To reason proves, or weds it to desire?

All things proclaim it needful; some advance
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure.
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen,

The bliss of being, or, with previous pain,
Deplore its period by the spleen of Fate,
Severely doom'd Death's single unredeemed?
If Nature's revolution speaks aloud

From Heaven, and earth, and man. Indulge a In her gradation, hear her louder still.
few,

By Nature, as her common habit, worn;
So pressing Providence a truth to teach,
Which truth untaught all other truths were vain.
Thou! whose all-providential eye surveys,
Whose hand directs, whose spirit fills and warms
Creation, and holds empire far beyond!
Eternity's Inhabitant august!
Of two eternities amazing Lord!

One past, ere man's or angel's had begun,
Aid! while I rescue from the foe's assault
Thy glorious immortality in man;

A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relished most
By those who love thee most, who most adore.
Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of thee the Great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom; is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her is most wise.
Lorenzo! to this heavenly Delphos haste,
And come back all-immortal, all-divine.
Look Nature through, 'tis revolution all;
All change, no death: day follows night, and night
The dying day: stars rise, and set, and rise:
Earth takes the example. See, the Summer gay,
With her green chaplet and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid Autumn: Winter gray,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows Autumn and his golden fruits away,
Then melts into the Spring: soft Spring, with

breath

Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to reflourish, fades:
As in a wheel, all sinks to reascend:
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just,
Nature revolves, but man advances; both
Eternal: that a circle, this a line:
That gravitates, this soars. The aspiring soul,
Ardent and tremulous, like flame, ascends,
Zeal and humility her wings, to Heaven.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life born from Death
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being, lost,
With change of counsel charges the Most High.
What hence infers Lorenzo? can it be?
Matter immortal? and shall spirit die?
Above the nobler shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain on which he feeds?
Is man, in whom alone is power to prize

Look Nature through, 'tis neat gradation all.
By what minute degrees her scale ascends!
Each middle nature joined at each extreme;
To that above it joined, to that beneath.
Parts into parts reciprocally shot,
Abhor divorce. What love of union reigns!
Here dormant matter waits a call to life;
Half-life, half-death, join there: here life and sense,
There sense from reason steals a glimmering ray;
Reason shines out in man. But how preserv'd
The chain unbroken upward, to the realms
Of incorporeal life? those realms of bliss
Where Death hath no dominion? Grant a make
Half mortal, half immortal; earthy part,
And part ethereal: grant the soul of man
Eternal, or in man the series ends.

Wide yawns the gap; connection is no more;
Check'd reason halts; her next step wants sup-
port;

Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme,
A scheme Analogy pronounced so true;
Analogy-man's surest guide below.

Thus far all Nature calls on thy belief;
And will Lorenzo, careless of the call,
False attestation on all Nature charge,
Rather than violate his league with Death?
Renounce his reason rather than renounce
The dust belov'd, and run the risk of Heaven?
O what indignity to deathless souls!
What treason to the majesty of man!
Of man immortal! hear the lofty style:
'If so decreed, the Almighty Will be done.
Let earth dissolve, yon ponderous orbs descend,
And grind us into dust. The soul is safe;
The man emerges; mounts above the wreck,
As towering flame from Nature's funeral pyre;
O'er devastation, as a gainer, smiles;
His charter, his inviolable rights,
Well pleased to learn, from Thunder's impotence,
Death's pointless darts, and Hell's defeated storms.'

But these chimeras touch not thee, Lorenzo;
The glories of the world thy sevenfold shield.
Other ambition than of crowns in air,
And superlunary felicities,

Thy bosom warms. I'll cool it if I can;
And turn those glories that inchant against thee.
What ties thee to this life proclaims the next.
If wise, the cause that wounds thee is thy cure.
Come, my Ambitious! let us mount together,
(To mount Lorenzo never can refuse,)
And from the clouds, where Pride delights to dwell,
Look down on earth.-What seest thou? wondrous
things!

Terrestrial wonders, that eclipse the skies.

O'er vales and mountains sumptuous cities swell, CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORT

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 import

High through mid air, here streams are taught to ant that can enter the mind of man. Of highest flow;

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 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 affecting view, than is (I think) to be met with else

where.

-The difficulty of being an Infidel; the infamy; the cause; 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 Christians; 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 scenes? 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 This, earth and skies* already have proclaimed. and tender instance of true friendship towards him. The world's a prophecy of worlds to come, Is not this surprising? what could be the cause? And who, what God foretells, (who speaks in things The cause was for his honour: It was a truly no- Still louder than in words) shall dare deny? ble, though, perhaps, a too punctilious regard for If Nature's arguments appear too weak, Immortality for his friend asking him, with such Turn a new leaf, and stronger read in man. an affectionate concern as became a friend, 'Where If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees, he should deposit his remains?' it was resented by Can he prove infidel to what he feels! Socrates, as implying a dishonourable supposition He, whose blind thought futurity denies, that he could be so mean as to have regard for any Unconscious bears, Bellerophon! like thee, thing, even in himself, that was not immortal. 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.

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

from them.

July 7, 1744.

CONTENTS.

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,

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 gradual growth of reason; from his fear of death; from the nature of hope, and of virtue; from knowledge and love, as being 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 Sighs on for something more, when most enjoye alone renders our present state intelligible.-An objection from Is Heaven then kinder to thy flocks than thee? the Stoic's disbelief of Immortality answered.-Endless ques

tions unresolvable, 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

*See Night the Sixth.

Man bleats from instinct, though, perhaps, de- Of all the darkest, if at death we die.

bauched

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 our
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 lesson half unlearned.
Men perish in advance, as if the sun
Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drowned;
If fit with dim 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 amiss,
And turn the scale in favour of the just!
His immortality alone can solve
That darkest of enigmas, human hope;
W

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 bliss ?→
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 Almighty 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

new

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,