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Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers
Of earth and hell confederate take away:
A liberty, which persecution, fraud,

Opression, prisons, have no power to bind ;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.
'Tis liberty of heart derived from heaven,
Bought with HIS blood, who gave it to mankind,
And sealed with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure
By the unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts

All bear the royal stamp, that speaks them his,
And are august; but this transcends them all.
His other works, the visible display

Of all-creating energy and might,

Are grand no doubt, and worthy of the word
That, finding an interminable space
Unoccupied, has filled the void so well,
And made so sparkling what was dark before.
But these are not his glory. Man, 'tis true,
Smit with the beauty of so fair a scene,
Might well suppose the artificer divine
Meant it eternal, had he not himself
Pronounced it transient, glorious as it is,
And still designing a more glorious far,
Doomed it as insufficient for his praise.
These therefore are occasional, and pass

Formed for the confutation of the fool,
Whose lying heart disputes against a God;
That office served, they must be swept away.
Not so the labours of his love: they shine
In other heavens than these that we behold,
And fade not. There is paradise that fears
No forfeiture, and of its fruits he sends
Large prelibation oft to saints below.
Of these the first in order, and the pledge
And confident assurance of the rest,
Is liberty. A flight into his arms
Ere yet mortality's fine threads give way,
A clear escape from tyrannizing lust,
And full immunity from penal woe.

Chains are the portion of revolted man,
Stripes and a dungeon; and his body serves
The triple purpose. In that sickly, foul,
Opprobrious residence he finds them all.
Propense his heart to idols, he is held
In silly dotage on created things,
Careless of their Creator. And that low
And sordid gravitation of his powers

To a vile clod so draws him, with such force
Resistless from the centre he should seek,
That he at last forgets it. All his hopes
Tend downward; his ambition is to sink,
To reach a depth profounder still, and still

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Profounder, in the fathomless abyss

Of folly, plunging in pursuit of death.
But ere he gain the comfortless repose
He seeks, and acquiescence of his soul
In heaven-renouncing exile, he endures—
What does it not? from lusts opposed in vain,
And self-reproaching conscience. He foresees
The fatal issue to his health, fame, peace,
Fortune and dignity; the loss of all,

That can ennoble man, and make frail life,
Short as it is, supportable. Still worse,

Far worse than all the plagues, with which his sins
Infect his happiest moments, he forebodes
Ages of hopeless misery. Future death,

And death still future. Not an hasty stroke,
Like that which sends him to the dusty grave;
But unrepealable enduring death.

Scripture is still a trumpet to his fears:

What none can prove a forgery may be true;
What none but bad men wish exploded must.
That scruple checks him. Riot is not loud,
Nor drunk enough to drown it. In the midst
Of laughter his compunctions are sincere ;
And he abhors the jest by which he shines.
Remorse begets reform. His master-lust
Falls first before his resolute rebuke,

And seems dethroned and vanquished. Peace ensues,

But spurious and short-lived; the puny child
Of self-congratulating pride, begot
On fancied innocence. Again he falls,
And fights again; but finds his best essay
A presage ominous, portending still
Its own dishonour by a worse relapse.
Till nature, unvailing nature, foiled
So oft, and wearied in the vain attempt,
Scoffs at her own performance. Reason now
Takes part with appetite, and pleads the cause
Perversely, which of late she so condemned;
With shallow shifts and old devices, worn
And tattered in the service of debauch,
Covering his shame from his offended sight.

"Hath God indeed given appetites to man, "And stored the earth so plenteously with means "To gratify the hunger of his wish;

"And doth he reprobate and will he damn "The use of his own bounty? making first "So frail a kind, and then enacting laws "So strict, that less than perfect must despair? "Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth

Dishonours God, and makes a slave of man. "Do they themselves, who undertake for hire "The teacher's office, and dispense at large "Their weekly dole of edifying strains, "Attend to their own music? have they faith

"In what with such solemnity of tone

"And gesture they propound to our belief?
"Nay-conduct hath the loudest tongue. The voice
"Is but an instrument, on which the priest
"May play what tune he pleases. In the deed,
"The unequivocal authentic deed,

"We find sound argument, we read the heart.”
Such reasonings (if that name must need belong
To excuses in which reason has no part)
Serve to compose a spirit well inclined

To live on terms. of amity with vice,
And sin without disturbance. Often urged,
(As often as libidinous discourse
Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes
Of theological and grave import)

They gain at last his unreserved assent;
Till, hardened his heart's temper in the forge
Of lust, and on the anvil of despair,

He slights the strokes of conscience. Nothing moves,
Or nothing much, his constancy in ill;

Vain tampering has but fostered his disease;

'Tis desperate, and he sleeps the sleep of death.
Haste now, philosopher, and set him free.

Charm the deaf serpent wisely. Make him hear
Of rectitude and fitness, moral truth

How lovely, and the moral sense how sure,
Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps

VOL. II:

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