallow'd whole the cheat; 440
How little strange that monks and fryars
Should prove miraculously liars;
[Page 77]Or converts to divines so sad
Turn out miraculously mad!
But now, a century worn away, 445
Time working wonders ev'ry day,
The vast discov'ries years have made
Have spoilt the wonder-monger's trade.
Sayst thou, events so strange of yore
Since now miraculous no more, 450
True miracles thou wouldst define
As real acts of power divine,
Th' effects of some immediate cause,
In fact transgressing nature's laws. s
[Page 78]How!—did th' omnipotent, on high, 455
Let those, his laws, at random fly:
Or was his providence so blind
To what omnisciency design'd,
That still his sov'reign will attends
To strike his foes or skreen his friends; 460
That pow'r beyond th' Almighty's art
To nature's system to impart:
Needful Heav'n's arbitrary fire
To blast a fig-tree or a liar?
[Page 79] Lorenzo, be not thou so vain, 465
To think thus brittle nature's chain;
From which whatever link we strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, broke alike, t
Connecting systems all destroy'd,
Unballanc'd worlds would strow the void, 470
To atoms burst; restor'd again
Old Chaos to his ancient reign:
Unless, in time, the God attend
The works of his own hand to mend.
Alas, how blasphemous to say 475
That Heav'n can save no other way;
Or that, for trifles or in joke,
Creation's sacred order's broke. u
[Page 80]For do we not, in fact, confess,
If God may nature's laws transgress, 480
The wise creator wanted skill
His vast intentions to fulfil,
Or that th' intention, tho' his own,
Was in th' extent to him unknown:
Or, still more impiously, imply 485
That Heav'n can give itself the lie.
Say, then, that miracles there be;
They're but miraculous to thee:
So many links conceal'd remain,
Which form the complicated chain, 490
True causes and effects between,
[Page 81]In Nature's providential scene.
What tho' without an obvious cause
We see inverted custom's laws,
Must we immediately infer 495
That nature from itself can err?
Commanded by the word divine,
Say water chang'd itself to wine;
Graves open'd wide their pond'rous jaws;
A breath the sole apparent cause. 500
Ah, who shall boast, that God revere,
Creation's laws were broken here? w
Might not ten thousand springs unite,
Causes too fine for mortal sight,
Such varied wonders to produce; 505
To providential ends of use:
[Page 82]Form'd when by Heav'n, its pow'r display'd,
The earth's foundation first was laid:
Or when that Logos x was design'd
By miracles to save mankind. 510
Think not, Lorenzo, nature strays
Whene'er the world is in amaze.
Extend thy view from pole to pole:
See one great miracle the whole;
Where all events their cause succeed, 515
As once the great, first cause decreed;
Where order still from order flows,
And never interruption knows;
Capricious but to mortal sense
The harmony of providence. 520
How strangely, therefore, bigots err
Who wonders to plain facts prefer;
[Page 83]With list'ning ear, who love to range,
And greedy eye, for all that's strange;
Rejecting their creator's plan, 525
The voice of God for that of man.
Besides, thy miracles confin'd
To former ages of mankind,
Nature in these our latter days
Unmov'd by pray'r, and deaf to praise, 530
Ne'er turning back, nor led aside,
To help our wants, or sooth our pride;
But keeping, pack-horse like, its track,
Bearing the world upon its back:
Say such to revelation guide; 535
For these on hear-say we confide:
In want of proof, on trust must take
For honest jew or gentile's sake;
Since, howsoe'er the truth conceal'd,
[Page 84]None trust in miracles reveal'd; 540
Unless learn'd Jortin's y scheme may pass
Of dreaming Balaam's talking ass.
Dost thou, secure, historians trust?
How know we if their tale be just.
From num'rous causes prone to err, 545
Dubious, alas, what these aver.
What from deception e'er can save
The man whose trust is in a knave;
To falsehood he how oft a tool
Whose confidence is in a fool: 550
And should, themselves, the honest speak;
The honest may be blind or weak;
Be led a visionary dance,
[Page 85]Like Peter, in prophetick trance, z
Or good St. Paul, that seldom knew 555
If what he said was false or true;
Forgetful, if his word we take,
When fast asleep or wide awake. aa
My friend, no wonder, then, at all,
Adventures strange should such befall; 560
Or that, by wild opinions, they
From truth are blindly led astray;
Who, like old wives in winter nights,
Hear, see, and feel, and chat with sprights.
Their prudent caution, therefore, just 565
Who waking dreamers seldom trust;
To whom light visions fact may seem,
And fact itself an idle dream.
In reverence, yet, we all must own
The pow'r and will of God unknown; 570
Confin'd not to the narrow bound
Of reason's most extensive round;
Active a thousand ways beside; bb
Beyond unknown how far and wide.
From grey experience, hence, conceal'd 575
The gifts of grace to babes reveal'd;
From Science hid that sacred fire
Heav'n's chosen servants doth inspire;
Who, highly favour'd from above,
Behold descend th' all-quickening dove, 580
Or cloven tongue; the spiritual boast
Of brethren in the Holy Ghost.
Lorenzo, then let you, nor I,
[Page 87]Unless we can disprove, deny.
And yet, in search of truths unknown, 585
Experience be thy guide alone;
Nay held perception in suspense
Till reason may confirm the sense:
To Science only unconfin'd
When God, himself, informs the mind. 590
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EPISTLE THE THIRD.

ARGUMENT.

On the infatuation of mankind, respecting pa­radox and mysteries. —The effects and cau­ses of such infatuation. —The absurdity of supposing ignorance and folly the means to promote the cause of truth; or that the free­dom of scientifick enquiry is incompatible with the political welfare of society.

SUMMARY.

IT is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universality of those truths which are founded on common-sense, man­kind have ever been so infatuated as to reject this general and obvious criterion, for the more particular dogmas and mys­terious paradoxes of pretended revelation. —The moral effects of this infatuation exemplified in our superficial attachment to religion, our indolent security in time of prosperity, and our transitory astonishment and penitence under the immediate weight of misfortune. —An absurd scheme of education the grand cause of that cowardice and imbecility of mind, which render us so ridiculous in speculation and inconsistent in prac­tice. —The misapplication of their talents, therefore, who think by encreasing such weakness to promote the cause of truth, or the interest of religion and morality, is plac'd in a ridiculous light; as the just object of censure. —The supposition, also, that ignorance and implicit subjection to authority are necessa­ry to the well-being of society, or the political happiness of mankind, is exploded; and shown to be exemplarily false and absurd: polity in general, as well as religion and private vir­tue in particulars, being founded on truth and nature, and not dependant on the chimerical productions of fancy, the low ar­tifices of faction, or the knavish cunning of designing false­hood.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE THIRD.

IF truth in science we may find;
Its root implanted in the mind;
To this so just the world's pretence;
On the plain rules of common-sense;
[Page 94]Our mental faculties t'abuse, 5
How prostituted is the muse!
How long have childish bards too long,
Their hours employ'd in idle song;
Busied the lineaments to trace
Of wither'd fiction's painted face; 10
Where not a native beauty blows;
But cankers eat the budding rose!
Yet, captive to her smiles and wit,
Pleas'd with their chains, her slaves have writ;
And all the labour'd pomp of verse 15
Employ'd, her fables to rehearse;
While thou, O sacred truth! remain
The theme of ev'ry humbler strain.
And yet, if true what each pretends,
How num'rous are her rhyming friends! 20
While such her fond admirers prove,
[Page 95]And tune their rival songs to love.
But, fools in fondness as in awe,
The truth, 'tis plain, they never saw;
And but themselves her lovers boast, 25
Because her name the publick toast.
So smit with sacred truth and rhyme,
The bard and sophist of the time; a
Long play'd, by turns, the wit and fool,
The monarch's and the printer's tool; 30
The jest the genius of the age,
Till hiss'd and pelted off the stage:
Whence now no more his lyre he strings
For tyrant booksellers and kings;
But, fir'd with vanity and spleen, 35
Dotes on the truth unsought, unseen;
[Page 96]Chaunting, so happy to be free,
Enraptur'd rhymes on liberty.
Such lovers truth must e'er despise;
Who see her but with borrow'd eyes, 40
Who only play the lover's part,
No real passion at the heart.
For say, what lover's passion true
For beauty that he never knew?
So eastern monarchs love their wives, 45
Tho' barren strangers all their lives.
So lov'd la Mancha's famous knight
The fair, for whom he swore to fight;
Fir'd by th' enthusiastick rage,
With men and monsters to engage. 50
Yet, ask'd, for whom this martial strife;
"He never saw her in het life:
"Nor was he positive, God wot,
[Page 97]"Whether, indeed, she liv'd or not."
Thus bards too oft in truth's defence, 55
Break through the rules of common-sense;
And; o'er his rival each t'aspire;
Strive which shall prove the greatest liar.
Strange to the liberty of thought,
Vile slaves! but seeking to be bought; 60
To lying faction early train'd;
A purchase by the truth disdain'd.
Mean-time, as insolent as vain;
They freedom's sacred name profane;
And, boasting, hug the chains that bind 65
That worst of slaves, the servile mind.
Such, Dryden, thou, supreme in wit,
Immortal and unrival'd yet:
How honour'd; might not truth accuse
Thy venal, prostiuted muse. 70
Sayst thou 'tis strange the world should rest
Content, by falsehood thus depress'd?
Alas, thou little knowst mankind,
That, seeing, imitate the blind;
In spite of truth and open day, 75
In darkness chuse to grope their way;
Suspecting plainness of disguise,
The obvious sense of terms despise;
From sound or derivation gleaning,
Some hard-word, deuteroscope meaning: 80
While each impostor's word prevails
In mystick parables and tales;
Neglected ev'n the voice of Heaven,
When rational instructions given.
Look back through each successive age: 85
How honour'd the mysterious page!
What millions have been made the tools
[Page 99]Of knaves, whose nat'ral prey are fools!
How strangely trick'd deluded crowds
Who, truth expecting from the clouds, 90
And therefore gaping up in th'air,
On errour stumbled unaware!
Thus an astrologer of old,
In learned history we're told;
Contemplating the milky way, 95
Neglected that before him lay;
And led by wand'ring planets, fell,
Unluckily into a well.
Yet e'er with slander branding those
Who sought the naked truth t' expose: 100
Short sighted mortals, in their pride,
Thus strove their ignorance to hide;
By holding all beyond their view
Beyond investigation too.
Lorenzo, our misfortune here 105
Th' effect of idleness and fear.
The sluggard shuns inquiry's task,
Because too great the pains to ask;
Stifling th' emotions of his breast,
T' indulge his lazy brains in rest. 110
A paradox, yet such the fact,
"More fear to think than fear to act;
"In thought tho' danger we surmize,
"In act while real danger lies." b
In truth, my friend, 'tis sad to find 115
Hence rise the zeal of half mankind;
Religion but the compound vice
Of indolence and cowardice.
Ev'n pious christians, much I fear,
Oft practically atheists here. 120
[Page 101]How deaf and blind to calls of grace
When nature wears a smiling face:
But when she frowns; in wild amaze,
Look how th' affrighted cowards gaze.
When clouds drop fatness on the plains, 125
In mildly soft descending rains;
In their due season harvests smile,
And plenty crowns the peasant's toil:
As nothing rare, as nothing new,
We take the blessing as our due. 130
For O! prosperity's a lot
At ease enjoy'd, with ease forgot.
In June's warm sun and April's shower
We trace not an Almighty power:
Ingrates! so light of Heav'n we make, 135
Nor think the hand that gives may take.
But ah! when threat'ning storms arise;
[Page 102]When thunders rattle through the skies;
When the tall mountain bows its head,
And earthquakes vomit up the dead; 140
Behold whole nations prostrate fall
Before the mighty God of all.
T' appease his anger now their care,
Lo, all is fasting, sighs and pray'r;
Till, the dread storm blown haply o'er, 145
They rise and revel as before,
Forget, or ridicule, the rod;
And laugh to scorn the fear of God.
Nor only, mov'd when danger's nigh,
Our fears awake the gen'ral cry; 150
Imaginary scenes, alike,
The dastard soul with terrour strike;
While to the coward's opticks seem
Light straws, as each a giant's beam.
[Page 103]In honour thus of God above, 155
So weakly draw the cords of love;
While nature's groans, or fancy's fears,
Drive, headlong, down the vale of tears.
Lorenzo, wouldst thou freely trace
Whence grows a cowardice so base? 160
At th' early dawn of moral sense
Th' infatuation did commence;
And, propagated since by art,
We all have more or less a part.
Ere hermit bald or pilgrim grey 165
Had worn the solitary way;
Ere yet the monk had told his beads;
Ere yet credulity or creeds;
To school, with sober Reason sent,
Young Genius to Experience went. 170
The latter, tho', as yet, 'tis true,
[Page 104]No wiser than the former two,
In charge the tender pupils took,
And with them read in nature's book.
So pedagogues unletter'd use 175
No class of blockheads to refuse;
But gravely undertake t' explain
The arts themselves must first attain;
Sufficient if the master goes
Before his blund'ring pupil's nose. 180
Careful his vacant hours t'employ,
Now Reason prov'd a hopeful boy.
But Genius, insolent and wild,
By nature an assuming child,
A treach'rous memory his lot, 185
The little that he learn'd forgot;
Nor gave himself a moment's pain
To con his lessons o'er again:
[Page 105]But, trusting to his forward parts,
Debauch'd with wit the sister- arts; 190
Who, yet unsettled, young and frail,
Enamour'd, listen'd to his tale;
And, since the cause of dire disputes,
Turn'd out abandon'd prostitutes:
By priest and prophet, once enjoy'd, 195
To basest purposes employ'd;
For ages past, their only use
To vitiate reason or traduce.
For this, Tradition foremost came,
Instruction was her maiden name, 200
Now grown a smooth-tongu'd slipp'ry jade,
An arrant mistress of her trade.
She told the stories, o'er and o'er,
That genius told the arts before,
Repeating lies, as liars do, 205
[Page 106]Till in the end they think them true;
And when detected in her lie,
"Myst'ry"—the biter's arch reply.
By this fine dame our mothers taught,
Their scheme of education wrought; 210
So train'd us early to deceit,
To look on reason as a cheat;
To lies first tun'd the op'ning ear;
Awoke our earliest sense to fear;
With monsters and chimeras vain, 215
Fill'd the soft head and turn'd the brain;
Till the fond fools, to top their part,
Fix'd the rank coward at the heart.
Nor with our growing years releas'd;
The nurse but moulds us for the priest; 220
Who, lest his ward, grown sly or stout,
Should find the knavish secret out,
[Page 107]The bugbear from his reach removes,
And all th' old woman's tale improves,
Passions more riotous to quell, 225
Chang'd the dark hole for darker hell;
The truant damn'd for naughty play,
Black monday now the judgment day;
Gay hopes for promis'd toys are given,
And endless holidays in Heav'n. 230
The groundless fear and vain desire,
Which hence mankind in youth acquire;
How deeply rooted do we find,
How fix'd th' impressions on the mind;
The weakness of those childish fears, 235
Too oft increasing with our years;
While ev'ry infant joy and strife,
Improv'd, is carried into life.
For see the idiot and the wise,
[Page 108]Each from his own fond shadow flies; 240
Like curs that run till nature fails,
A bladder fasten'd to their tails.
With idle fears the world t' abuse,
Assistant here th' inventive muse:
The tale of wonder early taught; 245
When playful, young and void of thought,
By stroling Fancy led astray,
The vagrant, troul'd the jovial lay.
Alas of mirth and pleasure cur'd,
To horrour's brownest shade inur'd; 250
By love of wonder since betray'd,
To lend fantastick Spleen her aid:
For whom her numbers, sad and slow,
In dismal melancholy flow;
Condemn'd to murmur all the day, 255
To sigh and groan the midnight lay;
[Page 109]The skull, the spade, the shroud, the herse,
The doleful implements of verse;
Or doom'd prepost'rous tales to tell,
By brain-sick Fiction brought from hell. 260
For know th' unwary muse was caught
While Fiction yet her friend was thought;
A hag, by Ignorance badly nurs'd,
With craving appetite accurs'd,
To Spleen's embrace, while yet a maid, 265
The dire chlorosis had betray'd.
Since when, the wretch has roam'd abroad,
Her sullen tyrant's willing bawd;
A vile procuress, to supply
The love of wonder with a lie. 270
Hence bards, that reason less than rail,
Affect to tell the woful tale;
Or vent their moralizing rage;
[Page 110]As bugbears of a fearful age;
To truth pretending to be led 275
by megrims in the sick-man's head;
As if with zeal prophetick burn'd
The wretch whose blister'd head was turn'd;
The fittest those the truth to teach,
By fevers half-depriv'd of speech; 280
Whose fault'ring tongues most loud complain,
When death or doctors shake the brain.
Nor seldom, by transition led
From dying moralists to dead,
Tristful, in hypocondres vex'd, 285
The musing parson chews his text;
Some solemn scene of dullness sought,
To aid his rectitude of thought;
The murky vaults, the haunted cells,
Where moping melancholy dwells, 290
[Page 111]And fear, that kneels in piteous plight,
Her straggling hair all bolt upright.
Fit comrades these as e'er could chuse
The splenetick or maudlin muse;
Her doleful ditties proud to sing 295
Where sadness spreads her dusky wing;
Where croaks the syren of the lake
The light-of-heart from ease to wake;
And solemn owls, in concert grave,
Join hoot the worldly-wise to save. 300
'Twas thus enthusiastick Young;
'Twas thus affected Hervey sung; c
[Page 112]Whose motley muse, in florid strain,
With owls did to the moon complain;
Clear'd at the morn her raven throat, 305
To sound the glibber magpye's note.
Mean-while religion gravely smil'd
To see grown piety a child;
In leading-strings to find her led,
By those her fost'ring hand had bred. 310
For why confin'd the moral muse,
To blasted oaks or baleful yews:
O'er graves to make fantastick moan,
And deepen horrour's dismal groan?
Say, hath alone the mould'ring tomb 315
For pious meditation room?
[Page 113]Ah! wont with meek-eyed peace to rove,
Through church-way path or silent grove;
Her grateful influence round her shed,
Where groan the sick, or sleep the dead; 320
With truth and soberness serene,
Enliv'ning ev'ry solemn scene;
Disarming terrour of it's pow'r,
To wander at the midnight hour;
Sweet philomel, harmonious spright, 325
The only spectre of the night.
Can love of truth impose the task,
To lurk beneath a gorgon mask;
To stalk, in garb terrifick clad,
And scoul the weak and wicked mad; 330
Or drive the wretch, o'erwhelm'd with care,
In godly frenzy, to despair?
Is folly vice, fear makes it worse;
[Page 114]Reflection is the coward's curse:
Unless remorse in mercy given, 335
To damn self-murderers to heaven.
Why, then, is sought the midnight shade
From vice or falsehood to dissuade?
Is night less vicious than the day?
Doth errour guide the solar ray? 340
Or is exhal'd, like morning dew,
The moral object or the true?
O, most ridiculous the scene,
Where super stition feeds the spleen;
Where the gray spectre stalks to view, 345
As burns th' expirin taper blue;
Or dances o'er the dizzy sight
The form of many a dreadful spright:
Mean-while a victim to his fears
The moon-struck moralist appears. 350
[Page 115]For when the brain wild fancy fires;
Reason most prudently retires.
As sober men from drunkards part,
For such companions griev'd at heart.
Awes, then, with tremulous restraint 355
The painted urn or plaster saint?
Humbles the mutilated bust
The rotten sinner to the dust?
Lorenzo, here, no errour make,
Nor cowardice for conscience take 360
Alas, repentance, void of root,
May blossom fair yet fail of fruit:
Attrition vain and insincere
Mere weakness all, unmanly fear.
In the dark grove what horrour reigns 365
To chill the blood in Chiron's d veins,
[Page 116]When th' ignis fatuus glares, by night,
Terrifick witchcraft to his sight;
Or, animated by his fears,
Alive the fresh-lopp'd elm appears; 370
A giant ghost the nestling thrush,
That shakes the formidable bush;
Securely perching on whose breast,
The anxious black-bird builds its nest;
Or, on its arm-extending spray, 375
The nightingale repeats her lay:
Th' heroick titmouse or the wren
Less fearful than the sons of men;
Who yet to conscience give the lie,
And dare the pow'r of truth defy. 380
For know, no tremour can impart
Conviction to the skeptick's heart:
Nor takes, like agues, in a fright,
[Page 117]Trembling impiety its flight.
Behold the tyrant's iron hand, 385
That holds in chains a captive land;
In whose firm grasp imprison'd lies
Bold freedom, struggling as it dies;
Crush'd by whose weight, the monarch bleeds
And sceptres break like blighted reeds: 390
See this strong hand let fall the rod,
And tremble if the bulrush nod;
Belshazzar's like, enervate fall,
If laid a finger on the wall:
The wretch, of God nor man afraid, 395
Yet trembling at an empty shade.
Nor only fear th' immoral crew;
The coward pious tremble too:
Philosophy herself a fool,
Attended by her nurse to school. 400
[Page 118]Such dupes to fear, at times, we find
The best, the wisest of mankind!
For Oh! what antidote so strong
As poison, that has work'd so long!
What drug eradicates the pest, 405
Suck'd from the mother's tainted breast?
In vain the doctor we may try:
No doctor's fee our cure can buy:
Tho', tamp'ring with the dire disease,
Licentiates mock with present ease; 410
And emp'ricks, salving ev'ry sore,
With nostrums make, it rage the more.
Sayst thou, "in, policy, afraid
"To spoil the priest's and lawyer's trade,
"The statesman, topping the divine, 415
"Supports with pow'r the same design;
"To keep th' inquisitive in awe,
[Page 119]"Smacking his long-tail'd whip, the law;
"Or thund'ring in the vulgar ear
"Implicit faith and groundless fear: 420
"The nostrums these of church and state;
"To make a nation good and great."
Thus forfeit patriots that pretence
They make, as men, to common-sense?
Can ignorance be understood 423
As needful to the publick good;
That free inquiry such decry;
And boast their salutary lie?
Or, are they here by habit led,
And innovation's tumult dread? 430
So sacred held the stated rules
Of custom, lawgiver to fools!
Yet custom's rules caprice hath broke,
And turn'd her statutes into joke;
[Page 120]Nor boast her laws, however old, 435
Resistance to the pow'r of gold.
Shall science, then, still drag her chain,
And sigh for liberty in vain?
Forbid it Heav'n! that thus the mind,
By tyrant policy confin'd, 440
Should bow while falsehood bears the sway,
And give the cause of truth away.
Is this, Lorenzo, to be free?
Are these the sweets of liberty?
That glorious priv'lege yours and mine, 445
In our own sties, like sensual swine,
At will, to grumble, eat and drink;
But ah, prohibited to think!
Our, nobler appetites denied
Their proper feasts, and damn'd for pride; 450
Forbad our reason to employ;
[Page 121]Depriv'd of each sublimer joy;
Robb'd of the privilege to know,
Man's chief prerogative below!
May Britons boast, of all mankind, 455
The nobler fortitude of mind;
To set blind prejudice apart;
To rend th' old woman from the heart;
To laugh at blind tradition's rules,
The mother and the nurse of fools? 460
Have they with blood so dearly bought
Their boasted privilege of thought;
To throw like school-boys, tir'd with play,
The long disputed prize away?
Ah! had not custom often fail'd, 465
What barbarism had still prevail'd?
Deaf to the call of truth and grace,
Denying reformation place,
[Page 122]What lengths still stubborn faith had run,
To end what madd'ning zeal begun? 470
In honour still of Moloch's name,
Our children might have pass'd the flame;
By persecution's faggot rais'd;
Religious fires in Smithfield blaz'd;
Or now, as in a Stuart's reign, 475
Been dy'd with blood Iërne's plain.
Nay still how prepossess'd we find
With pious falsehoods half mankind.
Think from the stake how late repriev'd
Wretches, no charity, reliev'd: 480
Oh horrour! to the slaughter led,
For wearing rags and wanting bread;
Doom'd by inhuman, legal rage,
Martyrs to poverty and age. e
See still th' enthusiastick band 485
Cant, whine and madden o'er the land;
By scripture-craz'd fanaticks led,
Westley, or partners at their head.
See ev'n the learning of our schools
Perverted to bewilder fools; 490
The words of plainness to disguise,
And baffle reason with surprize;
While truth and nature plead in vain
Against the comment of Romaine. f
Ah! think how fatal, soon or late, 495
Such crazy members to the state:
How dang'rous to the publick weal
[Page 124]Blind ignorance and foolish zeal.
Reflect in what a dreadful hour
Nonsense usurp'd the hand of power; 500
When puritans the land o'er-run,
And sacrilege was pious fun:
While wretches, for their country's good,
Dipt their vile hands in royal blood.
Is ignorance the curse of God? g 505
Avert good Heav'n th' impending rod!
O leave, ye patriots, leave the mind
In search of knowledge unconfin'd:
Lest truth your cunning should despise,
Returning to its native skies. h 510
[Page 125]Good policy to truth's allied;
By science guided not the guide.
Cease too, ye bards, so wond'rous wise,
T'instruct by means you should despise.
In sober sadness, much too long 515
Mankind have listen'd to your song;
Have strain'd the mental eye, to see
Your false, fantastick imag'ry;
With gaudy colours glaring bright,
To captivate the vulgar sight; 520
The gaping idiot's grin of praise,
Or stare of ignorance to raise.
Nay, tho' approv'd your moral ends,
Ye still are truth's mistaken friends,
Ah! full as dang'rous to her cause 525
As even those who spurn her laws.
No visionary fears intrude
[Page 126]Where triumphs moral rectitude.
Truth all the artifice disdains
Of dungeons deep, and clanking chains; 530
Skulks not in life's sequester'd way;
But walks abroad in open day.
'Tis Falsehood, her grim face to hide,
Shuffles on nature's darkest side;
Baffling, in terrour's murky den, 535
The scrutiny of honest men.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE FOURTH.

ARGUMENT.

On the weakness of the human understanding. —The abstract existence of the Deity. —The incomprehensibility of the divine nature, and the incongruity of pretended atheism.

SUMMARY.

AS it is necessary to our success in scientifick resear­ches that the mind should be divested of its prejudices, in favour of tradition and custom; so, however extensive be the freedom of enquiry, it is equally necessary that the object of investigation be adapted to the limits of the under­standing: mankind always falling into errour and confusion, in their attempts to discover the knowledge of things beyond their capacity. However true, therefore, may be many of our dis­coveries in the system of Nature; God, the authour of that system, is abstracted from it and above our comprehension. — Hence our pretensions to describe, or define, the Deity, are palpably absurd and ridiculous. For, tho' a created Being may ascribe to its creator the most respectable of all known perfections, yet, as all its ideas of perfection are relative to itself, the attributes human beings ascribe to God are necessa­rily the superior qualities of humanity. —Notwithstanding, however, the Deity is so far removed from our enquiries, and thereby confessedly no object of philosophical knowledge, yet the actual disbelief of the existence of a God is denied: the argu­ments for and against atheists composing, in fact, a very ridiculous dispute: as the impossibility of denying the being of a first cause is evident; and the rest of the controversy a mere cavil about words, of no determinate meaning.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE FOURTH.

RUL'D by no giant hopes or fears,
Whose stature grows with length of years,
In search of truth expect to find
The labour suited to the mind;
[Page 132]With genius, nature bearing part, 5
The strict, yet gentle, nurse of art.
Then aim not thou a point to hit,
Above the reach of human wit;
As if mankind could judge of aught
Beyond th' ability of thought. 10
Join not, Lorenzo, blindly those.
Who first would nature's God disclose;
Their moral and religious schemes
Building on theologick dreams;
Deduc'd the principles they own 15
From others equally unknown.
For, say the voice of reason true;
Be ours a just abstracted view:
Be it the privilege of man,
To trace exactly nature's plan; 20
The scale of beings in his hands,
[Page 133]To know the point at which he stands,
Compar'd with all he boasts to know,
As well above him as below:
Yet, if, of human logick vain, 25
He link to Heav'n a kindred chain,
Conclusions idle soon he draws;
And Heav'n prescribes by human laws.
Imagine thou in what degree
A seraph stands 'tween God and thee; 30
The neck how lowly dost thou bend
Before thy bright seraphick friend?
But place thyself a mite unseen
And being infinite between;
In this comparison, says pride, 35
A seraph thou, to God allied.
Thy pride, Lorenzo, disbelieve;
Let Locke nor Addison deceive;
[Page 134]For tho' creation's varied plan
Assigns degrees respecting man, 40
Yet, bigot, know, and learn to fear,
God is beyond thy proper sphere.
Created beings, all his care,
Doth he with them creation share?
Ah no! the system all our own, 45
God, the creator, stands alone:
At equal distance all his plan,
The mite, the seraph, or the man.
Is it not so, the passive clay
Of yon Corinthian column gay, 50
That gilt entablature or base,
Or marble of yon shining vase,
Resemble more the artist's mind
Than if to meaner use consign'd.
Absurd! is Jones's genius known 55
[Page 135]By the great model or the stone?
The pile, erect to Trajan's name,
Affected not by empty fame,
The cross rever'd, the honour'd bust,
And trodden floor are kindred dust: 60
For all in one degree respect
Their sov'reign lord, the architect.
How justly then soe'er we plead
That reason nature's book doth read,
As by its known establish'd laws 65
Of each effect we trace the cause,
Those laws can ne'er, themselves, confine
The legislative power divine:
Whose will those very laws decreed
And bad th' effect the cause succeed: 70
Agent, in some superior scheme,
Of which in this we can but dream.
Bear Atticus the critick's rod
In vain we, then, define a God;
In vain we attributes bestow; 75
Or reason, here, from what we know.
Tho' science teach, religion warm,
What wild ideas still we form?
Imperfect embrios of the brain,
That strive to scale the Heav'ns in vain. 80
Too short to reach beyond the sky
The focus of the mental eye;
Too cold our most transporting zeal
To paint what heav'ns and light conceal.
Yet will the skeptick ask me why? 85
Go, rise and to the dog-star fly.
Thou canst not: nor the cause unknown.
Central attraction holds thee down;
A pow'r occult, which, ere thy birth,
[Page 137]Fast bound thee to thy native earth: 90
From which thou ne'er canst hope to rise
To lunar plains or solar skies.
Nor less, within it's sphere, confin'd
The subtile essence of the mind.
What tho' it boast the pow'r to rove 95
In freedom through the plains above;
Tho' wing'd it's active feet to run,
With Merc'ry round the central sun;
Giv'n it far distant worlds t' explore;
And seas of space without a shore: 100
Yet, still, within creation's round,
Within our narrow system bound;
Of what's above or what without
We harbour universal doubt.
Say light prevails, no contrast shade 105
Outlines the void we would prevade:
[Page 138]If darkness reign no chearing ray
Delineates blind inquiry's way.
Hence, mortal man, must ever be
Thy authour, God, unknown to thee; 110
Destin'd thy erring way to trace
Through nature's parti-colour'd space.
Let ign'rance, then, her idol dress
In justice, love, and happiness;
Adorn with mercy's golden chain, 115
With all the virtues grace its train;
And then adore in humble plight,
Calling those fopp'ries infinite.
The pagan thus, despis'd as blind,
Creates his idol to his mind; 120
Thinking his deity express'd
By bird or beast he likes the best;
Then bows before the painted shrine;
[Page 139]And calls his wooden God divine.
Cast the presumptuous thought aside: 125
'Tis not humility but pride;
Unless that truly humble we,
T' adore the God humanity.
And such it is: for whence arise
Our virtues but from moral ties; 130
Whose known relations thus define
That essence mortals call divine.
Lorenzo, ready for reply,
Lay not thy prompt objection by.
Thou sayst "thy friend himself deceives, 135
"Nor God adores nor God believes:
"For tho' the mind the pow'r descry,
"If left its essence in the sky,
"If none imagin'd or display'd,
"To nothing adoration paid: 140
[Page 140]"In me no certain faith is found;
"My deity an empty found."
Not so: for, granting, I confess,
Thy attributes a God express;
Thou sayst thyself "still undefin'd 145
"The perfect, by th' imperfect, mind."
And to thy attributes must join
Thy infinite or thy divine.
As jugglers, who, t' enhance deceit,
To sacred science give their cheat, 150
While, with the curtain, still they hide
The slight of hand too closely eyed:
So sly theologues here impart
The hocus pocus of their art;
Holding religion's sacred veil, 155
Where slights of understanding fail.
For know, alas, their wisest plan
[Page 141]Displays but a superiour man,
Whom infinite the conjurer's rod,
Presto, converts into a God. 160
Till, then, they solve our problem right,
And tell us what is infinite,
They still must be reduc'd to own
Their compound deity unknown:
To all, or reasoning or inspir'd, 165
This infinite a term requir'd.
Differs Lorenzo, then, with me?
In terms alone we disagree:
Perfection infinite is thine,
Indefinite perfection mine. 170
Condemn not, then, half understood.
I not deny that perfect, good,
All-gracious, merciful, and wife,
[Page 142]God reigns, supreme, beyond the skies, a
Neither, 'tis true, my terms imply; 175
But, granting none, I none deny:
Requiring but to acquiesce
That thou thy infinite express.
Idly doth Bolingbroke refine;
Granting that wisdom is divine, 180
While, as absurdly, he denies
Justice and goodness to the skies.
Ideas, equally our own,
Our goodness as our wisdom's known;
To both as hard to reconcile 185
Or nature's frown or nature's smile.
[Page 143]Alas! no attributes of thine
Can e'er the deity define;
Impossible to judge, or know,
Of God above from man below: b 190
Reserv'd the prospect of the skies
To gratify immortal eyes.
Lorenzo, let us reason right.
No finite spans an infinite;
Unless, with Matho, vers'd in arts, 195
We hold th' infinity of parts.
But none th' absurdity will plan,
That God can be contain'd in man;
[Page 144]Tho', as absurdly, they suppose
Our partial gifts the God disclose. 200
Joinst thou, with Florio, the dispute,
T' enhance each moral attribute?
Pretending "these, however crude,
"Divine perfection doth include:
"As species in a genus they, 205
"Or parts, which, join'd, the whole display."
So, with the grandeur all t'inspire
Of the gay mansion of his fire,
An idiot heir, his mother's fool,
Taught his synecdoché at school, 210
Conceiv'd by part the whole was shown;
And took a sample of the stone.
Convinc'd, doth Polydore, with me,
That God's indefinite agree,
Yet argue "that our partial view 215
[Page 145]"May still be relatively true:
"For, if no abstract lights we gain,
"'Tis just our best to entertain;
"Our God to call that wond'rous cause,
"In nature trac'd, by nature's laws." 220
Mistake not here nor God dethrone:
The first mechanick cause be known;
'Tis of some prior cause th' effect;
Which no known similars respect.
The God we, then, by this define 225
Nor self-existent nor divine.
Be known creation's various ties,
Whence physical relations rise;
Of each effect the various cause;
Attraction and repulsion's laws; 230
That primum mobilé be found
That drove Des Cartes' whirlpools round;
[Page 146]Let matter, motion, ether, join,
To form thy attributes divine;
Striving if possible to rise 235
To the first agent in the skies:
Be next explain'd to mortal sense,
The wond'rous scheme of providence;
Down from those great important springs,
On which rebounds the fate of kings, 240
To those, so exquisitely small,
Destin'd to let the sparrow fall:
Sayst thou the knowledge hence deriv'd
Of him those systems hath contriv'd?
Alas! from hence we only trace 245
The features of creation's face;
The front it bears to human kind;
But not its self-existing mind.
Should we, presuming to display
[Page 147]The spirit of the golden day, 250
Thus, call its essence its result,
Attraction, fire, alike occult;
Or say 'tis vegetation green;
Who'd think it is the sun we mean?
So here t' absurdity we fall 255
Nor thus define a God at all.
Yet while, to thee I freely own,
I reverence a God unknown;
Think not, through ignorance or pride,
A God was ever yet denied. 260
No atheist c e'er was known on earth
[Page 148]Till fiery zealots gave him birth,
For controversy's sake, their trade,
And damn'd the heretick they made.
Doth Clody, impudent and vain, 265
Deny a God, in skeptick strain,
And yet in ignorance advance
That nature is the work of chance?
Theologists, absurdly wise,
With their anathemas despise; 270
For well may Clody these inflame,
Whose God exists but in a name;
A technick term, devis'd at school,
I pity Clody as a fool.
To Epicurus' strains belong 275
The censures of an idle song.
For say "united worlds might join
"By accident, and not design;
[Page 149] "Atoms might luckily contrive,
"And strangely find themselves alive; 280
"Or, by some other scheme as wild,
"The world be fortune's fav'rite child."
Explain the terms—say what is meant
By atoms, fortune, accident.
What meanst thou but th' efficient cause 285
Of nature's works and nature's laws?
O, think not, then, th' eternal mind
To term or epithet confin'd;
But take away or change the name;
And Clody's God and mine's the same. 290
Sayst thou "in chance a pow'r defin'd,
"Fortuitous, absurd, and blind,
"Unworthy that stupendous plan,
"Which nature's scenes display to man;
"Where grace, with harmony allied, 295
[Page 150]"And wisdom strike, on ev'ry side."
Alas! to Clody these unknown:
For wond'rous wisdom's all his own.
In nature nothing he surveys;
That actuates his soul to praise: 300
In vain the planets ran their course,
Obedient to impulsive force;
Th' excentrick comets, far and wide,
Pursue the same unerring guide;
In vain describes their varied race, 305
In equal times, an equal space:
In vain through microscopick eyes,
Innumerable wonders rise;
On the green leaf whole nations crawl,
And myriads perish in its fall. 310
Ah me! what bears the barren mind!
What beauty can affect the blind!
[Page 151]Should Clody then his chance disclaim,
And own a deity, by name,
The blund'ring deist would advance 315
A God, no wiser than his chance.
Boasts nature, therefore, no design?
Say whence, Lorenzo, yours and mine.
Did wisdom's sons themselves create?
Their birth 'tis own'd they owe to fate; 320
To fate capricious blind and dull;
Design lock'd up in th' atheist's skull.
But say, my friend, how came it there?
Lit chance upon occasion fair,
From odds and ends of matter join'd, 325
To form an intellectual mind?
Egregious blunder! gross surmize!
"Nature's a fool yet man is wise."
Is there a mortal, sound of brain,
[Page 152]Who such a tenet can maintain? 330
O, no—for words let fools contest,
Atheism's a mere, tho' impious, jest.
How obvious is the truth! and yet,
What learned volumes have been writ;
How scholiasts labour to refute, 335
Where none do actually dispute!
Of the first-cause, or fools or wise,
The pure existence none denies;
But in it's essence e disagree:
For who defines infinity! 340
Blush not, Lorenzo, then, to own,
Th' eternal God a God unknown;
Whose face, to mortal eye denied,
Can never gratify thy pride.
To him your votive altars raise, 345
[Page 153]As Athens did in ancient days;
Nor dare pollute his sacred shrine
With human sacrifice divine;
But humble adoration bring,
And silent praise; fit offering! 350
So the Peruvian, pure in heart,
Strange to the guile, or guilt of art,
Unaw'd by tenet, text, or tale,
Erects his temple in the vale,
Sacred to th' universal mind, 355
The God and guide of human kind.
No firstlings here affront the skies,
Nor clouds of smoking incense rise:
No hypocrite with acid face;
No convert tortur'd into grace; 360
No solid skull, in wisdom's cowl;
No hooded hawk, nor solemn owl,
[Page 154]Nor blind, nor ominous invade
This spotless consecrated shade:
But, as the native of the spray, 365
Man hails his maker, with the day;
By nature taught, Heav'n asks no more,
In spirit and in truth t'adore.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE FIFTH.

