What lengths of labour'd lands; what baded seas!
Loaded by man for pleasure, wealth, or war!
Seas, winds, and planets into service brought,
His art acknowledge, and promote his ends.
Nor can the eternal rocks his will withstand:
What levell'd mountains! and what lifted vales!
THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED.
PART II.
O'er vales and mountains sumptuous cities swell, CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND MORT
And gild our landscape with their glittering spires.
Some 'mid the wondering waves majestic rise,
And Neptune holds a mirror to their charms.
Far greater still; (what can not mortal might?)
See wide dominions ravished from the deep:
The narrow'd deep with indignation foams.
Or southward turn, to delicate and grand,
The finer arts there ripen in the sun.
How the tall temples, as to meet their gods,
Ascend the skies! the proud triumphal arch
Shows half heaven beneath its ample bend.
Whole rivers there, laid by in basins, sleep.
Here plains turn oceans; there vast oceans join
Through kingdoms channeled deep from shore to
shore,
As we are at war with the power, it were well if we were at war with the manners, of France. A land of levity is a land of guilt. A serious mind is the native soil of every virtue, and the single character that does true honour to mankind. The soul's immortality has been the favourite theme with the serious of all ages. Nor is it strange: it is a subject by far the most interesting and importHigh through mid air, here streams are taught to ant that can enter the mind of man. Of highest flow; moment this subject always was, and always will be: yet this its highest moment seems to admit of increase at this day; a sort of occasional importance is superadded to the natural weight of it, if that opinion which is advanced in the Preface to the preceding Night be just. It is therefore supposed that all our Infidels, (whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronize) are betrayed into their deplorable error by some doubt of their immortality at the bottom: and the more I consider this point, the more I am persuaded of the truth of that opinion. Though the distrust of a futurity, is a strange error, yet it is an error into which bad men may naturally be distressed; for it is impossible to bid defiance to final ruin, without some refuge in imagination, some presumption of escape. And what presumption is there? there are but two in Nature; but two within the compass of human thought; and these are,-That either God will not or can not punish. Considering the divine attributes, the first is too gross to be digested by our strongest wishes; and since omnipotence is as much a divine attribute as holiness, that God can not punish, is as absurd a supposition as the former. God certainly can punish, as long as wicked men exist. In non-existence, therefore, is their only refuge; and, consequently, non-existence is their strongest wish: and strong wishes have a strange tran-influence on our opinions; they bias the judgment
And changed Creation takes its face from man.
Beats thy brave breast for formidable scenes,
Where fame and empire wait upon the sword?
See fields in flood; hear naval thunders rise;
Britannia's voice! that awes the world to peace.
How yon enormous mole projecting breaks
The mid-sea, furious waves! their roar amidst
Out-speaks the Deity, and says, 'O Main!
Thus far, nor farther; new restraints obey.'
Earth's disembowcled! measured are the skies!
Stars are detected in their deep recess !
Creation widens! vanquished Nature yields!
Her secrets are extorted! Art prevails!
What monument of genius, spirit, power!
And now, Lorenzo, raptured at this scene,
Whose glories render Heaven superfluous! say,
Whose footsteps these?-Immortals have been
here;
Could less than souls immortal this have done?
Earth's covered o'er with proof of souls immortal,
And proofs of Immortality forgot.
To flatter thy grand foible, I confess
These are Ambition's works; and these are great;
But this, the least immortal souls can do,
Transcends them all.-But what can these
scend?
Dest ask me what?-one sigh for the distressed.
What then for Infidels? a deeper sigh.
Tis moral grandeur makes the mighty man:
How little they, who think aught great below?
All our ambitions Death defeats but one,
And that it crowns.-Ilere cease we; but, ere long,
More powerful proof shall take the field against
thee,
Stronger than death, and smiling at the tomb.
in a manner almost incredible. And since, on this member of their alternative there are some very small appearances in their favour, and none at all on the other, they catch at this reed, they lay hold on this chimera, to save themselves from the shock and horror of an immediate and absolute despair.
