This genera worship is to praise and pray:
One part to borrow blessings, one to pay:
And when frail nature slides into offence,
The sacrifice for crimes is penitence.
Yet since the effects of providence, we find,
Are variously dispensed to human kind;
That vice triumphs, and virtue suffers here,
A brand that sovereign 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 declared;
The bad meet punishment, the good reward.

Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar.
And would not be obliged to God for more.
Vain, wretched creature, how art thou misled,
To think thy wit these godlike notions bred!
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropped from Heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Revealed religion first informed thy sight,
And Reason saw not, till Faith sprung the light.
Hence all thy natural worship takes the source :
"T is revelation what thou think'st discourse.
Else how comest thou to see these truths so clear,
Which so obscure to heathens did appear?
Not Plato these, nor Aristotle found;

Nor he whose wisdom oracles renowned.

Hast thou a wit so deep, or so sublime,

Or canst thou lower dive, or higher climb?

Canst thou by reason more of Godhead know

Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero ?

Those giant wits, in happier ages born,

(When arms and arts did Greece and Rome adorn,)

Knew no such system: no such piles could raise
Of natural worship, built on prayer and praise
To one sole God.

Nor did remorse to expiate sin prescribe;
But slew their fellow-creatures for a bribe:

The guiltless victim groaned for their offence;
And cruelty and blood was penitence.

If sheep and oxen could atone for men,
Ah! at how cheap a rate the rich might sin!

And great oppressors might Heaven's wrath beguile,
By offering his own creatures for a spoil!

Darest thou, poor worm, offend Infinity?

And must the terms of peace be given by thee?
Then thou art Justice in the last appeal;

Thy easy God instructs thee to rebel:

And, like a king remote, and weak, must take
What satisfaction thou art pleased to make.

But if there be a power too just and strong
To wink at crimes, and bear unpunished wrong;
Look humbly upward, see his will disclose
The forfeit first, and then the fine impose:
A mulct thy poverty could never pay,
Had not eternal wisdom found the way;

And with celestial wealth supplied thy store:

His justice makes the fine, his mercy quits the score.

See God descending in thy human frame;

The offended suffering in the offender's name;

All thy misdeeds to him imputed see,

And all his righteousness devolved on thee.

For granting we have sinned, and that the offence

Of man is made against Omnipotence,

Some price that bears proportion must be paid;

And infinite with infinite be weighed.

See then the Deist lost: remorse for vice,
Not paid; or paid, inadequate in price:
What farther means can Reason now direct,
Or what relief from human wit expect?
That shows us sick; and sadly are we sure
Still to be sick, till heaven reveal the cure:

If then Heaven's will must needs be understood
(Which must, if we want cure, and Heaven be good),

Let all records of will revealed be shown;

With Scripture all in equal balance thrown,

And our one sacred book will be that one.

Proof needs not here, for whether we compare That impious, idle, superstitious ware

Of rites, lustrations, offerings (which before,

In various ages, various countries bore),

With Christian faith and virtues, we shall find
None answering the great ends of human kind,
But this one rule of life, that shows us best
How God may be appeased, and mortals blest.
Whether from length of time its worth we draw,
The world is scarce more ancient than the law:
Heaven's early care prescribed for every age;
First in the soul, and after in the page.
Or, whether more abstractedly we look,

Or on the writers, or the written book,

Whence but from heaven, could men unskilled in arts,

In several ages born, in several parts,

Weave such agreeing truths? or how, or why,
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?
Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice,
Starving their gain, and martyrdom their price.
If on the book itself we cast our view,
Concurrent heathens prove the story true:

The doctrine, miracles; which must convince,
For Heaven in them appeals to human sense:

And though they prove not, they confirm the cause,
When what is taught agrees with Nature's laws.
Then for the style, majestic and divine,

It speaks no less than God in every

line:

Commanding words; whose force is still the same As the first fiat that produced our frame.

All faiths beside, or did by arms ascend;

Or sense indulged has made mankind their friend:
This only doctrine does our lusts oppose:
Unfed by nature's soil, in which it grows;
Cross to our interests, curbing sense, and sin;
Oppressed without, and undermined within

It thrives through pain; its own tormentors tires;
And with a stubborn patience still aspires.
To what can Reason such effects assign,
Transcending nature, but to laws divine?
Which in that sacred volume are contained;
Sufficient, clear, and for that use ordained.

THE CHARACTER OF A GOOD Parson.

Imitated from Chaucer.

A parish priest was of the pilgrim train;

An awful, reverend, and religious man.

His eyes

diffused a venerable grace,

And charity itself was in his face.

Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor;

(As God has clothed his own ambassador :)

For such, on earth, his bless'd Redeemer bore.

Of sixty years he seemed; and well might last
To sixty more, but that he lived too fast;
Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense;
And made almost a sin of abstinence.
Yet, had his aspect nothing of severe,
But such a face as promised him sincere.
Nothing reserved or sullen was to see:
But sweet regards; and pleasing sanctity:
Mild was his accent, and his action free.
With eloquence innate his tongue was armed;

Though harsh the precept, yet the preacher charmed.
For letting down the golden chain from high,

He drew his audience upward to the sky:

And oft, with holy hymns, he charmed their ears: (A music more melodious than the spheres.)

For David left him, when he went to rest,

His lyre; and after him he sung the best.

He bore his great commission in his look:

But sweetly tempered awe; and softened all he spoke.
He preached the joys of heaven, and pains of hell:
And warned the sinner with becoming zeal,
But on eternal mercy loved to dwell.

He taught the gospel rather than the law;
And forced himself to drive; but loved to draw.
For fear but freezes minds: but love, like heat,
Exhales the soul sublime, to seek her native seat.
To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard,
Wrapped in his crimes, against the storm prepared;
But, when the milder beams of mercy play,
He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away.
Lightning and thunder (heaven's artillery)

As harbingers before the Almighty fly: