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Confpiring order, fitness, harmony,
Use, and convenience; will you not agree,
That fuch effects could not be undefign'd,
Nor could proceed but from a Knowing Mind?
Old fyftems you may try, or new ones raise,
May fhift and wind, and plot a thousand ways;
May various words, and forms of diction, use,
And with a different cant th' unjudging ear amuse;
You may affirm, that Chance did things create,
Or let it Nature be, or be it Fate;
Body alone, inert and brute, you'll find,
The cause of all things is by you affign'd.
And, after all your fruitless toil, if you
A Caufe diftinct from Matter will allow,
It must be conscious, not like matter blind,

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And fhew you grant a God, by granting Mind.

Vaninus next, a hardy, modern chief,

A bold oppofer of Divine Belief,

Attempts Religion's fences to fubvert,

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Strong in his rage, but deftitute of art;

In impious maxims fixt, he Heaven defy'd,
An unbelieving anti-martyr dy'd.

Strange, that an Atheist pleasure should refuse,
Relinquish life, and death in torment chuse!
Of science what a defpicable share
Vaninus own'd, his publish'd dreams declare.
Let impious wits applaud a Godless Mind,
As bleft with piercing fight, and sense refin'd,
Contriv'd and wrought by Nature's careful hand
All the proud fchools of learning to command.;

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Let them pronounce each patron of their cause
Claims by diftinguish'd merit juft applause;
Yet I this writer's want of fenfe arraign,
Treat all his empty pages with disdain,
And think a grave reply mif-spent and vain :
To horrow light, his error to amend,

I would the Atheist to Vaninus fend.

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At length Britannia's soil, immortal shame !'
Brought forth a fage of celebrated name,
Who with contempt on blest Religion trod,
Mock'd all her precepts, and renounc'd his God..
As awful fhades and horrors of the night
Disturb the mother, and the child affright,
Who fee dire fpectres through the gloomy air
In threatening forms advance, and fhuddering hear
The groans of wandering ghofts, and yellings of
despair. :-

From the fame fpring, he fays, devotion flows,
Confcience of guilt from dread of vengeance rofe;
Religion is the creature of the fpleen,

And troubled fancy forms the world unfeen;
That timorous minds, with felf-tormenting care,
Create thofe awful phantoms which they fear.

Such arms were us'd by impious chiefs of old,
Vain as this modern hero, and as bold.
Who would not this philofopher adore,
For finding worlds discover'd long before?
Can he one flower in all his garden show,
Which in his Grecian mafter's did no: grow?
And yet, imperious, with a teacher's air,
Boaftful he claims a right to wifdom's chair;

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Gafping

Gafping with ardent thirft of falfe renown,
With Grecian wreaths he does his temples crown,
Triumphs with borrow'd fpoils, and trophies not

his own.

The world, he grants, with clouds was overfpread;
Truth ne'er erected yet her starry head,

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Till he, bright Genius, rofe to chace the night,
And through all nature fhone with new-fprung light.
But let th' enquirer know, proud Briton! why
Hope fhould not Gods, as well as fear, fupply?
Does not th' idea of a God include

The notion of beneficent and good,

Of one to mercy, not revenge, inclin❜d,
Able and willing to relieve mankind?
And does not this idea more appear

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The object of our hope, than of our fear?

Then tell us, why this paffion, more than that,
Should build their altars, and the Gods create ?

But let us grant the weak and timorous mind
To fuperftitious terrors is inclin'd;

That horrid fcenes, and monsters form'd in air,
By night the children and the mother feare;
That apparitions, by a fever bred,

Or by the spleen's black vapours, fill the head;
Does that affect the fage of fenfe refin'd,
Whofe body's healthful, and ferene his mind?
Yet more, infulting Briton! let us try
Your reafon 's force, your arguments apply.
You fay, fince fpectres from the fancy flow,
To timorous fancy Gods their being owe;

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Since phantoms to the weak feem real things,
Religion from mistake and weakness springs.

But though the vulgar have illufions feen,
Thought objects were without, that were within;
Yet we from hence abfurdly fhould conclude,
All objects of the mind the mind delude;
That our ideas idle are, that none
Were ever real, and that nothing 's known.

But, leaving phantoms and illufive fear,
Let us at Reafon's judgement-feat appear;
There let the queftion be feverely try'd;
By an impartial fentence we abide :
Th' Eternal Mind's existence we fuftain
By proofs fo full, by evidence fo plain,
That none of all the fciences have shown
Such demonftration of the truths they own.
Spinofa next, to hide his black defign,
And to his fide th' unwary to incline,
For heaven his enfigns treacherous difplays,
Declares for God, while he that God betrays;
For whom he's pleas'd fuch evidence to bring,
As faves the name, while it fubverts the thing.
Now hear his labour'd fcheme of impious ufe:
No fubftance can another e'er produce;
Subftance no limit, no confinement, knows,
And its existence from its nature flows;
The fubftance of the Univerfe is one,
Which is the felf-exiftent God alone.

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The fpheres of æther, which the world inclofe,
And all th' apartments, which the whole compofe; 755

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The lucid orbs, the earth, the air, the main,.
With every different being they contain;

Are one prodigious aggregated God,

Of whom each fand is part, each stone and clod;
Supreme perfections in each infect shine,
Each fhrub is facred, and each weed divine..
Sages, no longer Ægypt's fons despise,
For their cheap Gods, and favoury Deities!
No more their coarse Divinities revile!
To leeks, to onions, to the crocodile,
You might your humble adorations pay,
Were you

not Gods yourselves, as well as they.
As much you pull Religion's altars down,
By owning all things God, as owning.none:
For fhould all beings be alike divine,
Of worship if an object you affign,
God to himself muft veneration fhew,
Must be the idol and the votary too;
And their affertions are alike abfurd,
Who own no God, or none to be ador'd.

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CREATION.

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