On reviewing my subject by the light which this argument, and others of like tendency, threw upon it, I was more inclined than ever to pursue it, as it appeared to me to strike directly at he
main root of all our infidelity. In the following | zo-The soul's vast importance; from whence it arises, &c pages it is, accordingly, pursued at large, and some-The difficulty of being an Infidel; the infamy; the cause, arguments for immortality, new at least to me, are ventured on in them. There, also, the writer has made an attempt to set the gross absurdities and horrors of annihilation in a fuller and more affect
ing view, than is (I think) to be met with else
and the character of an infidel state.-What true free-thinking is; the necessary punishment of the false.-Man's ruin is from himself.-An infidel accuses himself of guilt and hypocrisy, and that of the worst sort; his obligation to Christiar's; what danger he incurs by virtue; vice recommended to him
his high pretences to virtue and benevolence exploded.-The
conclusion, on the nature of faith; reason; and hope; with an apology for this attempt
The gentleman for whose sake this attempt was chiefly made, profess great admiration for the wis-HEAVEN gives the needful, but neglected call. dom of Heathen antiquity: what pity it is they What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts, are not sincere! If they were sincere, how would To wake the soul to sense of future seencs? it mortify them, to consider with what contempt Death stands, like Mercury, in every way, and abhorrence their notions would have been re- And kindly points us to our journey's end. ceived by those whom they so much admire. Pope, who couldst make immortals! art thou dead? What degree of contempt and abhorrence would I give thee joy; nor will I take my leave, fall to their share may be conjectured by the fol- So soon to follow. Man but dives in death, lowing matter of fact, (in my opinion) extremely Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise; memorable. Of all their Heathen worthies, So- The grave, his subterranean road to bliss. crates (it is well known) was the most guarded, Yes, infinite indulgence planned it so; dispassionate, and composed; yet this great mas- Through various parts our glorious story runs ter of temper was angry, and angry at his last Time gives the preface, endless age unrols hour; and angry with his friend; and angry for The volume (ne'er unrolled) of human fate. what deserved acknowledgment; angry for a right and tender instance of true friendship towards him. Is not this surprising? what could be the cause? The cause was for his honour: It was a truly noble, though, perhaps, a too punctilious regard for Immortality: for his friend asking him, with such an affectionate concern as became a friend, 'Where he should deposit his remains?' it was resented by Socrates, as implying a dishonourable supposition that he could be so mean as to have regard for any thing, even in himself, that was not immortal.
This fact, well considered, would make our infidels withdraw their admiration from Socrates, or make them endeavour, by their imitation of his illustrious example, to share his glory; and consequently, it would incline them to peruse the following pages with candour and impartiality, which is all I desire, and that for their sakes; for I am persuaded that an unprejudiced infidel must, necessarily, receive some advantageous impressions
This, earth and skies already have proclaimed,
The world's a prophecy of worlds to come,
And who, what God foretells, (who speaks in things
Still louder than in words) shall dare deny?
If Nature's arguments appear too weak,
Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in man.
If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees,
Can he prove infidel to what he feels!
He, whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee,
His own indictment; he condemns himself;
Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life;
Or Nature there, imposing on her sons,
Has written fables man was made a lie.
Why discontent for ever harboured there?
Incurable consumption of our peace!
Resolve me why the cottager and king,
He whom sea-severed realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter-blasts with mud and straw,
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,
In fate so distant, in complaint so near?
Is it that things terrestrial can't content?
Deep in rich pasture, will thy flocks complain?
Not so; but to their master is denied
To share their sweet serene. Man, ill at ease
In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where nature fodders him with other food
Than was ordained his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famished at a feast,
Sighs on for something more, when most enjoye
Is Heaven then kinder to thy flocks than thee?
In the Sixth Night, arguments were drawn from Nature in
proof of Immortality: here, others are drawn from Man; from
his discontent; from his passions and powers; from the gra-
dual growth of reason; from his fear of death; from the na-
ture of hope, and of virtue; from knowledge and love, as be.
ing the most essential properties of the soul; from the order
of creation; from the nature of ambition; avarice; pleasure.
