How fatally this Cassandra has foretold, we know too well by fad experience: the feeds were fown in the time of queen Elizabeth, the bloody harvest ripened in the reign of king Charles the Martyr: and because all the sheaves could not be carried off without shedding fome of the loose grains, another crop is too like to follow; nay, I fear it is unavoidable if the conventiclers be permitted still to scatter.

A man may be fuffered to quote an adversary to our religion, when he speaks truth: and it is the observation of Maimbourg, in his History of Calvinism, that wherever that discipline was planted and embraced, rebellion, civil war, and misery, attended it. And how indeed should it happen otherwise? Reformation of church and state has always been the ground of our divisions in England. While we were papists, our holy father rid us, by pretending authority out of the scriptures to depose princes; when we shook off his authority, the sectaries furnished themselves with the fame weapons; and out of the fame magazine, the Bible : so that the fcriptures, which are in themselves the greatest security of governors, as commanding express obedience to them, are now turned to their destruction; and never, fince the Reformation, has there wanted a text of their interpreting to authorize a rebel. And it is to be noted by the way, that the doctrines of kingkilling and deposing, which have been taken up only by the worst party of the papists, the most frontless flatterers of the pope's authority, have been espoused, defended, and are still maintained by the whole body of nonconformists and republicans. It is but dubbing themselves the people of God, which it is the interest of their preachers to tell them they are, and their own interest to believe; and after that, they cannot din into the Bible, but one text or another will turn up for their purpose: if they are under perfecution, as they call it, then that is a mark of their election; if they flourish, then God works miracles for their deliverance, and the faints are to possess the earth.

They may think themselves to be too roughly handled in this paper; but I, who know best how far I could have gone on this subject, must be bold to tell them they are spared though at the same time I am not ignorant that they interpret the mildness of a writer to them, as they do the mercy of the government; in the one they think it fear, and conclude it weakness in the other. The best way for them to confute me is, as I before advised the Papists, to disclaim their principles and renounce their practices. We shall all be glad to think them true Englishmen when they obey the king, and true Proteftants when they conform to the churchdiscipline.

It remains that I acquaint the reader, that these verses were written for an ingenious young gentleman my friend, upon his translation of the critical history of the old testament, composed by the learned father Simon: the verfes therefore are addressed to the tranflator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ought to be, epistolary.

If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the fmooth

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smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this poem; I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction, ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic for here the poet is prefumed to be a kind of lawgiver; and those three qualities which I have named, are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the paffions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul, by shewing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less: but instruction is to be given by shewing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into paffion, but to be reasoned into truth.

Is reason to the soul: and as on high,

Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,

But guide us upward to a better day.

And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason- at religion's fight;

So dies, and so dissolves in fupernatural light.

}

Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's secret head;

And found that one first principle must be:
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether fome foul incompaffing this ball
Unmade, unmov'd; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms, interfering dance,
Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great all was from eternity;
Not ev'n the Stagirite himself could fee;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he;
As blindly grop'd they for a future state;
As rashly judg'd of providence and fate :
But least of all could their endeavours find
What most concern'd the good of human kind:
For happiness was never to be found;
But vanish'd from them like enchanted ground.
One thought content the good to be enjoy'd :
This every little accident destroy'd:
The wifer madmen did for virtue toil:
A thorny, or at best a barren foil :

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In pleasure some their glutton fouls would steep;
But found their line too short, the well too deep;
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

}

Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:

In this wild maze their vain endeavours end :
How can the less the greater comprehend ?

Or finite reason reach Infinity?

For what could fathom God were more than He.

The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground;
Cries εύρεκα, the mighty fecret's found :
God is that spring of good; fupreme, and best;
We made to serve, and in that service bleft.
If so, fome rules of worship must be given,
Distributed alike to all by heaven :
Elfe God were partial, and to fome deny'd
The means his justice should for all provide.
This general worship is to praise and pray:
One part to borrow bleffings, one to pay :
And when frail nature slides into offence,
The facrifice for crimes is penitence.

Yet, fince the effects of providence, we find,
Are variously difpens'd to human kind;
That vice triumphs, and virtue suffers here,
A brand that fovereign justice cannot bear;
Our reason prompts us to a future state :
The last appeal from fortune and from fate :
Where God's all-righteous ways will be declar'd;
The bad meet punishment, the good reward.

Thus man by his own strength to heaven would foar:
And would not be oblig'd to God for more.
Vain wretched creature, how art thou mifled
To think thy wit these god-like notions bred !
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropt from heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Reveal'd religion first inform'd thy fight,
And reason faw not till faith sprung the light.
Hence all thy natural worship takes the fource :
'Tis revelation what thou think'st discourse.

Elfe