ARGUMENT.

On happiness. —The apparent incapacity of mankind for its enjoyment. —The compara­tive pain and pleasure of human sensations; and their relation to our physical and moral constitution.

SUMMARY.

NEXT to the absurdity of puzzling ourselves in the in­vestigation of matters beyond our capacity, and equally an obstacle to our inquiries after truth, is the folly of our con­stant pursuit, and in spite of as constant disappointments, our expectations of happiness—The term is certainly left vague and ill-defin'd even by those philosophers who, pretending it to be attainable, affect to teach us how happiness may be acquir'd—Its meaning is, nevertheless, obvious; and is determined from the tenour of its acceptation with the generality of man­kind. In which sense, it is shown to be hitherto unattain'd; and that, not only from the impossibility of externals to confer happiness, but, from the evident incapacity of human beings to be made happy—It is hence, also, declar'd unattainable; and even the most laudable means whereby it is pursued, as those of knowledge, religion, and virtue are experimentally, and logically, shown to be incapable of conferring happiness. —In fact, ev'ry state, age and condition of life having its seve­ral distinct anxieties and consolations, it appears that a conti­nued sense of either happiness or misery is incompatible with our nature; as well as with the very essence of pleasure and pain in general: our sensations of both which are merely compara­tive and reciprocally necessary to that of each other. Whence happiness and misery are evidently relative to, and dependant on, the constitution of the human frame; with which abstract pain and pleasure are totally inconsistent.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE FIFTH.