-A digression on the grandeur of the passions.-Immortality
alone renders our present state intelligible.-An objection from
the Stoic's disbenef of Immortality answered.-Endless ques-
tions untesolvable, but on supposition of our Immortality. Not so; thy pasture richer, but remote,
The natural, most melancholy, and pathetic complaint of a In part remote; for that remoter part
worthy man, under the persuasion of no futurity. The gross
absurdities and horrors of annihilation urged home on Loren-
Man bleas from instinct, though, perhaps, de- Of all the darkest, if at death we die.
By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause.
The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes:
His grief is but his grandeur in disguise,
And discontent is immortality.
Shall sons of Ether, shall the blood of Heaven,
Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here,
With brutal acquiescence, in the mire?
Lorenzo, no! they shall be nobly pained;
The glorious foreigners, distressed, shall sigh
On thrones, and thou congratulate the sigh.
Man's misery declares him born for bliss;
His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing,
And gives the sceptic in his head-the lie.
Our heads, our hearts, our passions, and
powers,
Speak the same language; call us to the skies:
Unripened these, in this inclement clime,
Scarce rise above conjecture and mistake;
And for this land of trifles those, too strong,
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human life.
What prize on earth can pay us for the storm?
Meet objects for our passions Heaven ordained,
Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave
No fault but in defect. Blessed Heaven! avert
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss.
O for a bliss unbounded! far beneath
A soul immortal is a mortal joy.
Nor are our powers to perish immature;
But after feeble effort here, beneath
A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil,
Transplanted from this sublunary bed,
Shall flourish fair, and put forth all their bloom.
Reason progressive, instinct is complete;
Swift instinct leaps; slow Reason feebly climbs.
Brutes soon their zenith reach; their little all
Flows in at once; in ages they no more
Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy.
Were man to live coeval with the sun,
The patriarch-pupil would be learning still,
Yet, dying, leave his 'esson half unlearned.
Men perish in advance, as if the sur
Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drowned;
li fit with Jim illustrious to compare,
The sun's meridian with the soul of man.
To man, why, stepdame Nature, so severe ?
Why thrown aside thy masterpiece half-wrought,
While meaner efforts thy last hands enjoy?
Or if, abortively, poor man must die,
Nor reach what reach he might, why die in dread?
Why cursed with foresight? wise to misery?
Why of his proud prerogative the prey?
Why less pre-eminent in rank than pain?
His immortality alone can tell;
Full ample fund to balance all amis,
And turn the scale in favour of the just!
His immortality alone can solve
That darkest of enigmas, human hope;
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Hope, eager Hope, the assassin of our joy,
All present blessings treading under foot,
Is scarce a milder tyrant than Despair.
With no past toils content, still planning new,
Hope turns us o'er to Death alone for ease.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?
That wish accomplished, why the grave of bli?
Because in the great future buried deep,
Beyond our plans of empire and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And he who made him bent him to the right.
Man's heart the Aknighty to the future sets,
By secret and inviolable springs,
And makes his hope his sublunary joy.
Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still;
More, more!' the glutton cries: for something
So rages appetite. If man can't mount,
He will descend. He starves on the possessed;
Hence, the world's master, from Ambition's spire,
In Caprea plunged, and dived beneath the brute.
In that rank sty why wallowed Empire's son
Supreme?-Because he could no higher fly:
His riot was Ambition in despair.
Old Rome consulted birds; Lorenzo, thou
With more success the flight of Hope survey,
Of restless Hope, for ever on the wing.
High-perched o'er every thought that falcon sits,
To fly at all that rises in her sight:
And never stooping, but to mount again
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake,
And owns her quarry lodged beyond the grave.
There should it fail us, (it must fail us there,
If being fails) more mournful riddles rise,
And virtue vies with hope in mystery.
Why virtue? where its praise, its being, fled?
Virtue is true self-interest pursued;
What true self-interest of quite mortal man?
To close with all that makes him happy here.
If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth,
Then vice is virtue; 'tis our sovereign good.
In self-applause is virtue's golden prize?
No self-applause attends it on thy scheme.
