(As far as man can penetrate) or heaven
Is an immense, inestimable prize;
Or all is nothing, or that prize is all
And shall each toy be still a match for heaven,
And full equivalent for groans below?
Who would not give a trifle to prevent
What he would give a thousand worlds to cure?
Lorenzo! thou hast seen (if thine to see)
All Nature, and her God, (by Nature's course,
And Nature's course control'd) declare for me.
The skies above proclaim 'immortal man!'
And man immortal!' all below resounds.
The world's a system of theology,
Read by the greatest strangers to the schools;
If honest, learn'd; and sages o'er a plough.
Is not, Lorenzo! then, imposed.on thee
This hard alternative, or to renounce
Thy reason and thy sense, or to believe?
What then is unbelief? 'tis an exploit,
A strenuous enterprise; to gain it, man
Must burst through every bar of common sense,
Of common shame, magnanimously wrong;
And what rewards the sturdy combatant?-
His prize, repentance; infamy, his crown.
But wherefore infamy!-for want of faith
Down the steep precipice of wrong he slides;
There's nothing to support him in the right.
Faith in the future wanting is, at least
In embryo, every weakness, every guilt,
And strong temptation ripens it to birth.
If this life's gain invites him to the deed,
Why not his country sold, his father slain?
"Tis virtue to pursue our good supreme,
And his supreme, his only good, is here!
Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd,
Is perfect wisdom while mankind are fools,
And think a turf or tombstone covers all:
These find employment, and provide for sense.
A richer pasture, and a larger range;
And sense, by right divine, ascends the throne. 1165
When Virtue's prize and prospect are no more,
Virtue no more we think the will of Heaven.
Would Heaven quite beggar Virtue, if beloved?
'Has Virtue charms?'-I grant her heavenly fair;
But if unportion'd, all will Interest wed,
Though that our admiration, this our choice.
The virtues grow on Immortality;
That root destroy'd they wither and expire.
A Deity believed will nought avail;
Rewards and punishments make God adored,、
And hopes and fears give Conscience all her power. As in the dying parent dies the child,
Virtue with Immortality expires.
Who tells me he denies his soul immortal,
Whate'er his boast, has told me he's a knave..
His duty 'tis to love himself alone,
Nor care though mankind perish if he smiles.
Who thinks ere long the man shall wholly die
Is dead already; nought but brute survives.
And are there'such? Such candidates there are
For more than death; for utter loss of being;
Being, the basis of the Deity!
Ask you the cause ?-the cause they will not tell;
Nor need they. Oh, the sorceries of sense!
They work this transformation on the soul,
Dismount her like the serpent at the fall,
Dismount her from her native wing (which soar'd
Erewhile ethereal heights,) and throw her down
To lick the dust, and crawl in such a thought.
Is it in words to paint you? O ye Fallen!
Fallen from the wings of reason and of hope!
Erect in stature, prone in appetite!
Patrons of pleasure, posting into pain!
Lovers of argument, averse to sense!
Boasters of liberty! fast bound in chains!
Lords of the wide creation, and the shame!
More senseless than the' irrationals you scorn!
More base than those you rule! than those you pity Far more.undone! O ye most infamous
Of beings, from superior dignity!
Deepest in woe, from means of boundless bliss!
Ye cursed by blessings infinite! because
Most highly favour'd, most profoundly lost!
Ye motley mass of contradiction strong!
And are you, too, convinced your souls fly off
In exhalation soft, and die in air,
From the full flood of evidence against you?
In the coarse drudgeries and sinks of sense,
Your souls have quite worn out the make of Heaven,
By vice new cast, and creatures of your own;
But though you can deform, you can't destroy:
To curse, not uncreate, is all your power.
Lorenzo! this black brotherhood renounce;
Renounce St. Evremond, and read St. Paul,
Ere rapp'd by miracle, by reason wing'd,
His mounting mind made long abode in Heaven.
This is freethinking, unconfined to parts,
To send the soul, on curious travel bent,
Through all the provinces of human thought;
To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man;
Of this vast universe to make the tour;
In each recess of space and time at home,
Familiar with their wonders; diving deep;
And, like a prince of boundless interests there,
Still most ambitious of the most remote;
To look on truth unbroken and entire ;
Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths
By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford
An archlike strong foundation, to support
The' incumbent weight of absolute complete
Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand
More firm who most examine, most believe.
Parts, like half-sentences, confound; the whole
Conveys the sense, and God is understood;
Who not in fragments writes to human race:
Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply.
This, this is thinking free, a thought that grasps
Beyond a grain, and looks beyond an hour.
Turn up thine eye, survey this midnight scene;
What are earth's kingdoms to yon boundless orbs, 1245
Of human souls, one day, the destined range?
And what yon boundless orbs to godlike man?
Those numerous worlds that throng the firmament,
And ask more space in Heaven, can roll at large
In man's capacious thought, and still leave room 1250
For ampler orbs, for new creations there.
Can such a soul contract itself, to gripe
A point of no dimension, of no weight?
It can; it does: the world is such a point;
And of that point how small a part enslaves!
How small a part-of nothing, shall I say? Why not?-Friends, our chief treasure, how they drop! Lucia, Narcissa fair, Philander, gone! The grave, like fabled Cerberus, has oped A triple mouth, and in an awful voice Loud calls my soul, and utters all I sing. How the world falls to pieces round about us, And leaves us in a ruin of our joy!
What says this transportation of my friends?
It bids me love the place where now they dwell, 1205 And scorn this wretched spot they leave so poor. Eternity's vast ocean lies before thee;
There, there, Lorenzo! thy Clarissa sails.
Give thy mind sea-room; keep it wide of earth,
That rock of souls immortal; cut thy cord;
Weigh anchor; spread thy sails; call every wind:
Eye thy great Pole-star; make the land of Life!
Two kinds of life has double-natured man,
And two of death; the last far more severe.
Life animal is nurtured by the Sun,
Thrives on his bounties, triumphs in his beams :
Life rational subsists on higher food,
Triumphant in His beams who made the day:
When we leave that Sun, and are left by this
(The fate of all who die in stubborn guilt,)
"Tis utter darkness; strictly double death.
We sink by no judicial stroke of Heaven,
But nature's course; as sure as plummets fall.
Since God or man must alter ere they meet,
(Since light and darkness blend not in our sphere) 1285
'Tis manifest, Lorenzo, who must change.
If, then, that double death should prove thy lot, Blame not the bowels of the Deity;
Man shall be bless'd, as far as man permits
Not man alone, all rationals Heaven arms
With an illustrious, but tremendous power,
To counteract its own most gracious ends,
And this of strict necessity, not choice;
That power denied, men, angels, were no more
But passive engines, void of praise or blame.
A nature rational implies the power
Of being bless'd or wretched, as we please;
Else idle Reason would have nought to do,
And he that would be barr'd capacity
Of pain, courts incapacity of bliss.
Heaven wills our happiness, allows our doom;
Invites us ardently, but not compels;
Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees.
Man is the maker of immortal fates.
Man falls by man, if finally he falls;
And fall he must, who learns from death alone
The dreadful secret,-that he lives for ever.
Why this to thee ?-thee yet, perhaps, in doubt Of second life? but wherefore doubtful still ? Eternal life is Nature's ardent wish;
What ardently we wish we soon believe :
Thy tardy faith declares that wish destroy'd:
What has destroy'd it ?-shall I tell thee what?
When fear'd the future, 'tis no longer wish'd;
And when unwish'd, we strive to disbelieve.
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