BEyond the science of mankind,
In nature's fane our God enshrin'd;
Content, Lorenzo, let us trace
The lines, the shaddow, of his face;
[Page 160]In humble boldness seek to know 5
Our heav'n on earth; our God below.
To face the sun, to beat the sky
Demand an eagle's wing and eye.
Ah! let not, then, mere birds of night,
Whose wings, whose opticks check their flight,
Encourag'd by the morning ray 11
To risk the sun-shine of the day,
Their feeble pow'rs too highly rate,
And rush absurdly on their fate;
As in the noon-tide beams they gaze 15
Struck blind by Heav'ns meridian blaze,
For ever after to their cost
To grope; in endless errour lost.
Adapted, then, inquiry's plan
To truths as relative to man, 20
Wouldst thou, Lorenzo, comprehend
[Page 161]Man's physical and moral end,
To future, to immortal views
Conducted by the faithful muse?
Secure while yet in reason's sight, 25
For thee she takes her daring flight;
Born up on scientifick wing,
Attempts her boldest note to sing;
For thee those winding tracts t'explore;
Where seldom muse hath dar'd to soar. 30
But, here, as truth we hope to find,
Be left each vain desire behind.
Be thrown those obstacles aside
Which expectation builds on pride;
While busy hope and bustling care 35
Erect their castles in the air;
Our fertile wishes safe to hold,
Fertile in pleasure, fame or gold,
[Page 162]A treasure valued at no less
Than man's consummate happiness. 40
For know, if bliss thy end and aim,
Truth but invalidates thy claim:
Th' exclusive privilege to know
The all we taste of Heav'n below.
Is this a maxim wits profess? 45
"That man was born to happiness:
"Tho' tow'rs of hope he fondly raise,
"Their structure lasts him all his days:
"In expectation ev'n possessing
"The better half of ev'ry blessing, 50
"His bliss for ever in his view,
"Whene'er he pleases to pursue."
My friend, with care such maxims weigh:
Nor run with giddy wits astray.
In search of truth may genius roam; 55
[Page 163]But bliss, if found, is found at home;
To region, clime nor soil confin'd
This boasted seed of Heav'nly kind.
Ah! vainly boasted, if below
The plant celestial cannot grow! 60
Say sophists neither more nor less
Than happiness is happiness;
Yet will they boast this state unknown,
This bliss indefinite, their own?
The diff'rence plain 'twixt bliss and woe, 65
Whate'er we feel we surely know:
What state can, then, be ever thine
Which sense nor science can define.
That man, by others is't confess'd,
Ne'er is but always to be blest? 70
Yet would they teach, in moral strain,
How all may happiness attain?
[Page 164]As well who ne'er was bless'd with light
May boast the happiness of sight,
The splendour of the solar ray; 75
Or teach his comrades blind their way;
As such to thee make ever known
A state of being ne'er their own.
Dost thou to prove my judgment wrong
In answer quote thy fav'rite song? 80
True bliss, thy Pope if we believe,
All hands can reach, all heads conceive: a
The happiness of each confin'd,
In truth, to that of all our kind.
Know terms so gen'ral naught define. 85
The bliss of all nor yours nor mine:
As yet distinctly understood
The publick and the private good.
[Page 165]Nor doth it prove this maxim right
To say that both in one unite; 90
Unless their union be so plain
That, seeking one, we both obtain:
Since th'individual, for himself,
Applies to riot, fame or pelf:
In spite of all the wise can say, 95
We seek our bliss a sep'rate way;
Just as the present maggots bite,
Take our own measures for the right;
Or, having no peculiar whim,
Along the tide of custom swim. 100
Mean-while, of bliss tho' all dispute,
None leave their darling substitute.
How short of happiness is gold!
The miser cries; yet keeps his hold.
In women, sighs the batter'd rake, 105
[Page 166]What solid comfort can we take!
Ah! what in wine? Silenus asks.
Yet cart the whore; go, stave the casks;
"How shall the sons of Comus live,
"If wine nor women life doth give!" 110
Thus publick happiness our care
But for our own peculiar share:
While sons their father's schemes traduce;
And here all patriotism abuse.
However then the specious face 115
Of wit may countenance the case,
Bliss inconsistently we call
The happiness of one and all.
Nor is it yet precisely meant
By good, ease, pleasure or content. 120
Good might we variously explain.
Ease is deliv'rance but from pain.
[Page 167] Pleasure is actual joy confess'd:
And mere content but patient rest;
A neutral state, at best and worst,
But negatively blest or curst:
That which our happiness we call,
Tho' that nor this, the sum of all.
The world's plain meaning plainly this,
Some constant state of actual bliss. 130
No matter whether in degree
Alike bestow'd on you or me:
Enough, if, void of fear or pain,
No motive lead us to complain:
Enough, whate'er the mode of joy, 135
If such that it can never cloy.
Look round the world, and tell me true.
Where is such happiness in view?
From monarchs fled, as sings the bard,
[Page 168]His patron's virtue to reward, 140
Tell me, in truth, was St. John blest? b
Or did the bitter bard but jest;
Dipping his pen in worse than gall,
An outed statesman bless'd to call?
With equal truth the muse might paint 145
My Lord of Bolingbroke a saint;
Run riot o'er his dubious fame,
And dub him with a patriot's name:
So worthy of his country's pràise!
So meek! so holy all his ways! 150
Nor, tho' to him, to him alone
A state of perfect bliss unknown,
Of each complexion, age, degree,
Mankind as far remov'd as he.
Go, ask, my friend, from door to door, 155
[Page 169]The high, the low, the rich, the poor;
In court, or cot, if here, or there,
Reside the mortal free from care.
You ask in vain, for joy and strife
Diversify all states of life. 160
To wield the scythe with sweaty brow,
With wearied arm to guide the plough,
To sow in hope, to reap in joy,
Thine, labour, is the sweet employ.
A life of rest with pain t'endure, 165
To seek in health disease's cure,
To eat the grape, unprun'd the vine,
Laborious idleness is thine.
Yet idleness of care complains
And labour quarrels with its pains. 170
Nor only found, or made, distress;
Because externals fail to bless:
[Page 170]Lodg'd in ourselves the taste, and will,
That make externals good or ill;
No earthly blessing, hence, we find 175
An equal good to all mankind.
Belmore, the sober'st thing on earth,
Dreads the broad laugh, and roar of mirth:
While Clerrio, with a length of chin,
Protracted by perpetual grin, 180
Tho' Socrates himself pass by,
Must laugh in ridicule or die.
How elegant, how high refin'd
The palate of Cardella's mind!
How low, how vulgar Cotta's soul, 185
That feels no rapture in a vole!
See thousands, as in love with strife,
Pursue it, fretting, all their life;
And darken, with the clouds of spleen,
[Page 171]The sky of providence serene: 190
Wretched to find another eas'd,
And most unhappy when they're pleas'd.
How strange! while some, with patient toil,
Raise comfort on a barren soil
Or pleasure strike, by native dint, 195
From cruel fortune's hardest flint;
The patriarch like, whose rod, we're told,
Earth's stubborn fetters burst, of old;
When gush'd the stream from Horeb's rock,
To water Israel's thirsty flock. 200
Hence not on earth a blessing sent
Gives universally content.
For while so varied is our taste,
Manna itself were show'r'd to waste.
With reason, therefore, we profess 205
God meant not here our happiness:
[Page 172]Else in the various blessings given
Sure various minds might find their heaven. c
But know, as different we find
Each individual's turn of mind, 210
As little with ourselves we see
Ourselves, at various times, agree.
So oft our views, our tempers change,
As through life's varied scenes we range.
At times, so diff'rent from himself, 215
The prodigal will hoard his pelf;
Spend greedily the night at play,
[Page 173]To throw next morn his gains away.
At times ev'n misers rob their store,
And give their sixpence to the poor. 220
At times ev'n trembling cowards fight,
And, desp'rate, put the bold to flight:
While, sick of fighting and of fame,
The brave, like belgick lions, tame.
How oft, my friend, in private life, 225
We love the maid we hate a wife.
How oft the scene, that gives delight
At morn, offends the eye at night.
'Tis not the want of that or this:
Possession is the bane of bliss: 230
And hence of happiness we see
On earth th' impossibility.
Yet, with an interested view,
Doth still Lorenzo truth pursue?
[Page 174]Dost thou suppose th'enlighten'd mind 235
In truth's researches bliss may find?
That science fancy may restrain,
And fix that weather-cock the brain?
Alas, deceive thy self no more;
But give thy vain pretensions o'er. 240
For, as a world of fruitless cost
In vain inquiries hath been lost;
A world of labour spent t'attain
To knowledge man may never gain:
So millions all their lives have spent, 245
Searching for bliss in discontent:
For bliss, which but a little thought
Had told them never could be taught.
Yet still they ask; yet still they run
A race that never can be won. 250
Thus sought, of yore, projecting fools
[Page 175]The summum bonum of the schools;
And wiser heads than those of old
The stone converting all to gold;
Or vain adepts, much wiser still, 255
To wrest from nature's hand, at will,
Promethean theft, celestial fire;
To animate their wood and wire:
Madmen, that not Monro could cure
Of circles and their quadrature, 260
Of thinking drunken nature reels,
Like a slung coach, on springs and wheels!
Dost thou, instructed in thy youth
To place consummate bliss in truth,
Conceive it somewhere hidden lies, 265
Among the learned and the wise;
That hence our bliss or misery flow,
The truth to know or not to know?
[Page 176]In vain the learn'd, in science deep,
In search of bliss, their vigils keep; 270
In vain the universe explore,
Swift as their search, it flies before,
Through ev'ry clime, on ev'ry wind,
And leaves the panting wish behind.
O, tell me, what connection ties 275
So close the happy and the wise.
Did e'er the sage in wisdom find
The artless infant's peace of mind?
Proud, knowledge, e'er, or boastful art,
Restore to joy the broken heart? 280
Ah! what avails the truth to know,
When truth's the frequent source of woe;
While gilded fiction's dazzling rays
With sun-shine beautify our days,
Or, mildly shed, its silver beams, 285
[Page 177]Reflected, light our nightly dreams;
While pleasure and its laughing train
Dance, by the moon-shine of the brain.
For what is knowledge, but to know
How ignorant our state below? 290
The more we learn, the more to find,
Beyond our learning, still behind:
Our fruitless wishes to increase,
Whene'er our mental prospects cease?
So far from happiness, my friend, 295
Is science, in its means, or end.
Sayst thou that bliss the world affect
The smile of God on his elect;
Confin'd to Abr'am's faithful seed;
And made dependant on our creed? 300
Go, ask the saints, to whom are given
The best assurances of Heaven,
[Page 178]The few distinguish'd here on earth
As children of a spiritual birth,
"How gloomy oft a state of grace; 305
"How often hid their Maker's face;
"How oft, by satan and by sin,
"Sore buffeted the man within."
These all confess beyond the sky
Their blissful heritage doth lie. 310
Say, is repos'd this Heav'nly trust
Within the bosom of the just,
While virtue, in itself, you call
The happiness of one and all?
Pretending still, "tho' yours and mine 315
"No partial mode of bliss define;
"Yet that our diff'rent tastes unite
"In meaning well and thinking right:
"An universal moral this,
[Page 179]"Conducting all mankind to bliss!" 320
Alas, what sophistry to tell
Of "thinking right, and meaning well:" d
Unless this rectitude of thought
With perspicuity be taught;
This honest meaning plainly shown; 325
So oft admir'd! so little known!
At virtue if we're left to guess,
What is't to say 'tis happiness?
The way to virtue as to bliss;
If dubious that as doubtful this. 330
How fruitless therefore but to know
"Virtue is happiness below!"
Sayst thou, mankind are all agreed
That happiness is virtue's meed?
The service of the work inquire, 335
[Page 180]And by the labour rate the hire.
Now virtue some to fact confine,
While others place it in design.
These blest but for the good they do;
And those for all they have in view. 340
But, if by virtue understood
The mere intent of doing good,
Those fully virtuous may be held,
Who ne'er one lawless passion quell'd;
Whom ne'er temptation led astray, 345
Beyond the tenour of their way;
A sober path by stoicks trod;
Nor friends to man, nor foes to God.
Consistent with a state of rest,
If virtue's centred in the breast, 350
As happy those may surely live
Who nothing give nor have to give,
[Page 181]As those who taste, in ey'ry sense,
Th' exertion of benevolence.
Some seeming diff'rence yet we find. 355
What pangs affect the tender mind?
What exquisite sensations rise,
To hear the orphan's piteous cries;
To feel the widow's piercing woe;
When no relief our wants bestow? 360
Doth virtue here rejoice the heart
As when the gen'rous ease impart,
When purest transports warm the breast,
That glows to succour the distress'd?
And yet, my friend, 'twere wond'rous hard, 365
If bliss the virtuous rich reward,
In poverty that virtue's zeal
Should double all the pangs we feel;
Each gen'rous sigh, each social tear,
[Page 182]But render want the more severe. 370
To virtue, therefore, if the deed
Our best designs must yet succeed,
Granting that happy ev'ry mind
In such proportion as its kind,
Here in externals do we place 375
The happiness of human race:
Enabled to relieve distress
As wealth, or pow'r, ourselves possess;
For bliss capacitated more
As blest with fortune's worldly store. 380
Fix'd, by this scheme, the blissful state,
Exclusive, to the rich and great:
The virtuous poor, but innocent,
Claim, at th' utmost, bare content.
Besides, if individuals blest 385
As sharers only with the rest,
[Page 183]True happiness with thee to call
Not merely that of one but all,
What is inactive virtue's use?
Can it to social good conduce? 390
Can it, thus fruitless and confin'd,
Be call'd a blessing to mankind?
If then we judge so much amiss
Of virtue, and of virtuous bliss,
If faith, tho' crown'd with alms and pray'rs, 395
Hath all its pangs, hath all its cares,
While, ev'n from knowledge, prospects rise,
That make us miserably wise,
His perfect happiness to reach,
No morals mortal man can teach: 400
Still Heav'n's best vot'ries must confess
No blessings here compleatly bless:
A compound strange of bliss and woe
[Page 184]Man's variable state below.
Some absent something ours to crave, 405
Ev'n from the cradle to the grave!
How idly, then, employ'd the mind
In search of that we cannot find.
For human bliss stands never still;
Our good insep'rable from ill; e 410
Whilst all of pain and pleasure share,
Their hour of joy, their hour of care,
Adapted to each sev'ral state;
Fix'd and determinate as fate.
The world my friend, an ample field, 415
Of such examples store doth yield.
How throbs the infant's little breast,
[Page 185]Beneath a load of care oppress'd;
The care that issues with a sigh;
The tear yet standing in the eye; 420
Or, caught in laughter's dimple sleek,
Dry'd up in stealing down the cheek.
See next, among, the sachel'd crowd,
Bold as a hero and as proud,
The little tyrant of his class; 425
How happy! till condemn'd to parse,
Or sob beneath the weightier curse
Of scanning Lily's crabbed verse. f
In youth how glows the vital fire
'Tween expectation and desire; 430
Our sanguine hopes our awkard fears,
[Page 186]All suiting unexperienc'd years.
Still riper joys do manhood bless,
When full-blown fortune we possess?
We riot on the joyous store, 435
Till health and strength can charm no more;
When disappointment and chagrin
Retaliate all our joys with spleen.
Proportion'd next to wasted age,
Insipid joys and peevish rage, 440
Tho' dim th' exhausted passions burn,
Take, to our latest gasp, their turn.
Thus relative, my friend, we find
The pains and pleasures of mankind:
Adapted all, in due degree, 445
To human sensibility.
For see, no more alive to smart
Than dead to joy the hard-of-heart:
[Page 187]As far from rapture as despair
The fretful family of care. 450
Not sickness, pain, nor death itself
Avarus dreads like loss of pelf:
While Lavish offers an estate
To staunch a cut, ere yet too late,
Dispel the head-ach, or remove 455
Th' effects of his intemp'rate love.
Was ever yet the child of mirth
Intensely blest, or curst, on earth?
Ah no! how lightly feel a pain
The light-of-heart, or light-of-brain! 460
The man, so happy as to think,
Life's bitter potion born to drink!
Behold the foolish, weak and blind
The sprightliest, merriest of mankind;
While suffers oft superior sense, 465
[Page 188]Ev'n from its own pre-eminence:
Those follies that the wise: annoy
The destitute-of-wisdom's joy.
The blockhead naturally free
From cares thy knowledge brings on thee, 470
While Heav'n your daily toil to seek,
Poor Ralpho works but once a week:
When left his plough and worldly cares,
He plies his sunday's task at pray'rs.
Nor puzzled he in truth's research, 475
Laid all his burthen on the church;
The friendly church, by Heav'n design'd
To help the weak, to lead the blind,
To check the rash, to warm the cold,
T'engage the young, t'amuse the old, 480
Th' unthinking from themselves to save,
And bring them calmly to the grave.
[Page 189]Blest ignorance! from care so free,
Hath it, Lorenzo, charms for thee?
Wouldst thou to science, empty name 485
If void of bliss resign thy claim?
Be like the ass, that plodding goes,
Nor looks beyond his bridled nose?
For me—O, rather should I ask
Life's most laborious, abject task. 490
Would ev'n the meanest lot sustain;
Bear ev'ry tolerable pain:
To emp'ricks would intrust my cure;
Ev'n to be pitied might endure:
Nay, plague me, Heav'n, in ev'ry sense, 495
Ere take my share of reason hence;
Of science ere my soul deprive,
My little portion, whilst alive.
Yet dost thou ignorance despise?
[Page 190]The joys of knowledge hence arise. 500
So strange so little understood
The varied source of mortals' good!
To Heav'n my grateful vows be paid
That man in human frailty's made;
That grief and ignorance my lot; 505
In joy and science since forgot;
Or best remember'd in the taste
They give improvement's rich repast.
O say, industrious querist, say,
What raptures court you on the way; 510
What views delight, from time, to time,
As the steep hills of art you climb.
Such transports ne'er had fir'd my breast,
If born of sciences possess'd,
As when, by want of knowledge fir'd, 515
To nature's lore I late aspir'd;
[Page 191]By slow degrees enlighten'd grew,
Her volume op'ning to my view;
To the weak mind as knowledge given;
Knowledge, that wings the soul for Heaven. 520
Lorenzo, is this doctrine strange?
Seest thou not, while the seasons change,
How much, as each in contrast felt,
We freeze with cold, by heat we melt.
Thus exquisite our sense of woe 525
As more refin'd our pleasures grow:
Pleasure and pain, as light and shade,
By one the other still display'd.
Didst never want? to thee denied
The bliss of being satisfied; 530
In constant fulness but enjoye'd
Th' insipid good of which we're cloy'd.
Say, plenty gives thee bread more white,
[Page 192]It blunts the edge of appetite;
Or, giving wine, malignly first 535
Robs thee, distasteful, of thy thirst.
How sunk, and terrible, to thee
The hollow, eye of poverty!
While Villius meets her with, a smile,
And sings, or whistles all the while. 540
Tho' worn his hands, perplex'd, his head,
He relishes the sweets of bread;
Nay patient sees, in want itself,
His crustless cupboard's vacant shelf:
Full many a time, in pleasant rue, 545
Dancing for joy without a shoe.
Is Fortunatus rich and gay?
Curst with the modish itch of play;
Bubbled at White's, through lust of gain;
Or jockey'd round New-Market plain; 550
[Page 193]See with his barb his manors fly;
His leaseholds totter with the die;
Braving the storm of many a cast,
His oaks a bet malignant blast,
His card-built villas, one and all, 555
Like infant architecture, fall.
From sharpers, creditors and duns,
Not half the peril Villius runs;
Whom all the world to trust refuse;
Who nothing owns he dreads to lose. 560
Ah me! what threat'ning danger nigh?
Why swells the tear in Delia's eye?
Eclips'd the fairest of the fair
By sad misfortune's drooping air;
Delia on whom kind Nature smil'd, 565
Ev'n at the birth her fav'rite child,
When, all the graces to combine,
She cloath'd them in one form divine;
Bestowing grandeur, wit and wealth,
And fortune's best of bounties, health: 570
Nay, adding, in her gen'rous fit,
Good-nature even to her wit.
With all these blessings yet unblest,
Ah, tell me, fair one, why distress'd.
Alas! alas! the belle's reply 575
"Of Brilliante's birth-day suit I die.
You smile at misery like this.
Match it with Delia's sense of bliss.
In rapture ever, with the gay,
To shine at concert, masque or play; 580
Her greatest happiness to boast
Her name the fopling's reigning toast:
The all in life her wish regards
Summ'd up in fashions, routs and cards.
[Page 195]Ah, then, how pow'rful to distress 585
Th' important article of dress!
So deeply some may cares affect,
Those trifling cares that you neglect,
Half the solicitude we see
Ridiculous to you and me? 590
Others there are as lightly hold
Dangers, at which our blood runs cold.
Lo where, beneath th' impending cliff
The Norway fowler moors his skiff;
Or, desp'rate, fifty fathoms high 595
Suspended, seems himself to fly;
While thus, from rock to rock, he swings;
And, blythe, his summer's ditty sings.
As blythe the sea-boy furls the sail,
Regardless of the blust'ring gale; 600
Nor winds, nor waves, disturb his sleep,
[Page 196]Amid the horrours of the deep.
The cordial draught, the downy bed
Had ne'er reviv'd the drooping head,
Had sickness pale, and fainting grief 605
Ne'er wish'd for wearied nerves relief.
See Belmont on the sofa laid;
What racking pains his limbs invade!
Take half his gout, the respite given
He calls a blissful taste of heaven. 610
Give but a youth, dispersing wealth,
Who riots on the bloom of health,
That blissful part, which yet remains;
And his a mortal's bitter'st pains.
Pains which no aggravation know! 615
Yet, so comparative our woe,
Inflict them when Cleora's kiss,
Kind earnest of approaching bliss,
[Page 197]Hath rais'd the glowing lover's fire
To flaming raptures of desire; 620
Lo, disappointment joins the curse,
And turns this worst affliction worse.
Correct ideas let us gain.
Our sense of joy we owe to pain;
So strange a paradox is this! 625
And mis'ry to our sense of bliss;
While such our varying state below,
Ev'n joy degen'rates into woe;
And pains, in sufferance, by degrees,
On their own pangs engender ease; 630
Their antidote, like scorpions, bring,
T' expel the poison of their sting.
The tension of th' extended nerve,
Say Phisiologists, may serve,
The means of pleasure and of pain, 635
[Page 198]This seeming paradox t' explain.
As strung the harp with trembling wire,
So brac'd with nerves the human lyre,
While such in tune, these sages say,
The smiling hours in concert play: 640
But if, in change, too lax or tense;
Health strikes no more the keys of sense:
But, tremblingly alive all o'er,
The tortur'd strings in discord roar:
While sickness, with her harpy claws, 645
Stranger to each harmonious cause,
Labours, benumb'd, the jarring strain,
That stuns our ear with deaf'ning pain.
Nor yet can health too oft repeat
Its musick, howsoever sweet; 650
While, by degrees, lo, ev'ry string,
Depriv'd of its elastick spring,
[Page 199]In gen'ral lassitude, full soon
The whole machine grows out of tune.
Should, also, passion, sense or art 655
Wind up too high the nervous part;
With noise the notes tumultuous tire;
Or breaking strings unman the lyre.
Of pain or pleasure on our frame
Th' effects, hence, frequently the same; 660
Thus, full of gladness or of grief,
In tears we find the same relief;
Alike the feeble nerve destroy
Exquisite pain, extatick joy.
The bandit, stretch'd upon the wheel, 665
Th' extreme of torture ne'er can feel;
But, cruelty disarming, lies
Or dead to sense, or really dies.
So, rapture never meant to bless,
[Page 200]Ev'n joy grows pain when in excess. 670
Indulg'd to print the burning kiss
On Chloe's lips, how fierce the bliss!
How keen the torture of her charms,
Caress'd, to pant within her arms,
Melting in fulness of desire, 675
Stretch'd on the rack of bliss, t'expire!
Thus constitutional, below,
Is all our bliss, is all our woe:
Each holding, intimately join'd,
Alternate empire o'er the mind. 680
Like Persian monarchs, hardly known
Ere tumbled headlong from the throne,
Precarious and as short its sway,
Depos'd and sceptred in a day,
Pleasure begins its fickle reign, 685
[Page 201]And tyrannizes into pain:
When, as to cruel pain we bow,
Its rod grows light we know not how.
Ah, cruel blow to human pride!
Is pain and pleasure thus allied, 690
That all the sweets of life grow sour
Within the transitory hour!
Complains, Lorenzo? darts behind
No ray of comfort on his mind?
If thus with varied joy and strife 695
Diversified all states of life;
If human being cannot know
A constant state of bliss or woe;
Worn by sharp mis'ry to the bones,
While grief with intermission groans, 700
And meagre want, half fed, the while,
[Page 202]Grins forth her grateful, ghastly smile;
Tho' vain our hopes of bliss, as vain
Our fears of unremitting pain:
Absurd the mischief-making care 705
That leads us blindly to despair.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE SIXTH.

ARGUMENT.

On abstract good and evil—The physical per­fection of the material universe, and the mo­ral harmony observable in the dispensations of Providience.

SUMMARY

THE inquiries, of philosophers into the abstract cause of e­vil have hitherto been attended with little success. In­deed, no such abstract evil exists. For, whatever calamities human life be subject to, their evil depends merely on our own s;ensibility. Even physical evils, which are the least contro­vertible, are evidently relative to their effects on the suffer­ings, or enjoyments, of mankind. Whence they must not be accounted abstract evils, or real defects in the general system of things: of which we have at present but a partial view; and therefore cannot tell how far apparent imperfections may conduce to the perfection of the whole. That human life is subject, nevertheless, to palpable evils cannot be denied: but it should be consider'd that, as such evils are but temporary, and are evil but in proportion to the pleasure, or good, by which they are contrasted, we are not sensible of any abstracted evil, unless a state of humanity, on the whole, be attended with a greater portion, of pain than pleasure. This is asserted by many; but is experimentally false. Indeed, on a fair and im­partial estimate, our sufferings and enjoyments seem to stand on an equal ballance. Hence, also, if there be no abstract phy­sical evil in the universe, there is as little reason for us to hold [Page 206] the existence of physical good; or to maintain that happiness is the privilege of human life. That "whatever is is right," with respect to the whole, is allow'd; but that it is therefore good is another consideration: goodness being a term relative to the happiness of mankind, and not applicable to that general system. The famous principle of the BEST is therefore futile and frivolous—As to moral good and evil: we owe a sense of them purely to physical: for had mankind felt neither pain nor pleasure, they would never, from the light of nature, have ac­quir'd the ideas of moral good or ill. Those actions, therefore, are morally good which give rise to more pleasure than pain; and morally bad, vice versa: Innocence being, strictly speaking, neither good nor evil; and indeed inconsistent with a state of action. Moral evil appears, hence, to be, also, merely rela­tive to man; and can by no means be consider'd as a defect in the designs of Providence; unless we can be so absurd as to sup­pose it in the power of created beings to counterwork the in­tentions of their supreme creator. On the other hand, moral good is equally relative, and can have no effect on the happi­ness of the first cause, or plead any abstract merit with the Deity. Moral good and evil, however, in the agent, is ne­cessarily attended with temporary happiness and misery; in the [Page 207] distribution of which, also, agreeable to relative merit, it is not improbable that impartial justice is done, even in this life, in the perfect dispensations of Providence. Our hopes or ap­prehensions, nevertheless, of a future state are not hereby cut off. On the contrary, this life may only be preparatory to a future; where the virtuous and vicious may be very diffe­rently dispos'd of in the scale of existence. But, whatever be our lot hereafter, it rests on the good pleasure of our creator: into whose hands philosophy calmly resigns the hidden concerns of futurity.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE SIXTH.

IS there who teach that human woe
Must from a source abstracted flow;
Existing in creation's plan,
Some active ill the curse of man;
[Page 210]Some imperfection, or offence, 5
In physicks or in providence?
The question old unanswer'd lies.
"Whence did the curse of evil rise?"
By Wolfius left and twenty more,
As puzzling as 'twas left before, 10
To God or devil still assign'd
The cause of ill by human-kind.
In disobedience to his God,
Did man himself call down the rod?
Or did th' arch-fiend, from Heav'n that fell, 15
Inspire the mischief to rebel?
Yet, sure, if pow'r preventive given,
No angel e'er had fell from Heaven;
Man had no tempter known to vice;
Serpent, nor Eve, in Paradise. 20
Lorenzo, in the pride of sense,
[Page 211] Instruction's deem'd impertinence.
She, therefore, daughter of the wise,
Hath long been shelter'd in disguise;
Ent'ring, beneath the mask of sport, 25
The presence, tho' forbid the court:
So fond with young delight to stray,
And moralize the wanton's play,
That ev'n her precepts still prevail
In ev'ry fav'rite, gossip's tale. 30
Yet so that those who seek to learn
With ease the naked truth discern;
To genius but a pleasing task
To sport with allegory's mask.
The moral, then, from tales deduct; 35
And let philosophy instruct.
Angelick truths let angels scan:
Ours is the scrutiny of man.
[Page 212]Ours but in reason's bounded course
Allow'd to try our native force; 40
Confin'd within life's little space
The fleetest genius at the race,
In vain we urge beyond the goal
Th' ideal coursers of the soul.
Art thou, my friend, so ill at ease 45
That all thy prospects here displease?
Dost thou, in peevishness or pain,
Of nature's system all complain?
Of blunders there, confusion here,
Too distant Heav'n, and hell too near! 50
In mood so splenetick, my friend,
Say what those evils that offend:
Thy doubts propose, thy questions ask,
And take omnisciency to task.
Giv'n thy sagacity offence 55
[Page 213]By all thou seest of providence,
The constitution prone to blame
Of nature's universal frame,
Dost thou Heav'n's boasted care deny
When tempests sweep along the sky; 60
Thy feather'd geese when whirlwinds bear
Aloft, and scatter, wide in air;
Or from the hills impetuous rains
Descend and strip th' autumnal plains?
Concluding the machin'ry vile 65
When earthquakes shake our stable isle,
When Etna and Vesuvius flame;
To nature each a burning shame!
Finds thy philosophy as soon
Faulty th' attraction of the moon, 70
When death resistless, roaring rides
In triumph o'er the swelling tides,
[Page 214]Or, bathing in destruction, drowns
Flocks, herds and men and helpless towns;
Or bears them off some mountain steep 75
All headlong down, to glut the deep?
Or is thy wiser censure bent
Against some comet's dire event?
In time to come, time out of mind,
To fall into the sun design'd; 80
Suspicious that, if planets turn
To comets, ours at length may burn;
And we be doom'd, some sultry day,
To his devouring flames a prey!
Lorenzo, is this strain admir'd, 85
Here mayst thou rail till sense be tir'd.
But judge not thou, as sophists vain,
Of gen'ral good by partial gain:
Thinking when cross'd our stubborn will
[Page 215]Such is a providential ill. 90
For know, no abstract cause exists
And battles in creation's lists,
A formal enemy to man,
Since nature's tournaments began,
Inflam'd with enmity and power 95
God's human likeness to devour.
No—'tis impossible a cause
Should counteract creation's laws,
The hand of providence arrest,
Or IIcav'n's determin'd pow'r contest: 100
As one or other must prevail,
And one, or both together, fail.
But nature knows no real strife,
However jarring human life,
From evil and from errour free; 105
These only relative to thee.
[Page 2l6]In icy chains let winter bind
The glebe untrod by human-kind,
Fierce light'nings flash, and thunders roll
Their horrours only round the pole; 110
Let Malstrooms roar, and Heclas blaze
Where fools nor cowards stand to gaze:
Let islands drown; let mountains melt;
These are no evils till they're felt.
'Mid southern seas and lands unknown 115
Should agonizing nature groan,
There only ease her future th [...]oes,
And harmless horrours. round disclose;
Earthquakes would lose their evil name,
And Heav'n no longer bear the blame; 120
Tho' evils now we loudly call
Lima's, and Ulysippo's, a fall.
Lorenzo, of creation's plan
But parts are visible to man;
Whence, ign'rant of their sep'rate use, 125
We think them subject to abuse:
Tho' all with art consummate join,
Conducive to Heav'n's main design.
As parts to complex engines prove,
Inspir'd by mechanism to move, 130
This retrograde, and that direct,
In diff'rent modes to one effect,
So, howsoe'er they clash to sense,
The sev'ral springs of providence,
In concert, at their Maker's will, 135
Their ends harmoniously fulfil:
Upheld the weight, let fall the rod,
As urges the first mover, God.
How blind are, then, the smatt'ring fools,
[Page 218]Just taught their geometrick rules, 140
The simple use of rule and line,
To these who nature would confine;
Its laws who else capricious call,
Or say "it acts by none at all;
"The macrocosm's vast engine made 145
"By one that knew not half his trade;
"Its bungling engineer at hand,
"To help it forward, at a stand."
Impious! like Marli's, doth it take
The pains to mend it did to make, 150
Requiring endless cost and care
To hold in tenable repair?
Ah! no, howe'er to us it seem,
Creation is a perfect scheme.
Lorenzo, let not words deceive. 155
All imperfection's relative;
[Page 219]Since from conceiv'd amendments came
The patch-work we perfection name;
A term for something understood
Productive still of mortals' good. 160
But, of perfection absolute
All nature is, beyond dispute.
For all from God is here deriv'd,
And all is perfect God contriv'd.
"Man surely perfect then" you cry. 165
As man, most perfect, I reply.
The creature of his Maker's will,
Form'd his good pleasure to fulfill,
Destin'd in th' universal plan
To fill his space, and act, as man. 170
What tho' on earth the human mind
Involv'd in ignorance we find,
Impassion'd, fickle, giv'n to pride,
[Page 220]Nor resting e'er self-satisfied,
Doth pow'r comparative t'improve 175
Perfection positive remove?
As well imperfect might we say
The rising sun at early day,
Since with superior heat and light
It blazes in meridian height. 180
Form'd with progressive pow'rs to rise
From out the dust to tread the skies,
Perfect as such humanity
However lowly in degree.
How ignorant and weak are those 185
Who nature's authour, then, suppose
In providence remains a spy,
To guard his work with, watchful eye;
From fallen angels' base intent
The direful outrage to prevent; 190
[Page 221]To rescue, or preserve, his plan
From that prodigious creature, man.
Like the young steed, that scours the plain,
Its nature wild and needs a rein?
Or halts it like a founder'd jade; 195
Lame by her frequent stumbling made?
Perhaps, Lorenzo, some mistake
Concerning providence we make;
The pow'rs of nature to divide
From its imaginary guide: 200
For, if creation has, in fact,
Been long ago a finish'd act,
What end doth lab'ring time pursue?
Or what hath providence in view?
For sure thou wilt not take the side 205
Of those, whose ignorance and pride
Maintain the universe design'd
[Page 222]Merely to gratify mankind:
A stage, as on a stroler's cart,
Where drolls itin'rant play their part, 210
In grinning mirth, or brawling strife:
The tragi-comedy of life!
Was, then, heav'n's wond'rous pow'r display'd;
This system in perfection made,
Only to wear itself away? 215
Stupendous frame! for mere decay!
Its worlds to wander through the void,
Destroying till themselves destroy'd;
Or, in some future, fabled, days,
To take imaginary blaze 220
At flames, that all to ruin turn,
Annihilating as they burn?
Risk'd, then, the censure of my wit,
I hold the world unfinish'd yet:
[Page 223]Time building what Heav'n's wisdom plann'd,
Creation's work ev'n yet in hand.
Through nature's scenes in order range;
See all things in continual change;
All to some point progressive run,
To do, as well as be undone. 230
Existing for so short a space,
Thousands we know but by their place,
Which chang'd, by changing form, we say
The things themselves are pass'd away.
No proofs of being objects bring, 235
Whose essence ever on the wing,
Flown from their forms, ere yet defin'd,
Leaves no identity behind.
But waving this, yet see we here
No abstract cause of ill, to fear: 240
Since on the feelings of mankind
[Page 224]Depends the ev'ry ill we find:
Whence, tho' our suff'rings ill we call,
They're no abstracted cause at all:
For, stript creation of mankind, 245
No evil would be left behind.
To this will cavillers reply?
"We ask not where those causes lie;
"If in externals be th'offence,
"Or in the pravity of sense: 250
"That real ill exists is plain,
"While man is sensible of pain."
In answer, my Lorenzo, here,
No vaunting stoicism fear:
Nor think thy friend so madly wise 255
T'affect his mis'ries to despise.
I ne'er presume that point to teach,
Nor 'gainst the voice of nature preach:
[Page 225]None feel more tenderly than I:
Mine the soft heart and wat'ry eye, 260
The sanguine hopes, the groundless fears;
Still unsubdued by sense or years;
Ah, too susceptible of pain
When vice, or folly, but complain!
Yet, ev'n while tears of anguish flow, 265
I hold no abstract ill we know.
'Tis true, my friend, no man alive
Could, in his senses, gravely strive
The wretch in torture to persuade
Of evil not to be afraid; 270
The murd'rer, mangled on the wheel;
To smile at harmless rope and steel;
Or that the blows, that loitering kill,
Cannot be physically ill.
Absurd the argument and vain! 275
[Page 226]Since all we know of ill is pain.
And yet, as, neither griev'd nor pain'd,
Of evil man had ne'er complain'd,
If, relative, our bliss and woe
Reciprocally ebb and flow, 280
'Tis palpable that joy and strife
Are but the modes of human life;
Which varied with consummate skill
Proves, on the whole, nor good nor ill.
Sayst thou the learned are agreed 285
The ills of life the good exceed?
Lorenzo, peevish, sick, or vain,
How nat'ral is it to complain!
But sure experience here denies
This thread-bare maxim of the wife. 290
Behold the weak, the blind, the lame,
The sons of poverty and shame,
[Page 227]The wretch, expiring by degrees
By amputations or disease;
Such whose vile lot, the world their foe, 295
Contempt and beggary below:
Shouldst thou to this, or that, propose
In death a cure for all their woes;
Tell 'em, "oppress'd with human strife,
"Wide stand the num'rous doors of life, 300
"With open arms, the wretch to save,
"Rest welcomes mis'ry to the grave."
How few your recipé will try;
Tho' dying piece-meal loth to dye.
Nor merely from the fear of worse, 305
Tenacious of a present curse.
For say annihilation here
The all poor mortals have to fear:
How few would yet their ills incline
[Page 228]Their sense of being to resign; 310
To part, on terms like these, with pain,
With pleasure ne'er to meet again;
Ev'n nature shudd'ring at the thought,
To sink inconscious into naught.
In mere existence sure mankind 315
Must then intrinsick pleasure find;
Some good equivalent must feel
To such suppos'd excess of ill;
Since thus, by death, so loth to part
An aching head and bleeding heart. 320
May not, at least, all human woe
Be ballanc'd with our joys below.
Dost thou, Lorenzo, doubt of this?
How dost thou measure earthly bliss?
'Tis not by extasy alone 325
Thy actual share of joy is known:
[Page 229] Duration adds to the degree
As much as its intensity.
Joy for a moment's space how small!
Pain instantaneous, none at all; 330
Through life continued little less
Ev'n bare content than happiness:
The joyous extasy of bliss
Dilating rarified to this.
Be it on individuals tried; 335
Each needs but to be satisfied:
The longing wish, the sigh is o'er
When once content; we ask no more.
Thus equal joy we often taste
In short-liv'd pleasures, snatch'd in haste, 340
As others, or, when raptur'd less,
For years, ev'n we, ourselves, possess.
Hence oft asserted in dispute
[Page 230]That time ideas constitute;
Sense of duration so confin'd 345
To that which passes in the mind.
Th'expectant lover thinks, in rage,
His Stellia's absent hour an age;
While short and sweet the moments fly.
When love and she sit smiling by: 350
Nor giv'n their epithets in vain.
To fleeting joy, and lingering pain,
In minutes flown, each joyful day,
Each sad one whiled in hours away.
Nay, tho' of life tenacious all, 355
Longevity no bliss we call.
In diff'rent animals, at least,
While ev'n the less the greater's feast,
'Tis probable their, joys and strife
Are suited to their term of life. 360
[Page 231]Whence equal pleasure, equal pain,
May long-liv'd elephants sustain
With young ephemerons, whose flight,
At noon beginning, ends at night:
During which momentary space, 365
They rise, love, battle and embrace,
Flutt'ring around, till, out of breath,
They drop into the arms of death.
From self-experience dost thou rate
The real hardship of thy fate? 370
Art thou with ev'ry friend at strife?
Seest thou no gentle joy in life?
Dost thou no fav'rite scheme possess,
To build contemplative success?
Hast thou no hope; no good dost choose, 375
A good thou wouldst not die to lose?
Thy day, thus clouded at the dawn,
[Page 232]Will brighter shine, its clouds withdrawn:
Or, is thy morn of sun-shine past,
With clouds thy ev'ning's overcast: 380
Wouldst of its brightness know th'amount?
Bring morn and ev'ning to account.
Stands nature then, so long abus'd,
Of abstract evil thus excus'd;
As little truth is understood 385
By those, who hold all nature good.
"Whatever is, is right." —it may.
But therefore good we cannot say;
Unless some perfect bliss we see
Arise from partial misery. 390
In spite of truth, in reason's spite
When vex'd, or pain'd, we all deny't:
Ne'er, till the pain be o'er, confessing
That was, which never is, a blessing,
[Page 233]The term's, then, here misunderstood, 395
Right's not equivocal to good;
Goodness adapted and confin'd
To th' appetites of human-kind;
The right, unknown to you or me:
Tho' sure what is is fit to be. 400
Let Plato, then, or Leibnitz prate
Of goodness influencing fate;
Or idle sophisters contest
Their boasted principle the best:
By disputants, on either side, 405
The partial term is misapplied. b
[Page 234]That God is good they know full well;
But what his goodness none can tell;
Unless to man, his kindness shown
Heav'n's good depends upon our own. 410
Lorenzo, merely to mankind
Thus evil physical confin'd;
Of moral next, a puzzling task,
An explanation dost thou ask?
Sayst thou "Heav'n's care no more extends 415
"To physical than moral ends:
"The same the providential power,
"That rains the soft, refreshing shower,
"That, in the womb of teeming earth,
"Its atoms quickens into birth, 420
"Doth in the moral scene connect
"The cause and consequent effect;
"On virtue peace of heart bestows;
[Page 235]"Softens the good man's casual woes;
"Abandons vice to fell despair; 425
"Or plagues with heart-corroding care:"
Concluding hence "that moral ill,
"Opposing nature's righteous will,
"Aloud for Heav'n's dread vengeance calls,
"The curse that on the guilty falls." 430
So far Lorenzo, I with thee,
In part most readily agree;
That vice will leave a sting behind,
And virtue its reward shall find.
Yet all, with good St. Paul, confess 435
"Without a law we can't transgress."
Now nature's law is Heav'n's command,
Whose will no mortal can withstand.
How! lives earth's animated clod
To contravene the will of God? 440
[Page 236]As well, advent'rous of his neck,
The laws of gravity to break,
Presumptuous man might seek to fly,
A creeping earth-worm, to the sky;
Or don the bishop's winged shoon, 445
To trip it yarely to the moon. c
What curse soe'er then vice provoke,
Creation's laws can ne'er be broke.
But know, by physical alone
Is moral good or evil known; 450
For, had not vice the pow'r to vex,
Its evil never would perplex.
Each moral thus a partial ill,
Permitted by th'eternal will;
[Page 237]To mortals relative th'offence 455
And punishments of providence.
Lorenzo, state the matter clear.
Be pain and pleasure strangers here.
Strangers to pleasure and to pain,
Induce what motives to complain? 460
Suppose we, then, in nature's plan,
T'exist th'automaton of man,
Rising from senseless matter's arms,
Where perfect rest nor grieves, nor charms;
Should Heav'n a consciousness bestow, 465
Subject to good or ill below;
Not real pain or pleasure give,
But only make the form to live:
As yet from all reflection clear,
Unnerv'd by hope, unaw'd by fear, 470
Suppose to action thus consign'd
[Page 238]This naked, unaffected mind.
Lorenzo, with precision hence
Let us infer the consequence.
Ere yet existed moral ill, 475
The first sole agent Was the will:
Reason without the pow'r to act,
To censure or advise a fact;
As from experience naught it knew,
Of good or bad, or false or true: 480
For reason its conclusion draws
From similar effect and cause;
No instinct, faculty or sense,
Insuring actual innocence,
That bids us virtue's steps pursue, 485
Or points to bliss it never knew:
Else giving reason here had Heaven
No less than actual pleasure given:
[Page 239]This not suppos'd—hence reason's use
Some known effect must introduce. 490
Now, as innate if we maintain
A love of bliss and hate of pain,
Directed as the passions fir'd,
The will to pleasure first aspir'd;
The moral agent bound to chuse 495
From pleasure's most immediate views.
But, prone to censure and complain,
Suppose our first sensation pain;
Let pain or pleasure be attain'd,
Of both an equal sense was gain'd, 500
As the first tree of knowledge bore
Of good and evil equal store;
For when the mind one pleasure knew,
Its neutral state of rest withdrew:
Pleasure and pain, by contrast known, 505
[Page 240]Criteria of each other grown.
Hence felt th'initiated mind
The sting which pleasure left behind,
And reason did to act commence
On th'information of the sense; 510
Seeing the passions ebb and flow,
Now swoln with bliss, now sunk in woe,
Trac'd out the bounds, extremes between,
Of innocence that golden mean.
But ah, the fluctuating tide 515
Of passion doth this mean deride:
Consistent only, 'tis confess'd,
With nature in a state of rest.
Here then from moral action came
The necessary ill, we blame: 520
Running self-love, in full career,
Reason her guide not always near,
[Page 241]Her satisfaction oft pursuing,
Tho' at her own and others' ruin.
Pronounce we, hence, a moral ill 525
Th'indulgence of the human will,
Whene'er from such indulgence flows
More pain than pleasure it bestows.
In guilt original involv'd,
Here see the wond'rous myst'ry solv'd. 530
To the first man no more confin'd
Than passions found in ev'ry mind,
Is, the plain cause of moral woe,
Sin, human frailty here below.
Lorenzo, evil understood, 535
The die's reverse is moral good:
Whate'er more pleasure yields than pain d
[Page 242]The name of goodness doth obtain.
Unsatisfied, Lorenzo, yet,
Dost thou lost happiness regret? 540
Doth, from our plan of morals, seem
Yet providence no perfect scheme,
Because, perplex'd with fear or pain,
Ev'n virtue covets bliss in vain?
Dost thou against the cause object? 545
"'Tis disproportion'd to th' effect,
"Thus in th'intemp'rance of the will
"To place the source of moral ill:
"Our passions but a nat'ral cause,
"Obedient to creation's laws, 550
"Here palpably too innocent
"The cause of mis'ry to be meant."
Must I repeat it o'er again?
From pleasure flows our sense of pain.
[Page 243]Through life, each other's contrast made, 555
Dependant these as light and shade.
Whence, tho' to moderation join'd
Content's serenity of mind,
While vice but sports with higher glee
To sink as low in misery, 560
Proportion'd to the guilty joy
The pangs intemperance annoy,
Yet, on the whole, no abstract ill
Doth here confront th'eternal will;
Of evil all th'effected strife 565
But relative to human life.
Sayst thou indeed "if man confin'd
"To fill the place by Heav'n assign'd,
"But partially to rise, or fall,
"Why feels he misery at all?" 570
Another question answers this.
[Page 244]What title have mankind to bliss?
During thy life if, man and boy,
Thy share of both thou mayst enjoy;
If perfect rest the certain mean 575
Our pleasures and our pains between;
Null'd the momentum of our pain;
Who shall of providence complain?
Seest thou incumbering the ground,
The barren fig-trees flourish round; 580
While virtue stands the brunt of vice,
And knaves possess fools' paradise?
'Tis here indeed our errour lies.
Our virtue we too highly prize;
And adequate rewards to find, 585
Create them fondly to our mind:
Not satisfied on Heav'n to trust,
Or think its dispensations just,
[Page 245]Unless his conduct God submit
To our investigating wit; 590
Here toiling, as an humble drudge,
For man, his critick, lord and judge.
What merit in thy Maker's eye
That thou vain man art six foot high?
To Heav'n must all, with shame, agree 595
Unprofitable servants we;
Unworthy of celestial dress
The rags of human righteousness:
The all that virtue has to boast
Claiming the world's regard, at most. 600
As virtue here so vice depends.
Ourselves our guilt alone offends.
For know, proud man, no act of thine
Renders defective God's design:
No pow'r to human frailty given 605
[Page 246]To injure unpreventing Heaven.
Presume not at so high a price
To rate th' iniquity of vice.
Nor let the vainly-virtuous fool,
Projecting Heav'n by line and rule, 610
Sore lash'd and wasting to the bone,
The crimes of health and ease t'atone,
Conceive by want of rest and meat
Th' eternal purpose to defeat.
Presume not at so vile a rate 615
To hold th' omnipotence of fate.
Yet who shall say that guilt is free,
Or promise vice impunity?
Since 'tis so plain the sting of woe
To joy inordinate doth grow; 620
And none from virtue's paths would stray
If pleasure did not lead the way.
[Page 247]Can virtue also hence despair?
Since virtue's providence's care;
Compensing pleasure due to pain, 625
And this nor that bestow'd in vain.
Let fools, when hard their present lot,
Think distant Heav'n has earth forgot;
In discontent aloud complain,
"That all our trust in Heav'n is vain," 630
Pretending God the world protects,
And yet its sev'ral parts neglects.
Do thou, Lorenzo, better taught,
Never indulge so wild a thought;
Conceiving th' individual man 635
No charge on nature's gen'ral plan.
What tho' impossible that we
At once the whole and parts should see;
To single objects here confin'd
[Page 248]Each fix'd attention of the mind; 640
Yet, shall we blasphemously join
Heav'n's intellect with yours and mine?
Know thou the world's great architect
Its smallest part shall not neglect;
As needful in the stately pile, 645
As golden roofs th' abutments vile;
Nor, in their kind, more perfect they,
The parian stones, than potter's clay.
How sadly, blund'ring in the dark,
Here St. John miss'd his boasted mark; 650
When, Heav'n's omnipotence t'enhance,
He almost gave the world to chance:
Supposing God too great to mind
The peccadillos of mankind;
Too insignificant our claim 655
To deity's immediate aim.
[Page 249]Or rather, from his reasons given,
He thought the task too great for Heaven;
Too puzzling for th' eternal wit
To hold its state and thus submit; 660
Wherefore, like th'idiot at a loss
To count, Heav'n takes us in the gross.
Lorenzo, probable the scheme,
However strange the doctrine seem,
Whate'er the next world give, in this 665
That virtue hath its share of blifs;
While all accounts 'tween vice and woe
Are settled and discharg'd below:
No ballance to receive or pay,
Left, shuffling, for a future day. 670
Go, make an estimate of life;
Compare the sums of joy and strife;
Each in its separate degree,
[Page 250]Duration and intensity.
Perhaps, upon the whole, you'll find 675
That neither's due to human-kind;
Nor loss nor profit in the trade
Of life's commercial pleasures made.
Mean-time how difficult to guess
At real objects of distress! 680
How difficult, in fact, to trace
Where real pleasure hath a place!
See, shudd'ring at September's frost,
In clothes of fur, Duke Chilly lost;
Lamenting, with his belly full, 685
The tinker's half-cloth'd, starving trull:
A jade, that, warmer than his grace,
Laughs at his pity to his face.
Accustom'd to the melting mood,
So, wishing ev'ry mortal good; 690
[Page 251]Behold Tendrilla drown her eyes
At what the sufferers despise.
How oft, the scene revers'd, again,
Apparent bliss is actual pain!
How oft we hear much-envied state 695
Groan beneath bulky grandeur's weight;
Of thousands broke their nightly rest
By that for which we call them blest!
Nay, as a God on earth ador'd,
See the dread inquisition's lord, 700
Rais'd, in the pomp of priestly pride,
How envied, by his monarch's side!
And yet how mis'rable a part
He acts, if not extinct his heart:
How little less, at nature's cost, 705
If ev'ry social feeling lost.
Mean-while the wretch, for whom we sigh,
[Page 252]In cruel tortures doom'd to die,
To pain superiour, fear or shame,
Exulting, smiles amidst the flame; 710
Makes his proud judge with malice swell;
And triumphs over death and hell.
Proportion'd to the weight of care,
Gives nature thus the pow'r to bear?
But partial judges we, 'tis plain, 715
Of others' joy or others' pain.
So vice and virtue could we trace,
Neither is stampt upon the face.
And who to read presumes the art
The secret of another's heart? 720
Nay, ev'n that art how little known
To open, and peruse our own!
Who then, so much a slave to sense,
Shall here arraign Heav'n's providence:
[Page 253]Thinking "the good the world may leave 725
"Ere virtue's portion they receive;
"Triumphant that the wicked go,
"Blest, or unpunish'd, here below:
"As if our end a slight event,
"Depending on mere accident." 730
Is this not atheism in the eye
Of those who atheism most decry?
Who made the world, with equal skill
Can surely guide it, if he will.
Who, then, appearances shall trust, 735
To tnink that Heav'n's on earth unjust;
When vice and virtue may relate
Solely to man's sublunar state;
And here, for ought we truly know,
Be paid their dues of joy and woe. 740
Yet think not thou I here deny
[Page 254]That virtuous souls ascend the sky:
Or that the grov'ling sons of vice
Shall be excluded paradise.
Prepar'd, my friend, the man, in life, 745
By varied means of joy and strife,
Or, by redemption's wond'rous grace,
To view his Maker face to face,
In death compleated for the state
Design'd him by the will of fate, 750
A place of constant rest may find
The portion of the virtuous mind;
A place, comparatively ill,
For those whose god their brutal will:
By Heav'n th' immortal being plac'd, 755
Consistent with its pow'rs and taste.
Such future scenes may sure be given;
This call'd a hell and that a heaven;
[Page 255]And justly vice and virtue, here,
Have that to hope and this to fear. 760
Still do I hear the growl of care?
"To be we know not what or where!"
Is it, because we know not why,
So sad a thing for once to die?
Is it so hazardous, my friend, 765
On God our maker to depend?
That God to whom we being owe,
Our friend and guardian here below;
Who, all along the vale of life,
In ev'ry scene of care and strife, 770
Affords his providential arm,
To raise beneath, or shield from, harm?
Is it for him so hard to save
Our conscious being from the grave?
Secure, Lorenzo, in the pow'r, 775
[Page 256]That wak'd me at my natal hour,
To me, and mine, in life so just,
On this in death I mean to trust:
Safe in the hollow of his hand,
Content to fall by whom I stand, 780
Of whom I kiss the chast'ning rod,
And bless the father in the God.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE SEVENTH.

