formation of church and state has always been the ground of our divisions in England, While we were Papists, our holy Father rid us, by pretending authority out of the Scriptures to depose princes; when we shook off his authority, the Sectaries furnished themselves with the same weapons, and out of the same magazine, the Bible. So that the Scriptures, which are in themselves the greatest security of governors, as commanding express obedience to them, are now turned to their destruction; and never, since the Reformation, has there wanted a text of their interpreting to authorize a rebel. And it is to be noted by the way, that the doctrines of king-killing and deposing, which have been taken up only by the worst party of the Papists, the most frontless flatterers of the Pope's authority, have been espoused, defended, and are still maintained by the whole body of Nonconformists and Republicans. It is but dubbing themselves the people of God, which it is the interest of their preachers to tell them they are, and their own interest to believe, and, after that, they cannot dip into the Bible, but one text or another will turn up for their purpose. If they are under persecution, as they call it, then that is a mark of their election; if they flourish, then God works miracles for their deliverance, and the saints are to possess the earth.

They may think themselves to be too roughly

handled in this Paper; but I, who know best how far I could have gone on this subject, must be bold to tell them they are spared; though at the same time, Į am not ignorant that they interpret the mildness of a writer to them as they do the mercy of the govern ment; in the one they think it fear, and conclude it weakness in the other. The best way for them to confute me is, as I before advised the Papists, to disclaim their principles, and renounce their practices, We shall all be glad to think them true Englishmen when they obey the king, and true Protestants when they conform to the church discipline.

It remains that I acquaint the reader that these verses were written for an ingenious young gentleman, my friend, upon his translation of The Critical History of the Old Testament, composed by the learned Father Simon the verses, therefore, are addressed to the translator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ought to be, epistolary.

If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this Poem, I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace I have studied him, and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem, designed purely for instruction, ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic ; for here the poet is presumed to be a kind of lawgiver,

and those three qualities which I have named are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way, is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, arc begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less: but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta docere.

DIM as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring, travellers,

Is reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimm'ring ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;

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So dies, and so dissolves in supernatʼral light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head,
And found that one first principle must be ;
But what, or who, that Universal He,
Whether some soul encompassing this ball
Unmade, unmov'd, yet making, moving all,
Or various atoms' interfering dance

Leapt into form, the noble work of Chance ;
Or this great All was from eternity,
Not e'en the Stagirite himself could see;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he.

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As blindly grop'd they for a future state;
As rashly judg'd of Providence and Fate:
But least of all could their endeavours find

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What most concern'd the good of human kind;
For happiness was never to be found,

But vanish'd from 'em like inchanted ground.

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One thought content the good to be enjoy'd;
This every little accident destroy'd:

The wiser madmen did for virtue toil,

A thorny, or at least a barren soil:

In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep,
But found their line too short, the well too deep,
And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep. 35
Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll,
Without a centre where to fix the soul:

In this wild maze their vain endeavours end:
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach infinity?

For what could fathom God were more than He.
The Deist thinks he stands cn firmer ground;
Cries, Enxa; the mighty secret's found:
God is that spring of good; supreme, and best;
We made to serve, and in that service blest.
If so, some rules of worship must be giv'n,
Distributed alike to all by Heav'n;
Else God were partial, and to some deny'd
The means his justice should for all provide.

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