92

Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the blessed cross, by fortune stamp'd
On passive nature before thought was born ?
My birth's blind bigot! fired with local zeal!
No; reason rebaptized me when adult;
Weigh'd true and false in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head;
And made that choice, which once was but my fate.
On argument alone my faith is built:
Reason pursued is faith; and, unpursued
Where proof invites, 'tis reason then no more:
And such our proof, that, or our faith is right,
Or reason lies, and heaven design'd it wrong:
Absolve we this ? what then is blasphemy?

Fond as we are, and justly fond of faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.
Reason the root; fair faith is but the flower:
The fading flower shall die; but reason lives
Immortal as her father in the skies.

* When faith is virtue, reason makes it so.
Wrong not the Christian; think not reason your's;
Tis reason our great master holds so dear;
'Tis reason's injured rights his wrath resents;
'Tis reason's voice obey'd, his glories crown;
To give lost reason life, HE pour'd his own:
Believe, and shew the reason of a man;
Believe, and taste the pleasure of a God;
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb :
Through reason's wounds alone thy faith can die,

92

Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the blessed cross, by fortune stamp'd
On passive nature before thought was born ?
My birth's blind bigot! fired with local zeal!
No; reason rebaptized me when adult;
Weigh'd true and false in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head;
And made that choice, which once was but my fate.
On argument alone my faith is built:
Reason pursued is faith; and, unpursued
Where proof invites, 'tis reason then no more:
And such our proof, that, or our faith is right,
Or reason lies, and heaven design'd it wrong:
Absolve we this? what then is blasphemy?

* When faith is virtue, reason makes it so.
Wrong not the christian; think not reason your's;
Tis reason our great master holds so dear;
'Tis reason's injured rights his wrath resents;
'Tis reason's voice obey'd, his glories crown;
To give lost reason life, HE pour'd his own:
Believe, and shew the reason of a man;
Believe, and taste the pleasure of a God;
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb:
Through reason's wounds alone thy faith can die,

93

Which, dying, tenfold terror gives to death,
And dips in venom his twice-mortal sting.

Learn hence what honours, what loud pæans due
To those, who push our antidote aside;
Those boasted friends to reason and to man,
Whose fatal love stabs every joy, and leaves
Death's terror heighten'd gnawing on his heart:
These pompous sons of reason idolized
And vilified at once; of reason dead,
Then deified, as monarchs were of old;
What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow?
While love of truth through all their camp resounds,
They draw pride's curtain o'er the noon-tide ray,
Spike up their inch of reason on the point
Of philosophick wit, call'd argument;
And then, exulting in their taper, cry,
"Behold the sun;" and, Indian-like, adore.

Talk they of morals ? O thou bleeding love !
Thou maker of new morals to mankind !
The grand morality is love of THEE.
As wise as Socrates, if such they were,
Nor will they bate of that sublime renown,
As wise as Socrates might justly stand
The definition of a modern fool.

A christian is the highest stile of man:
And is there who the blessed cross wipes off,
As a foul blot, from his dishonour'd brow ?

* If angels tremble, 'tis at such a sight;
The wretch they quit, desponding of their charge,
More struck with grief or wonder, who can tell ?

Pantocratie, Fig. 103 by R. Edwards, from a drawing by J. H. W. B. Stadler.

B1992.8.10(39) ba- obj- 3569 -0001

Yale Center for British Art, 2010