EPISTLE I. OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH ARGUMENT. Of man in the abstract.-1. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things.-2- That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the creation agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown.-3. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends.-4. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfituess, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his dispensations.-5. The absurdity of couceiting himself the final canse of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.--6. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while, on the one hand, he demands the perfec tious of the angels, and, on the other, the bodily qualifications of the brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable.-. That throughout the whole visible world an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, aud of all creatures to man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason: that reason alone countervails all the other faculties.-8. How much further this order and subordination of living creatures may extend above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation, must be destroyed.-9. The extravagance, madness, and pride, of such a desire.-10. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state. AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things Let us (since life can little more supply Try what they open, what the covert yield; 1. Say first, of God above or man below What can we reason but from what we know? Of man what see we but his station here, From which to reason or to which refer? Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known, 'Tis our's to trace him only in our own. whole? Is the great chain that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee? 2. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind! [find, First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less? In human works, though labour'd on with pain, [strains When the proud steed shall know why man reHis fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains: When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god; Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend His actions', passions', being's, use and end; Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity. Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather man's as perfect as he ought; His knowledge measur'd to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. If to be perfect in a certain sphere, What matter soon or late, or here or there! The bless'd to-day is as completely so As who began a thousand years ago. [fate, 3. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of All but the page prescrib'd, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to day, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d mind Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To be content's his natural desire; ; He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; And who but wishes to invert the laws Of order, sins against the' Eternal cause. 5. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use ?---Pride answers, "Tis for mine : For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb and spreads out every flower; Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew The juice nectareous and the balmy dew; |