Whence self-applause? from conscience of the
right;
And what is right, but means of happiness?
No means of happiness when virtue yields;
That basis failing, falls the building too,
And lays in ruin every virtuous joy.
The rigid guardian of a blameless heart,
So long revered, so long reputed wise,
Is weak, with rank knight-errantries o'er-run.
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams
Of self-exposure, laudable, and great
Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death?
Die for thy county?-thou romantic fool!
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink.
Thy country! what to thee?-the Godhead, what? Extinguished; and a solitary God,
(I speak with awe!) though he should bid thee O'er ghastly ruin frowning from his throne? bleed,
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spilt?
Nor can Omnipotence reward the blow.
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey.
Nor is it disobedience. Know, Lorenzo,
Whate'er the Almighty's subsequent command,
His first command is this:- Man, love thyself.'
In this alone free agents are not free.
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize;
If virtue costs existence, 'tis a crime;
Bold violation of our law supreme;
Black suicide; though nations, which consult
Their gain at thy expense, resound applause.
Since virtue's recompense is doubtful here,
If man dies wholly; well may we demand
Why is man suffered to be good, in vain?
Why to be good in vain, is man enjoined?
Why to be good in vain, is man betrayed?
Betrayed by traitors lodged in his own breast,
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt?
Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part?
Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name
Of sacred Conscience) plays the fool in man,
Why reason made accomplice in the cheat?
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise?
Can man by reason's beam be led astray!
Or, at his peril, imitate his God?
Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth,
Or both are true, or man survives the grave.
Or man survives the grave; our own, Lorenzo,
Thy boast supreme a wild absurdity.
Dauntless thy spirit, cowards are thy scorn;
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just.
The man immortal, rationally brave,
Dares rush on death-because he can not die!
But if man loses all when life is lost,
He lives a coward, or a fool expires.
A daring infidel (and such there are,
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge,
Or pure heroical defect of thought)
Of all earth's madmen most deserves a chain.
When to the grave we follow the renowned
For valour, virtue, science, all we love,
And all we praise; for worth whose noon-tide beam,
Enabling us to think in higher style, Mends our ideas of ethereal powers; Dream we, that lustre of the moral world Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close? Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise, And strenuous to transcribe, in human life, "The mind Almighty? Could it be that Fate, Just when the lineaments began to shine, And dawn the Deity, should snatch the draught, With night eternal blot it out, and give The skies alarm, lest angels too might die? If buman souls why not angelic, too,
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man,
The next lose man for ever in the dust?
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes,
And there, where least his judgment fears a flaw
Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends!
Wisdom and worth are sacred names, revered
Where not embraced; applauded, deified;
Why not compassioned too? if spirits die,
Both are calamities, inflicted both
To make us but more wretched. Wisdom's eye
Acute, for what? to spy more miseries;
And worth, so recompensed, new-points their
stings.
Or man surmounts the grave, or gain is loss,
And worth exalted humbles us the more.
Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes
Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind.
'Has virtue, then, no joys?'-Yes, joys dear
bought.
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state
Virtue and vice are at eternal war.
Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought,
Or for precarious, or for small reward?
Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,
Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives and unfaithful guards.
The crown, the unfading crown, her soul inspires!
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail
The body's treacheries and the world's assaults.
On earth's poor pay our famished virtue dies;
Truth incontestible! in spite of all
A Bayle has preached, or a Voltaire believed.
In man the more we dive, the more we see Heaven's signet stamping an immortal make. Dive to the bottom of his soul, the base Sustaining all, what find we? knowledge, love! As light and heat, essential to the sun, These to the soul; and why, if souls expire? How little lovely here? how little known? Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil, And love unfeigned may purchase perfect hate. Why starved, on earth, our angel-appetites, While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill? Were then capacities divine conferred, As a mock diadem, in savage sport, Rank insult of our pompous poverty, Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair? In future age lies no redress? and shuts Eternity the door on our complaint? If so, for what strange ends were mortals made! The worst to wallow, and the best to weep: The man who merits most, must most complain: Can we conceive a disregard in Heaven What the worst perpetrate, or best endure?
