Invites; for I will clear their senses dark,
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endeavour'd with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut:
And I will place within them as a guide

My umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,
Light after light, well used, they shall attain;
And to the end, persisting, safe arrive.
This my long sufferance and my day of grace
They who neglect and scorn shall never taste;
But hard be harden'd, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall;
And none but such from mercy I exclude.
But yet all is not done; man disobeying
Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins
Against the high supremacy of Heaven,
Affecting Godhead, and so losing all,
To expiate his treason hath naught left;
But to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must die;
Die he or justice must: unless for him
Some other able, and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

Say, heavenly powers, where shall we find such love?
Which of you will be mortal to redeem

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Man's mortal crime; and just the unjust to save?

Dwells in all heaven charity so dear?

He ask'd, but all the heavenly quire stood mute;

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And silence was in heaven: on man's behalf
Patron or intercessor none appear'd;

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 renew'd:-

Father, thy word is pass'd; 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;

This my long sufferance and my day of grace.

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It is a great pity that our author should have thus debased the dignity of the Deity, by putting in his mouth this horrid doctrine of a day of grace, after which it is not possible for a man to repent; and there can be no sort of excuse for him, except the candid reader will make some allowance for the prejudices which he might possibly receive from the gloomy divinity of that enthusiastic age in which he lived.—THYER.

Happy for man, so cotning; 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 anger fall;
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 vanquish'd; 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 4:

But I shall rise victorious, and subdue

My vanquisher, spoil'd of his vaunted spoil;

Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop,
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm'd.

I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead hell captive, mangre 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 carcase glut the grave:
Then, with the multitude of my redeem'd,
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.

His words here ended, but his meek aspect

With corruption there to dwell.

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Psalm xvi. 10. “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither suffer thine Holy One to see corruption :" applied to our Saviour's resurrection by St. Peter, Acts ii. 20, 21.-NEWTON.

↑ His words here ended.

What a charming and lovely picture has Milton given us of God the Son, considered as our Saviour and Redeemer -not in the least inferior in its way to that grander one in the sixth book, where he describes him clothed with majesty and terror, taking vengeance of his enemies. Before he represents him speaking, he makes divine compassion, love without end, and grace without measure, visibly to appear in his face," v. 140; and, carrying on the same amiable picture, makes him end it with a countenance "breathing im mortal love to mortal men." Nothing could be better contrived to leave a deep impression upon the reader's mind; and I believe one may venture to assert, that no art or words could lift the imagination to a stronger idea of a good and benevolent being. The mute eloquence which our author has so prettily expressed in his "silent, yet spake," is with no less beauty described by Tasso, at the end of Armida's speech to Godfrey, c. iv. st. 65.

Ciò detto tace, e la risposta attende

Con atto, ch'en silentio hà voce, e preghi-THYER.

Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shone
Filial obedience: as a sacrifice

Glad to be offer'd, he attends the will

Of his great Father.

Admiration seized

All heaven, what this might mean and whither tend,
Wondering; but soon the Almighty thus replied:
O thou, in heaven and earth the only peace
Found out for mankind under wrath, O thou,
My sole complacence! well thou know'st how dear
To me are all my works; nor man the least,
Though last created; that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By losing thee a while, the whole race lost.
Thou therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join ;
And be thyself man among men on earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth: be thou in Adam's room
The head of all mankind, though Adam's son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee,

ક

As from a second root, shall be restored,
As many as are restored; without thee none.
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit
Imputed shall absolve them, who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die ;
And dying rise, and rising with him raise
His brethren, ransom'd with his own dear life.
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate,
Giving to death, and dying to redeem;
So dearly to redeem what hellish hate
So easily destroy'd; and still destroys

In those who, when they may, accept not grace.
Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume
Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own,
Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss
Equal to God, and equally enjoying

God-like fruition, quitted all to save

A world from utter loss; and hast been found
By merit more than birthright Son of God:
Found worthiest to be so by being good,
Far more than great or high. Because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds;
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt

8 As in him, &c.

See 1 Cor. xv. 22.-NEWTON.

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With thee thy manhood also to this throne;
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man,
Anointed universal King. All power

I give thee; reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits; under thee, as head supreme',
Thrones, princedoms, powers, dominions, I reduce :
All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide
In heaven, or earth, or under earth in hell.
When thou attended gloriously from heaven
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send
The summoning archangels to proclaim
Thy dread tribunal: forthwith from all winds
The living, and forthwith the cited dead
Of all past ages, to the general doom

Shall hasten such a peal shall rouse their sleep.
Then, all thy saints assembled, thou shalt judge
Bad men and angels; they arraign'd shall sink
Beneath thy sentence: hell, her numbers full,
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile
The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And after all their tribulations long

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,

With joy and love triumphing and fair truth:
Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay by,
For regal sceptre then no more shall reed;
God shall be all in all. But, all ye gods,
Adore him, who to compass all this dies;
Adore the Son, and honour him as me.

No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all
The multitude of angels with a shout ",

Under thee, as head supreme.

Here the speech begins to swell into a considerable degree of sublimity, and that of the purest and most perfect kind, in no way inconsistent with our most reverent ideas of the great Being who is the speaker, as he is portrayed to us in the Holy Scriptures.-DUNSTER.

"With a shout.

At this expression of angelic praise, it may be proper to give Addison's remarks unbroken upon the amazing colloquy which they had heard. The critic commences at ver. 56, and

ends with ver. 415.

The survey of the whole creation, v. 56, and of everything that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience; and as much above that in which Virgil has drawn Jupiter, as the christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and sublime than that of the heathens. The particular objects on which he is described to have cast his eye are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed spirits, and in the Divine Person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and complacency.

I need not point out the beauty of the circumstance, wherein the whole host of angels are represented as standing mute; nor show how proper the occasion was to produce such a

PARADISE LOST.

Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy; heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud hosannas fill'd

The eternal regions. Lowly reverent

Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground.
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;

Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise fast by the tree of life

Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence
To heaven removed, where first it grew, there
And flowers aloft shading the fount of life,

grows,

And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;
With these, that never fade, the spirits elect

Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams;
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled.

Then crown'd again their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part: such concord is in heaven.

Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee, Authour of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible

Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt st
Throned inaccessible; but when thou shadest
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine,
Dark with excessive bright' thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle heaven; that brightest seraphim
Approach not; but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee next they sang of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,

In whose conspicuous countenance without cloud
Made visible the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold: on thee
Impress'd the effulgence of his glory abides;

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silence in heaven. The close of this divine colloquy, and the hymn of angels which follows upon it, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.-ADDISON.

Dark with excessive bright.

Gray has imitated this, speaking of Milton,

Blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.