ARGUMENT.

On moral principles—The respective influence of reason and the passions—The immorality of ignorance and the indispensable duty of seeking knowledge.

SUMMARY.

THE doctrine, by which virtue and vice are confessedly limited to this life, will doubtless excite the clamour of those who pride themselves, or ground their expectations of fu­ture happiness, on their own merit. It may also be ask'd, "To what purpose is it that mankind should pursue virtue rather than vice, if all our pains and pleasures depend recipro­cally on each other, and our bad deeds neither actually offend, nor our good ones have any real merit with, the Deity." It is answer'd, that, as the merits and demerits of virtue and vice are partial and relative, so also must be conceiv'd their respec­tive rewards and punishments. So that, whatever distinction may be made between the virtuous and vicious in a future state, it must be purely owing to the good pleasure of our crea­tor, and not to the influence of our merit over his final deter­minations. —It must not be conceiv'd, however, that this doctrine countenances immorality. On the contrary, it proves, that (as we are led to vice solely by the motives of pleasure, apparently attending the gratification of our desires) were a conviction always present to the mind, that such pleasure must necessarily be attended with an equal degree of pain, such con­viction might prove an antidote to vice, and preserve us, at least, in innocence; the motive to action being thereby remov'd. As to actual virtue, indecd, it is not pretended that any ra­tional [Page 260] conviction whatever is, of itse'f, a sufficient motive to virtue: the use of reason being only to determine what is true or false, just or unjust; and not to excite us to embrace either. This is the business of the passions; which are, however, in themselves, neither good nor evil: those dispositions of mind which are generally term'd virtuous being the frequent occa­sion of our falling into vices, which opposite ones, tho' general­ly disapprov'd or detested, would have secur'd us from. Thus compassion, benevolence and candour are the fertile sources of vice; while hardness-of-heart, selfishness, and distrust are as frequently the means of preserving innocence. Nay the fierce, harden'd and turbulent passions enter sometimes into the most virtuous characters; and a heart unaffccted by the present suff'rings of humanity is, not unfrequently, necessary to pre­serve the rights and liberties of mankind. —In fact we are much deceiv'd, in the motives as well as in the practice of virtue; it being not only necessary that we should mean to do good and take the best way our reason may direct us to effect it; but that we should previously take those measures which are in our power, to acquire the knowledge of the means of doing such good. Wilful ignorance is declar'd therefore intentionally vi­cious; not having, tho' innocent in fact, the least claim to merit; to which ev'n virtue itself hath but relative pretensions. Indeed, as physical good in the consequence is the measure of moral good in the action, the very appearance of merit in the agent in a great degree vanistes; our power of doing good de­pending [Page 261] frequently on accident, and, not very seldom on downright knavery. On all which considerations knowledge is laid dow [...] as a fundamental and indispensible moral principle; and, hence, the employment of our leisure hours in inquiries after tru [...] is presum'd to be not merely entertaining but morally virtuous.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE SEVENTH.

