Man's mortal crime, and just the unjust to save?
Dwells in all heaven charity so dear?"
He asked, but all the heavenly quire stood mute,
And silence was in heaven: on man's behalf
Patron or intercessor none appeared,
Much less that durst upon his own head draw
The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renewed:
Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace; And shall grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all
Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought?
Happy for man, so coming; he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins, and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering meet,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring:
Behold me, then; me for him, life for life
I offer; on me let thine
Account me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die
Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all his rage: Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished; thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever; by thee I live,
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due
All that of me can die: yet, that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil;
Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed.
I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead hell captive, maugre hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of heaven shalt look down and smile,
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcass glut the grave;
Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,
Shall enter heaven, long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire."
"THOU in thy thought art pondering (as I deem,
And what I deem is truth) how just revenge
Could be with justice punished: from which doubt
I soon will free thee; so thou mark my words;
For they of weighty matter shall possess thee.
Through suffering not a curb upon the power
That willed in him, to his own profiting,
That man, who was unborn, condemned himself;
And, in himself, all, who since him have lived,
His offspring whence, below, the human kind
Lay sick in grievous error many an age;
Until it pleased the Word of God to come
Amongst them down, to His own person joining
The nature from its Maker far estranged,
By the mere act of His eternal love.
Contemplate here the wonder I unfold.
The nature with its Maker thus conjoined,
Created first was blameless, pure, and good;
But, through itself alone, was driven forth
From Paradise, because it had eschewed
way of truth and life, to evil turned. Ne'er then was penalty so just as that Inflicted by the cross, if thou regard
The nature in assumption doomed; ne'er wrong
So great, in reference to Him, who took
Such nature on Him, and endured the doom.
So different effects flowed from one act:
For by one death God and the Jews were pleased;
And heaven was opened, though the earth did quake.
Count it not hard henceforth, when thou dost hear
That a just vengeance was, by righteous court,
Justly revenged. But yet I see thy mind,
By thought on thought arising, sore perplexed;
And, with how vehement desire, it asks
Solution of the maze. What I have heard,
Is plain, thou sayest: but wherefore God this way
For our redemption chose, eludes my search.
"Brother! no eye of man not perfected, Nor fully ripened in the flame of love,
May fathom this decree. It is a mark,
In sooth, much aimed at, and but little kenned:
And I will therefore show thee why such way
Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spurns
All envying in its bounty, in itself
With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth
All beauteous things eternal. What distils
Immediate thence, no end of being knows;
Bearing its seal immutably imprest.
Whatever thence immediate falls, is free,
Free wholly, uncontrollable by power
Of each thing new: by such conformity
More grateful to its author, whose bright beams,
Though all partake their shining, yet in those
Are liveliest, which resemble him the most.
These tokens of pre-eminence on man
Largely bestowed, if any of them fail,
He needs must forfeit his nobility,
No longer stainless. Sin alone is that,
Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike
To the chief good; for that its light in him
Is darkened. And to dignity thus lost
Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void,
He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain.
Your nature, which entirely in its seed
Trangressed, from these distinctions fell, no less
Than from its state in Paradise; nor means
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