This can not be. To love and know, in ma Is boundless appetite and boundle power
And these demonstrate boundless objects too.
Objects, powers, appetites, Heaven suits in all,
Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet
Eternal concord on her tuneful string.
Is man the sole exception from her laws!
Eternity struck off from human hope,
(I speak with truth, but veneration too)
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heaven,
A stain, a dark, impenetrable cloud
On Nature's beauteous aspect, and deforms
(Amazing blot!) deforms her with her lord.
If such is man's allotment, what is Heaven?
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme.
Or own the soul immortal, or invert
All order. Go, mock-majesty! go, man!
And bow to thy superiors of the stall,
Through every scene of sense superior far
They graze the turf untilled, they drink the stream
Unbrewed, and ever full, and unembittered
With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, de-
spairs,
Mankind's peculiar! Reason's precious dower!
No foreign clime they ransack for their robes,
Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar;
Their good is good entire, unmixed, unmarred;
They find a paradise in every field,
On boughs forbidden where no curses hang:
Their ill no more than strikes the sense, un-
stretched
By previous dread, or murmur in the rear:
When the worst comes, it comes unfeared; one stroke
Begins and ends their wo: they die but once;
Blessed, incommunicable privilege! for which
Proud man, who rules the globe and reads the
Philosopher or hero, sighs in vain.
Account for this prerogative in brutes. No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot, But what beams on it from Eternity. O sole and sweet solution! that unties The difficult, and softens the severe; The cloud on Nature's beauteous face dispels; Restores bright order; casts the brute beneath, And reinthrones us in supremacy Of joy, even here. Admit immortal life, And virtue is knight-errantry no more; Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower, Far richer in reversion: hope exults, And though much bitter in our cup is thrown, Predominates, and gives the taste of Heaven. O wherefore is the Deity so kind? Astonishing beyond astonishment! Heaven our reward-for heaven enjoyed below. Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart?-for there The traitor lurks, who doubts the truth I sing: Reason is guiltless; Will alone rebels.What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find New unexpected witnesses against thee?
Ambition, Pleasure, and the Love of gain!
Can'st thou suspect that these, which make the soui
The slave of earth, should own her heir of Hear
Can'st thou suspect what makes us disbelieve
Our immortality should prove it sure?
First, then, Ambition summon to the bar.
Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust,
And inextinguishable nature, speak:
Each much deposes; hear them in their turn.
Thy soul how passionately fond of fame!
How anxious that fond passion to conceal!
We blush, detected in designs on praise,
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men;
And why? because immortal. Art divine
Has made the body tutor to the soul;
Heaven kindly gives our blood a moral flow,
Bids it ascend the glowing check, and there
Upbraid that little heart's inglorious aim
Which stoops to court a character from man;
While o'er us, in tremendous judgment, sit
Far more than man, with endless praise and blame.
Ambition's boundless appetite outspeaks
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire
At high presumptions of their own desert,
One age is poor applause: the mighty shout,
The thunder by the living few begun,
Late time must echo, worlds unborn resound.
We wish our names eternally to live;
Wild dream! which never had haunted human thought,
Had not our natures been eternal too.
Instinct points out an interest in hereafter,
But our blind reason sees not where he lies,
Or, seeing, gives the substance for the shade.
Shame is the shade of Immortality,
And in itself a shadow; soon as caught
Contemned, it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Consult the ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure.
'And is this all? cried Cæsar, at his height,
Disgusted. This third proof Ambition brings
Of immortality. The first in fame,
Observe him near, your envy will abate:
Shamed at the disproportion vast between
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh
At such success, and blush at his renown.
And why? because far richer prize invites
His heart; far more illustrious glory calls;
It calls in whispers, yet the deafest hear.
And can Ambition a fourth proof supply?
It can,
and stronger than the former three,
Yet quite o'erlooked by some reputed wise.
Though disappointments in ambition pain,
And though success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo!
In vain we strive to pluck it from our hearts,
By Nature planted for the noblest ends.
Absurd the famed advice to Pyrrhus given,
More praised than pondered specious, but an
sound:
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