HARK! my Lorenzo, how they rage,
The pious of our pious age;
Those who think Heav'n an easy fool,
Of wiser mortals made the tool,
[Page 264]Vile counters take for current coin; 5
Our filthy rags for robes divine:
We made its joint immortal heirs
For penance, paltry alms and prayers!
What racks their disappointed zeal
Dooms the poor, culprit bard to feel; 10
A thief, whose rhimes the rents have stole,
Long mark'd on their celestial roll!
So angry bees take sudden wing,
Furious the harmless boy to sting,
Who, less in anger than in play, 15
O'erturn'd their labours in his way.
Have they the poor their farthings lent,
At more than th' usual cent per cent;
Because the promises of Heav'n
For principal and interest given; 20
Yet, loth to mortgage house or land,
[Page 265]Dealing ev'n these with sparing hand;
Hard times and taxes wont to moan,
T'excuse their adding to the loan;
Spite of hypocrisy, confess'd 25
The world's security the best?
Vile us'rers! yet you think it hard,
Your virtue should not meet reward!
I think so too—hence, hence, to hell:
With merit there 'mong devils swell. 30
Do here th' immoral pertly ask,
What profits rise from virtue's task?
Or wherefore vice we should eschew,
If what the muse hath sung be true?
That "vice and virtue, bliss and woe 35
"Quit scores effectually below;
"While, unaffected, Heav'n surveys
"Its ends fulfill'd in human ways."
[Page 266]Say they "if pain give pleasure birth,
"To joy proportion'd grief, on earth, 40
"Our suff'rings all comparative,
"What matters how th' ungodly live?
"What can we gain by self-denial,
"Or standing virtue's fiery trial?"
Virtue's clear gain, my friend, 'tis true, 45
If any, hid from me and you,
Lodg'd in the dark decrees of fate,
A waits us in some future state;
A gift Heav'n pleases to bestow,
Wholly unmerited below. 50
So, whatsoever diff'rent state
Should vice in future life await,
Hid in the counsels of th' All-wise,
The reprobating secret lies:
Predestination's dreadful plan 55
[Page 267]Beyond the scrutiny of man.
Can yet Lorenzo weakly dream
That ours is an immoral scheme;
Because we hold that joy and strife
Are ballanc'd probably in life; 60
Whence equally nor blest nor curst
The lives of th' unjust and the just?
Shines not the sun alike, on earth,
On good and bad of mortal birth?
Falls not the plant-enliv'ning rain 65
Alike on mountain-heath and plain?
Tho' noxious there vile brambles shoot;
Here sweetest flow'rs and choicest fruit,
To reason's sober call, my friend,
Did the blind passions but attend; 70
While ever present to the mind
A full conviction we might find,
[Page 268]"That in the lust of mere desire
"No certain pleasure men acquire;
"But what in extasy they gain 75
"They're sure to lose in future pain."
By truth enlighten'd, hence, to fly
The distant evil as the nigh,
Men were no longer prone to vice,
Now stript of all her charms t'entice; 80
But, arming in their own defence,
Would stand in neutral innocence.
Through reason let a sensual eye
Th' enchanting form of vice espy:
Equivocal in make and face, 85
Her left side doth her right disgrace.
As form'd to give, and share, delight,
One blooming cheek doth hearts invite,
While roguish loves in ambush lie,
[Page 269]And dart their arrows from her eye. 90
A polish'd arm, a taper side,
Her thigh, that scarce her garments hide,
Her snow-white leg, and foot, shod neat,
The half of beauty's form compleat.
But ah, the contrast side appears 95
Worn out with care and gray with years;
With wrinkled brow and squinting eye,
Scowling most haggardly awry;
While hollow cheek and nostril maim'd,
Notch'd ear, burnt hand, and thigh-bone lam'd,
Display a wretch, from head to tail
Diseas'd with many a desp'rate ail;
A form, which, wrapt in squalid dress,
Compleats the half of ugliness.
Behold the charmer—this is Vice. 105
Embrace her. —Is thy stomach nice?
[Page 270]Too often passion, single ey'd,
Enamour'd with the fairer side,
The monster clasps; till, turn'd her face,
We starting fly her loath'd embrace: 110
Through reason's medium only shown
Her real form, in tints her own;
Which thus disgusting to the sense,
Could ne'er beguile our innocence.
Should virtue, then, disown the muse; 115
At least let innocence excuse:
The strictest moralists content
If mortals were but innocent.
In actual virtue, true, indeed,
I see no hopes we should succeed; 120
If once by reason grown so tame
That naught our passions could inflame.
For say, desires may not extrude
[Page 271]A sense of moral rectitude:
This only points, to what is right; 125
But ne'er to virtue can excite.
Reason, indiff'rent to th' event,
Merely bestows its cold assent;
As far as truth's concern'd, in part,
Speaks to the head, but not the heart: 130
Reason bestow'd, an humble friend,
Not to keep faultless, but to mend;
With hopes to cheer or fears to bind
Self-love, a glutton deaf and blind;
To give our scene of action light; 135
To check the sensual appetite;
To show us what is good and fair;
And passion's blunders to repair.
To virtue sense of right and wrong
Must of necessity belong; 140
[Page 272]But from this knowledge who infer
The conscious party, cannot err?
Nay, founded on such sense our claim
To bear of vice the moral blame;
The fool, the mad, do what they will, 145
Standing excus'd of moral ill.
Say, then, the virtuous must be wise;
Yet not in wisdom virtue lies.
By other motives must the mind
To virtuous action be inclin'd. 150
"What other motive?" dost thou ask?
Lorenzo, difficult the task
T'unravel here the human mind;
Its moral principles to find.
Sayst thou we all true virtue love; 155
And virtue that which all approve.
Supposing this, yet is't with you
[Page 273]That very approbation too?
Is this, Lorenzo, what is meant
By virtue sprung from sentiment? a 160
By that ambiguous term of art
The native goodness of the heart?
Pride not yourselves, ye Pharisees,
That acts of kindness give you ease:
Nor think, ye publicans, from Heaven 165
An evil inclination given.
Know that from diff'rent passions vice
And virtue take not sep'rate rise.
For, tho' deducing moral ill
But from th' indulgence of the will, 170
No passion, not the love of pelf,
Is really vicious, in itself:
The noblest in the human breast,
[Page 274]Motives to action but confess'd,
Howe'er admir'd, howe'er approv'd, 175
From actual virtue far remov'd.
For a good heart, as put to use,
Or vice or virtue may produce:
A fertile soil, where, taking root,
Plants good and bad bear equal fruit. 180
Narcissa boasted once a mind,
The purest sure of human kind,
Till growing passions taught her breast
To feel for all that seem'd distress'd,
To melt in tenderness of grief, 185
And sigh to give, unask'd, relief.
Ah, since, by cruel arts betray'd,
How low is fall'n the hapless maid!
Too innocent to feel distrust,
Or know how diff'rent love and lust! 190
[Page 275]Now, by her tempter ev'n accus'd,
See her abandon'd and abus'd;
Her open heart, her gen'rous mind
To prostitution how resign'd!
Of vices glorying in the shame 195
Her former self had blush'd to name.
Alas, for pity! sec, mean-while,
At lost Narcissa's ruin smile
Gremia, to pity never mov'd,
As little loving as belov'd; 200
In spite of all vile man could say,
In pious maidenhood grown gray,
Blessing her better stars, that she
Still triumphs in her chastity;
Tho', with the planets, on her side 205
Ill-nature, ugliness and pride.
See Phormio, stoically cold,
[Page 276]In youth by constitution old,
Who never yet, his heart of stone,
Once made another's cause his own; 210
But, living for himself, or heirs,
Minds nothing but his own affairs:
Whose word not unbelieving Jews,
For more than Heav'n is worth, refuse:
His credit sacred, east and west 215
His bills negotiating best;
Safe in whose hands were many a pound;
Too good a man to run a-ground.
O worthy, honest man! we cry;
While bankrupt knaves in dungeons lie: 220
So vile the rogue, who, scorning pelf,
Lov'd others better than himself!
Thus oft th'inflexible, the just,
The man that never broke his trust,
[Page 277]Indebted to inhuman art, 225
Or killing coldness in his heart;
While base and mean the quick-of-sense,
From glowings of benevolence.
Lorenzo, feelingly I speak
Of failings where myself am weak; 230
To whom adversity severe
Hath sold experience much too dear:
Hard hearted prudence far from me,
And narrow-soul'd economy,
To knave and fool too oft a prey, 235
No match for either in his way,
Till cheated, plunder'd, fill'd with shame,
Lit on my luckless head the blame.
How short, Lorenzo, plainly, hence,
Of virtue is benevolence! 240
To mere good nature, while you live,
[Page 278]No more that pompous title give:
The milk of kindness in a trice
Yielding the luscious cream of vice. b
The dryest eye, the hardest heart, 245
May act as virtuous a part:
When turn'd, as adders deaf, the ear
From all that others feel or fear;
Thence, vicious sloth, a whining cheat,
Is forc'd to work before it eat; 250
Misfortune, struggling in its thrall,
Rises more glorious from its fall.
Should to the prodigal the friend,
On whom his spendthrift hopes depend,
When ask'd assistance or advice, 255
Reply, with looks as cold as ice,
[Page 279]With all the insolence of ease,
"Nay, friend, for me do what you please."
May this not teach the hand profuse
Virtuous discretion's sov'reign use; 260
And thus a coldness of the heart
A good to too much warmth impart?
How much less vicious oft the mind,
That ne'er, beneficent or kind,
For others broke one moment's rest, 265
Nor cheer'd with comfort the distress'd,
Than he, whose open hand and heart
Espouse the poor and needy's part,
Plunging in unforeseen distress
Hundreds, in striving one to bless. 270
Shortsighted, oft benevolence
Proves a sad breach of innocence:
To virtue requisite that first
[Page 280]The virtuous mind be strictly just.
Passions, the springs of joy and strife, 275
Are but the elements of life;
And, as the streams from mountains flow,
Smooth winding some through vales below,
While others, raging as they come,
Tear up their mother-mountain's womb; 280
Or, pouring down the hills amain,
Deluge, at once, the humble plain;
So some of these are gently mild,
While others, furious, bold and wild,
Foaming o'er reason's rock-built mounds, 285
Disdain the check of moral bounds.
But see in pastures streams of use
When art corrects the flood's abuse,
When, their due channels taught to keep,
In shallow brook or river deep, 290
[Page 281]Smiling through dappled meads they go;
And paint the flow'rs they cause to grow.
Corrected thus, by reason's art,
The bursts, or meltings, of the heart,
In virtue's channels see them glide; 295
Her flow'rs the blooming margin's pride.
Is the small spring thy fav'rite theme,
That trickles forth a shallow stream,
In murmurs soft, a purling rill?
What wilt thou do to drive the mill? 300
How wilt thou make to ride at large
Thy timber, or thy loaded barge?
As much as purling rills admir'd
The navigable stream requir'd;
The stream, whose turbulence abides 305
The roaring of the swelling tides,
Alike whose raging bosom swells,
[Page 282]And back the threat'ning tide repels.
The hero, thus, the hardy brave c
How needful half the world to save; 310
Like Prussia's king, through seas of blood
Wading, for threaten'd Europe's good!
Virtuously useful to mankind
[Page 283]The strongest as the weakest mind,
Thus, one no better than the other, 315
The warmest heart's the cold one's brother:
And neither this nor that, in fact,
Are virtuous till as such they act.
Yet here, appearances believ'd,
In virtuous actions oft deceiv'd, 320
How plain in th'hypocritick face
We read the characters of grace;
And falsely to youth's giddy tribe
Designing villainy ascribe;
While time, and circumstance, and place, 325
Our byass'd judgments here disgrace.
Is there a man, whose tender heart
Takes in another's pains a part,
Who clothes the naked, feeds the poor,
And bribes the orphan to his door;
[Page 284]So kind he cannot bear to see
Another less at ease than he?
Godlike benevolence! you cry;
And praise his virtue to the sky.
But were this virtuous mortal poor, 335
Oblig'd to beg from door to door;
Could he not eat the bread at rest,
Torn by the law from the distress'd;
Should his weak mind compunction feel,
In honest ways of trade, to steal; 340
Could not the softness of his heart
Torture the horse, that draws the cart;
Mangle the lamb before it die,
Or draw its heart's blood through its eye:
Who would not cry, "too proud to serve! 345
"Work, idle wretch, or work or starve:"
To Bridewell's lash the knave consign'd,
[Page 285]For vicious tenderness of mind.
Is there who, worn with vice, begins
To hide his multitude of sins, 350
Leave of the wicked world doth take
And hermit turns for virtue's sake;
Or, anxious for the souls of men,
Flies to the pulpit or the pen?
Behold another Paul! we cry, 355
A new apostle from on high!
Are there whom cares nor want exclude,
At little cost, from doing good;
In pious practices that spend
Their fortune and their latter end; 360
The sick who physick in distress;
And make the trav'ler's burthen less?
To these what virtue will refuse
The praiseful, elegiack muse!
[Page 286]But, say, doth tenderness of heart 65
Teach the divine's or doctor's art?
Too oft unletter'd preachers rave,
And damn the souls they meant to save:
Too oft, alas, the pious pill
Of charity, like Ward's, doth kill: 370
While lighten'd more the pedlar's pack
To clothe our own than save his back.
"Whence then is virtue," dost thou cry?
In truth and nature, I reply:
Reason and passion both combin'd 375
To form true virtue in the mind.
Nor rests it there in mere design;
To go where these may chance t' incline.
'Tis not sufficient to set out,
Tho' meaning well, thy way in doubt; 380
Needful experience here to use,
[Page 287]That passion reason mayn't abuse;
Cautious in virtue's route to go
No farther than such route we know:
Lest, when, through ign'rance lost our way, 385
Passion to vice should wildly stray.
'Tis not enough to mean aright,
Unless that meant effect's in sight:
Too apt to wander from the mark,
When blund'ring forward in the dark. 390
A poor excuse to have it said
The heart had put it in the head,
When mischief done, instead of good,
For want of being understood!
To virtue pitiful our claim 395
When, at a venture taking aim,
More by good luck than sense or wit,
The mark of moral good we hit!
[Page 288]What virtue's in the madman's dream,
Or fool's impracticable scheme? 400
Whose, should they ev'n succeed, at best,
Chance-medley morals are confess'd.
Knowledge, my friend, goes, hence 'tis plain,
Foremost in virtue's splendid train;
While reason and the passions, join'd, 405
Walk closely, hand in hand, behind.
Is't said? "one mere good-natur'd deed
"All worth in science doth exceed." d
On this weak maxim dost object
We virtuous merit here neglect; 410
Thus honest ign'rance to contemn;
And inability condemn?
Sayst thou " here no fore-knowledge given,
[Page 289]Events are in the hands of Heaven;
"And, therefore, virtuous those confess'd 415
"From what they know who act the best."
Lorenzo, no—unless 'tis shown
That such no better might have known.
'Tis true, as individuals here
Are plac'd in, each his, proper sphere, 420
Their knowledge more or less compleat
As genius and instruction meet,
Man by no seraph's rapture fir'd,
Virtue's, as knowledge giv'n, requir'd.
But think not thou that bounteous Heav'n 425
Hath barren understanding given;
Hath talents lent which, unapplied,
'Tis virtuous in the earth to hide.
No—with the pow'r of genius blest,
Improvement's claim'd, as interest. 430
Is there who turns away his ear,
Instruction's voice averse to hear,
Most obstinately bent to plod
Along the road his father trod,
Old custom never to forsake; 435
Nor use of eye or ear to make?
Tho' right the wilful wretch we find,
Is his a virtuous turn of mind?
With God above, or man below,
How is't deserving not to know? 440
Of virtue's merit, folly, hush:
Nor put true wisdom to the blush,
Remember virtue still depends
Both on our motives and our ends.
What merit is't we gladly do 445
That which our hearts incline us to?
Or what that reason doth submit
[Page 291]To own the truth is right and fit?
For say that by the heart or head
Solely to virtue men were led. 450
If by the heart, and that alone,
What man e'er call'd his heart his own?
Right oft by impulse forc'd to go,
Whether his reason leads or no:
Apparently against the will, 455
As oft conducting him to ill.
How meritorious, then, the best
That love or pity warms the breast?
For this, nor that, from vice can save;
Or if they could—'tis God that gave. 460
Is it from caution, practis'd long,
You seek the right and shun the wrong;
By just experience understood
How much your int'rest to be good?
[Page 292]What merits here the clod of earth 465
That nature smil'd upon its birth;
And gave it reason's fost'ring aid
To teach it virtue as its trade?
Sayst thou "when head and heart we praise,
"Doth this not virtue's merit raise? 470
"The man of vicious acts asham'd—"
May yet for spiritual pride be blam'd.
"The elegantly just"—too nice
Perhaps for vulgar scenes of vice.
"The lowly-minded, kind and meek"— 475
Mean, pitiful, perhaps, and weak.
"The patriot, in his country's cause"—
A gudgeon, greedy of applause.
"The pious, that their God revere,"—
Only, perhaps, of Hell in fear; 480
Or, not by fears sufficient driven,
[Page 293]Push'd forward by the hopes of Heaven.
So little do we truly know
The cause to which we virtue owe;
To what bad principle or good 485
Ev'n we ourselves have vice withstood:
Nor can the best of mortals say
From what has yet directed may;
Or in a state he never knew
Tell what his head and heart might do. 490
Who then their moral worth shall prize?
Shall ev'n the best the worst despise?
Thin the partitions that divide
Ev'n vice itself from virtue's pride;
The virtuous boaster weak and proud; 495
Like the tall ideot in the crowd,
Who, stalking with exalted tread,
Above his fellows rears his head:
[Page 294]While from his more distinguish'd height
The harm upon his pate doth light. 500
The pride of virtue hence depress'd,
O learn to pity not detest:
Ev'n looking with a brother's eye
On wretches doom'd by law to die:
To Heav'n that hath the diff'rence made 505
'Tween thee and them, the honour paid!
The object more of pity, sure,
The vicious mind no leech can cure,
Than such whose mere corporeal part
Diseas'd admits the doctor's art! 510
Nay, if by virtue understood
The act producing moral good,
And moral good and evil known
By sense of physical alone,
The term of merit thrown aside, 515
[Page 295]Abash'd at once is virtue's pride:
Since such most virtuous we must call
Who most promote the good of all.
Here virtue see, in fortune's power,
Dependent ev'ry day and hour! 520
So little rests on good intent,
So much alas, on accident!
See to the publick good conduce
Of wealth and state the simple use: e
Such pow'r of doing good a lot 525
By birth, caprice, or favour got:
A post of virtue oft the gain
Of knavery; honest hearts disdain.
Proportional to ev'ry state
[Page 296]Sayst thou its virtue we must rate; 530
Those much to blame, tho' doing good,
Who fail to do the must they could?
Most needful, then, how far to know
Our pow'rs of doing good may go:
In ev'ry station, place and time, 535
Neglectful ignorance a crime.
For say, if e'er preferr'd to place,
Should fortune take us into grace;
Tho' kings should act the donor's part,
They neither give a head or heart. 540
'Tis true a ribbon, star and garter
May make a flutt'ring fop look smarter;
SIR John sounds big and mighty pretty
Among the plain Johns of the city;
But George himself, of many a knight, 545
Ne'er dubb'd one sordid cit polite.
[Page 297]Clever indeed could royal grace
Fit ev'ry placeman for his place!
If being voted for with spirit
Supplied our want of real merit, 550
Conferr'd taste, judgment, observation,
Adapted to th'appointed station!
Title and pow'r give consequence,
But ah! ne'er gave one jot of sense.
Knowledge, Lorenzo, hence confese'd 555
Of moral principles the best,
Well spent we hope our vacant days
In studious search of wisdom's ways:
On reason while our steps attend,
Reason fair virtue's firmest friend! 560
Hail sober guide! O teach my youth
To woo thy lovelier sister truth;
For whose embrace my vows I pay,
[Page 298]In ardent sighs, throughout the day;
Nor, when the longest day is o'er, 565
Cease, by the midnight lamp, to pore
O'er the dull tale, or tedious, page
Of saint or, more laborious, sage:
Happy if saint or sage could tell,
Where I with her might ever dwell: 570
With her for whom, and whom alone,
My genius for the verse be knwon:
For truth content to lose the bays;
The poet's for her lover's praise.
[figure]

EPISTLE THE EIGHTH.

ARGUMENT.

On the immortality of the soul; and the argu­ments for, and against, a future state.

SUMMARY.

THE immortality of the soul, or doctrine of a future state, is propos'd as the subject of inquiry. A doctrine, which, however true or false in itself, is both weakly attack'd and lamely supported by the philosophical arguments generally made use of, for, or against, it. Comparisons drawn from the vegetable creation, however striking, are partial and prove nothing. Moral arguments prove as little, unless we could first be made certain that vice and virtue are not duly punish'd and rewarded in this life; or, unless we could entertain ade­quate ideas of divine justice. With these, the metaphysical re­finements, concerning the soul's immateriality, are shown to be equally inconclusive. Our natural desire of existence is expos'd, also, as a weak argument for the justice of our claim to immortality. On the other hand, that intimate connection between body and mind, and their apparent dependance on each other, are shown to afford rather a specious plea in favour of the immortality of the soul, than, as frequently made to do, any argument against it—Setting, however, moral and me­taphysical speculations aside, man is consider'd merely in the light of an animal. In which state of humiliation, his pre­tensions to a future state are, notwithstanding, evidently justi­fied on the plain and reasonable supposition that, the Creator hath given to all animals such pow'rs and faculties as were necessary to the state of being appointed them.—Now the evi­dent pursuits of other animals tend solely to the gratification' of [Page 302] themselves or the mere preservation of their kind. They have no intellectual system that extends beyond the life of the indivi­dual; nor doth their experience serve to the improvement of their species. With man it is otherwise: The preservation and gratification of the individual, however powerful their motives, are in him made subservient to more general views: his case, health and life being constantly sacrific'd to pursuits, that are of no use to him merely as an animal; but, on the contrary, serve to promote the intellectual perfection of his species; hence apparently intended for the enjoyment of a state of existence, to which those faculties are adapted. In the powers of imagination and genius may also be trac'd that faint image of the Deity, in which man was confessedly made. So that philosophy alone affords us sufficient reason to believe the certainty of a future state, without our having recourse to con­tested authorities, the chimerical suppositions of errour, or the absurdities of ignorance.

[figure]

EPISTLE THE EIGHTH.

O Blind to truth, to science blind,
The sceptick tribe of human-kind!
Who doubt, Lorenzo, if our lot
Be here to die and be forgot,
[Page 304]Or if it prove our future fate 5
To know an intellectual state,
In death to perish, or to rise,
Immortal, to our native skies. a
Allur'd by wit to neither side,
Be reason our impartial guide; 10
Let us, Lorenzo, fairly weigh
What argument hath here to say.
Hast thou poor Dromio's sophisms got,
Who bids us vegetate and rot;
Man but a rank and useless weed? 15
Prove them alike and 'tis agreed.
But the analogy of parts
Is all that's prov'd by skeptick arts.
[Page 305]Say that, "of vegetable race,
"We spread the root from place to place; 20
"The lovely flow'r of beauty blows;
"Twin sister to the province rose,
"Allures at morn the gazing eye,
"That ere the ev'ning sees it die."
Say, "years disrobe the mantled brow, 25
"As winter strips th' autumnal bough;
"The rough, rude blast to both unkind,
"Both perish by an eastern wind:
"Or, by the axe, untimely blow!
"Are laid their spreading honours low." 30
Admit, Lorenzo, this be true:
Go on—the parallel pursue.
Say, "the tall elms, you stately row,
"Sweet transports of sensation know.
"When zephyrs kiss the lilly's breast 35
[Page 306]"The lilly's rapture be confess'd."
Say "the broad oak, when thunders roar,
"Fears till the thunder-storm be o'er;
"Conscious of doubt and dread by turns,
"Stands trembling as the forest burns; 40
"Alive, awake, to nature's laws,
"From nature's scenes experience draws;
"Throbbing its trunk with hopes and fears,
"Grown old in wisdom as in years!
Is this absurd? absurd indeed! 45
Lorenzo how unlike a weed!
To moral arguments dost run?
Here shall we end as we begun.
Sayst thou "the virtuous, when they die,
"In their own right ascend the sky; 50
"The wicked, here unpunish'd, go
"To torment in the world below;
[Page 307]"Heav'n's justice else we should arraign,
"And prove the virtuous good in vain,"
You take, my friend, for granted here, 55
What none by reason make appear;
That vice at God almighty's hands
Eternal punishment demands;
While endless bliss, beyond the skies,
Justice bestows, as virtue's prize. 60
Justice! Lorenzo, what, my friend,
By justice dost thou here intend?
Her sword she holds; but, say, what ails
The equilibrium of her scales?
How low the one, tho' empty, lies, 65
To kick the beam while t'other flies!
Alas, I see by what compell'd;
In diff'rent mediums are they held;
One in material fluids buoy'd;
[Page 308]The other in a perfect void: 70
Weigh'd in eternity and time,
The punishment against the crime!
Dare the self-righteous tribe to say,
That Heav'n's no more than virtue's pay,
While vice demerits endless woe? 75
Needs God a friend? fears God a foe?
Holding vindictive rage in store,
For his own sake, on man to pour?
O, no—unhurt th'Almighty cause,
Or kept or broken human laws. 80
Cease, then, presumption, to contend
That mortals Heav'n itself offend,
Or, at an infinite expence,
Must answer a finite offence:
To pay the fine immortal made; 85
Which else unable to have paid.
[Page 309]The dying wretch tho' tyrants cure
But tortures longer to endure;
With nature cruelty at strife
When criminals are quit with life; 90
Can God, whose tender mercies flow
O'er all his varied works below,
Whose loving kindness all confess,
Whose name the distant nations bless;
Say, can this God, of boundless love, 95
Vengeful as earthly tyrants prove?
O shame, Lorenzo, shame to all
Such cruelty that justice call!
Such argument, beside, is vain,
Unless the premises were plain; 100
Unless we first could make it clear,
That vice can ne'er be punish'd, here;
That virtue must be ever blest,
[Page 310]For foll'wing but its interest;
Or that we truly could define 105
That justice mortals call divine.
By metaphysicks dost thou strive
To keep the man in death alive?
Wouldst thou, set moral pleas aside,
The body from the soul divide? 110
Material that and born to die,
While this a native of the sky;
Objects that none can hear and see
Hence claiming immortality!
But, say, is thy corporeal claim 115
Laid to the matter or the frame?
Is it the substance of the heart
Or make that is the mortal part?
Doth change of form bring death alone?
Form we must immaterial own. 120
[Page 311]If to the essence of the clay,
Again, mortality we lay,
Doom'd the loath'd carcass to the worm,
The substance changes but its form:
Through modes of being giv'n to range, 125
Immortal in perpetual change,
Maiter by all the skeptick crowd
Essentially the same allow'd;
In death, in life, our shame, our pride,
In various forms but modified. 130
Say, then, the matter or the frame,
Or both, in body have a claim;
Nor mortal, nor immortal, we
From our materiality. b
Lorenzo, doth thy bosom beat 135
To claim in heaven th'immortal seat?
So fond of thy existence here,
Dost thou annihilation fear?
To fall as undistinguish'd clay
To dumb forgetfulness a prey? 140
The joys of paradise in view,
Sayst thou "thy claim must needs be true,
"Else, wherefore doth thy fond desire
"To immortality aspire," c
Whate'er in hope be Heav'n's intent, 145
This is, my friend, no argument.
I, too, perhaps, so pleas'd to live,
[Page 313]My very means of life might give,
All I am worth, from death to save,
If hope were buried in the grave. 150
But let Lorenzo never trust
To wish or hope, however just:
Nor let a passionate desire
To reason's sober task aspire.
Wouldst thou false principles defend, 155
Because they serve a pleasing end?
Who loves the truth will sure despise
Her cause to rest on specious lies.
What merit doth it add to worth
That knaves its virtues babble forth? 160
What added weight or consequence,
In suff'rage, gives the fool to sense?
Again, is't said "so closely join'd
"In life the body and the mind,
[Page 314]"Reciprocally form'd to bear 165
"Each other's weight of pain and care,
"Sharing alike the mutual joy,
"Which either wholly may destroy;
"Since thus together both concur,
"We know not either to prefer, 170
"If both be purposely combin'd,
"In use of body or of mind."
Are there who weakly, hence, suppose
"The soul no sep'rate being knows;
"But, as the body doth decay, 175
"So wears the mortal mind away."
Yet wherefore might not at our birth,
Lodg'd in this tenement of earth,
Lock'd up for life th'immortal mind,
Its temporary prison find, 180
Till paid our vital debt should be,
[Page 315]And death should set the captive free?
Mean-while, in hope, in fear, in doubt,
Concerning friends and foes without,
Prone through its prison grates to pry, 185
It sees Time's scatter'd ruins lie,
In darkness and confusion hurl'd,
The embryo of another world.
Why may not thus, on earth, be join'd
The body and the tenant mind? 190
Th'inhabitant, with cost and care,
Keeping his mansion in repair,
Us'd to the dungeon where he lies,
And prone his present home to prize,
Unknowing whither doom'd to roam, 195
If once bereft of house and home.
What wonder, then, for help he calls
When danger threats his tott'ring walls?
[Page 316]Nor strange, if, heedless of their fate,
They tumble on his wareless pate: 200
Each other's mutual strength and ward
The mansion and the mansion's lord.
What tho' we hold the soul to be
Attach'd to sensibility,
Concludes Lorenzo rashly hence 205
The soul's as mortal as the sense?
Alleging that "in life we find
"Perception to the organs join'd,
"Poor mortals of sensation void
"As these are damag'd or destroy'd; 210
"Therefore the soul on sense depends,
"And with the failing organ ends."
Lorenzo, through a darken'd glass
Seest thou but faintly objects pass?
More darken'd yet, dost thou confess 215
[Page 317]Thy certainty of vision less?
With its transparency thy sight
Decreasing, till obstructed quite.
Suppose it broke or let it fall,
Dost think thou couldst not see at all? 220
Ridiculous! when objects lie
All open to the naked eye.
Thus, may the soul, to body join'd,
Be deaf, irrational or blind:
But take th'obstructing organs hence, 225
At liberty its native sense,
By fits no more it hears and sees,
As now by piece-meal and degrees,
In partial modes, adapted here
To organs of the eye and ear; 230
But, intellect, all ear, all eye,
It reads the wonders of the sky,
[Page 318]At once what nature can disclose
Of scientifick secrets knows:
Now sense and science both combin'd 235
In each perception of the mind.
But here, Lorenzo, for a while
Lay by the metaphysick foil.
With this, behind our darken'd glass,
Too apt to make a blund'ring pass: 240
By much more anxious, on the whole,
To guard the body than the soul.
Too nice th' anatomizing art,
To take them dextrously apart,
Let us on both inquiry plan, 245
And scrutinize their compound, man:
Contented from his present state
To reason of his future fate.
Doth Dromio say, to hold dispute,
[Page 319]"Man, if no plant, is yet a brute; 250
"A helpless animal in birth,
"His body form'd of kindred earth,
"An animal in his decay,
"His strength and vigour past away;
"Equal the beast's sagacious pow'rs 255
"Or ev'n superior oft to ours."
The politick, industrious bee
Dost own in wisdom rivals thee?
Oeconomy secures from want
The careful and laborious ant, 260
While man, with all his boasted sense,
Riots at health's and life's expence,
Luxurious, casts his cares aside,
Or starves through indolence or pride;
Here no preheminence his claim, 265
Insects! in life and death the same!
Is there no medium in dispute?
Must man be either God or brute?
Must we with burning seraphs join,
Or litter with the grov'ling swine? 270
Content to bear the slight disgrace
Of mingling with the brutal race;
Agreed—for once, no longer proud,
Be men mere animals allow'd.
Say that, more helpless at his birth 275
Than ev'n the vilest brute on earth,
Man, if denied the nurse's care,
Might have run wild, a human bear;
Have beat the plains in search of food,
Or sought his shelter in the wood: 280
Devoid of language and of art,
Apparent brute in head and heart.
Yet still, Lorenzo, as we find
[Page 321]Some little difference, in kind;
Man, as an animal, is known, 285
By marks peculiarly, his own.
Tho' both, sharp-sighted, grave and fat,
Melinda and her tabby cat,
But a specifick diff'rence seen
'Twixt Pug and Faddle, in the spleen, 290
The wild, the tame, the great, the small,
Included in one genus all;
We must not hence, my friend, infer
Melinda's only born to purr;
Nor that, because alike in shape, 295
Faddle by nature's but an ape.
What, if a monkey, taught in France,
A modish minuet could dance;
Or, mischievous, should play his tricks,
Vers'd in Parisian politicks, 300
[Page 322]Breaking thy china's brittle clay,
Tho' sure to suffer for his play.
Wouldst thou acknowledge, hence, to me,
The pert baboon, un homme d'esprit?
Or own, on this sagacious plan, 305
A monkey's nat'rally a man?
Let rash polemicks idly prate
Of nature and a nat'ral state,
The arts of social life despise,
And think that brutes are only wise; 310
Pretending better had it been
If kings and priests we ne'er had seen;
If lawless, ignorant and wild,
Man had been left, while yet a child,
With brutes to share a common fate; 315
More blest than in his present state:
Go thou, and act a social part
[Page 323]Man's nat'ral state's a state of art c.
'Twas nature, when the world was young,
[Page 324]Unloos'd our first, great grandsire's tongue; 320
Taught his wild sons the force of speech,
And gave the human pow'r to teach;
To social converse tun'd the ear,
Gave mutual love and mutual fear,
Inspir'd the hero, warm'd the friend, 325
And bade the strong the weak defend.
'Twas nature gave religion's rule,
And bade the wise conduct the fool;
In justice gave the law, to save
The weak and honest from the knave. 330
'Twas nature rais'd our thoughts on high,
In contemplation, to the sky;
Taught us to beat the wilds of space,
And worlds on worlds in ether trace;
Planets and suns unknown explore, 335
And hence their maker, God, adore.
[Page 325]All this you artificial call,
I heed not empty terms at all.
Call it by whatsoever name,
'Tis human nature's special claim. 340
Say, from mere phrases to depart,
How differs nature here form art?
Within the solitary wood
Rears the old brock her helpless brood;
For safety, scouring to her den, 345
At sight, or sound of dogs and men?
'Tis nature warns her not t'expose
Herself, or offspring, to her foes;
But sends her to the safe retreat,
Where both enjoy their rest and meat. 350
Why rears not man in forest wild,
Or acorn grove, his fav'rite child?
But, lodg'd in towns, and nurs'd with care;
[Page 326]Protects and feeds his fondled heir.
Experter, sure, were human race 355
If train'd in forests for the chase;
The chase that might our food provide;
And what need animals beside?
Lorenzo, here we plainly find
The characters that mark our kind. 360
'Twas nature knowledge did impart,
Which time has ripen'd into art:
But call it art, or what you will.
'Tis nature, human nature still.
As natural for us, my friend, 365
To bid the cloud-capt tow'rs ascend;
To bid the floating castles ride
On moving mountains of the tide;
As for the bird and beast their food
To seek in thicket, plain or wood, 370
[Page 327]To build the nest, or dig the den,
Far distant from the haunts of men.
Science, disprove it those who can,
Is, therefore, natural to man:
To other animals denied 375
This best and worst excuse for pride.
There are, 'tis true, who gravely hold
"Grimalkin's no essential scold,
"That men and monkies differ wide,
"As Gods to stocks and stones allied:" 380
Striving to prove, by various means,
"That brutes are nothing but machines." f
But, can we e'er with these suppose
[Page 328]Springs lodg'd within the terrier's nose,
Direct his nimble feet to go 385
Where the old fox lies earth'd below?
Or that by mere mechanicks tray
Pursues his master's doubtful way?
For me, I frankly must impute
True syllogism to e'en the brute: 390
A pow'r of reason, spite of pride,
No more to them than man denied.
So much admitting, dost thou say?
"I fairly throw my cause away,
"Unless to brutes Heav'n also give 395
"In immortality to live."
Lorenzo, no.—Tho' less refin'd,
My pleas are of another kind.
Low as the dust tho' here we lie,
Yet death may raise us to the sky. 400
[Page 329]Is man a worm? 'tis here his fate
To winter his aurelia state;
In time to burst his cell design'd,
And leave his clay-cold case behind;
Flutt'ring on angel wings, to rise 405
A bright papilio of the skies!
Distinguish'd from the beasts, my friend,
Experience ev'ry doubt may end;
Granting "by nature all enjoy
"The pow'rs heav'n meant them to employ;
"Passion or instinct ne'er bestow'd
"On man, or beast, a useless load;
"But serving animals, in kind,
"To th' end for which they were design'd."
This once suppos'd, here end disputes. 415
Look round among our fellow brutes.
See to what point their labours tend;
[Page 330]And how in death their talents end.
Perfect the bird and beast, we find,
Advance not here their sev'ral kind; 420
From race to race no wiser grow,
No gradual perfection know;
T'increasing knowledge void their claim,
Still their specifick pow'rs the same,
In th'individual centred all, 425
Tho' generations rise and fall.
Mean-while, by observation wise,
The human genius never dies;
But, in tradition kept alive,
The wreck of kingdoms doth survive; 430
Or, glowing in th'instructive page,
Improving, lives from age to age;
Ev'n giving those who greatly know
An immortality below.
[Page 331]What idle mourner droops his head? 435
Is Plato, Locke, or Newton dead?
With Plato still his pupils rove
Along his academick grove;
With Locke we wing the naked soul,
And mount with Newton to the pole. 440
To animals of ev'ry kind
Are, then, their proper pow'rs assign'd;
To actuate, strengthen or restrain,
Nor sense nor instinct giv'n in vain?
Man, as an animal confess'd, 445
Distinguish'd plainly from the rest,
Behold his pow'rs, his labours here
Presumptive of a brighter sphere!
Not merely to this life confin'd
The aim, and end, of human-kind! 450
Say, if our purpose but to live,
[Page 323]What mighty help doth science give?
What needed more the human brute
Than cooling springs and strength'ning fruit?
Or, summer past, the diet spare 455
Of wholesome roots, his winter fare?
How need our better rest and health
Golconda's or Potosi's wealth,
That sacrific'd that health and rest,
To fetch it home from east and west? 460
Lorenzo, sure, if human-kind
For this life only were design'd,
As well we ignorant had been
Of luxury, the bawd to sin;
As well those arts had been without 465
That give, while none can cure, the gout.
Ah! why was speculation given
If not to teach the way to Heav'n?
[Page 333]What need have animals below
The planets' paths above to know? 470
Or in what curves, meand'ring, rove
Satellites round the orb of Jove?
Lends art its microscopick eye,
In nature's miniature to pry?
To see beneath the civil knife 475
The butcher'd atoms robb'd of life;
To know that 'scaping from the steel,
Thousands may perish at a meal:
While, conscious ev'ry step we tread,
We trample hosts of beings dead. 480
Ah, why this knowledge giv'n, to raise
Our wonder to our Maker's praise;
Why hence inspir'd our God t'adore,
If seen, in death, his face no more?
It cannot be.—Of Heav'nly birth, 485
[Page 334]Science, no offspring of the earth,
To man hath Jacob's ladder giv'n,
Reaching, its foot on earth, to heav'n.
O, seize, with ardour seize the prize;
And claim thy kindred to the skies. 490
Genius, Lorenzo, yours or mine,
Faint image of the pow'r divine;
Endow'd with ev'n creative pow'r,
To form the beings of an hour,
To people worlds, to light the skies, 495
To bid a new creation rise;
O'er all to wield the thund'rer's rod,
And act the momentary God!
Ev'n here my friend, in nature's plan
Own'd the divinity of MAN. 500
A truth that genius feels and knows,
As oft as with the God it glows.
[Page 335]And shall t'oblivion be consign'd
This portion of etherial mind?
O, no.—Come death in any form, 505
I doubt not to ride out the storm;
The shipwreck'd body to survive;
My thinking part still left alive.
Mean-while, through all the modes of sense,
Bear me, bold Contemplation, hence. 510
On thy firm wing, O, let me soar;
And idly hope and fear no more.
Bear me to th' ever-blooming groves,
Where genius with fair science roves;
Where, in the cool sequester'd shade, 515
Sits Resignation, pious maid;
To Heav'n directed by whose eye,
When drooping nature calls to die,
Let this my latest wishes crown,
[Page 336]On her soft lap to lay me down; 520
Whilst mild content, and gentle peace,
Her handmaids, waiting my release,
Strow, stealing round with softest tread,
Their grateful roses o'er my bed,
No thorn among, to break my rest; 525
By euthanasian slumbers blest;
Without a sigh, at close of day,
To breathe, becalm'd, my soul away.
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