Of endless night! night darker than the grave's t
Who fight the proofs of immortality!
With horrid zeal, and execrable arts,

Work all their engines, level their black fires,
To blot from man this attribute divine,
(Than vita! blood far dearer to the wise)
Blasphemers, and rank atheists to themselves ?
To contradict them, see all nature rise;
What object, what event, the moon beneath,
But argues, or endears, an after scene?
To reason proves, or weds it to desire!
All things proclaim it needful; some advance
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure.
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen,
From heav'n, and earth, and man. Indulge a few,
By nature, as her common habit, worn;
So pressing Providence a truth to teach,

Which truth untaught, all other truths were vain.
THOU! whose all providential eye surveys,
Whose hand directs, whose Spirit fills and warms
Creation, and holds empire far beyond!
Eternity's Inhabitant august!

Of two eternities amazing Lord!

One past, ere man's or angel's had begun :
Aid while I rescue from the foe's assault

Thy glorious immortality in man:

A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relish'd most

By those who love thee most, who most adore.
Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of thee the great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom; is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her, is most wise.
Lorenzo, to this heav'nly Delphos haste;
And come hack all-immortal, all-divine;
Look nature through, 'tis revolution all;

All change, no death. Day follows night; and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th' example. See the summer gay,
With her green chaplet, and ambrosial flow'rs,
Droops into pallid autumn winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn and his golden fruits away;

Then melts into the spring soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to reflourish, fades ;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re ascend.
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
With this minute distinction, emblems just,
Nature revolves, but man advances; both
Eternal, that a circle, this a line;

That gravitates, this soars. Th' aspiring soul,

Ardent and tremulous, like flame, ascends;
Zeal, and humility, her wings to heav'n.
The world of matter, with its various forms,
All dies into new life. Life horn from death
Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll.
No single atom, once in being, lost,

With change of counsel charges the Most High.
What hence infers Lorenzo? Can it be?
Matter immortal? And shall spirit die ?
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise ?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain, on which he feeds?
Is man, in whom alone is pow'r to prize
The bliss of being, or with previous pain
Deplore its period, by the spleen of fate,
Severely doom'd death's single unredeem'd ?
If nature's revolution speaks aloud,
In her gradation, hear her louder still.
Look nature through, 'tis neat gradation all.
By what minute degrees her scale ascends!
Each middle nature join'd at each extreme,
To that above it join'd, to that beneath,
Parts, into parts reciprocally shot,

Abhor divorce: What love of union reigns!
Here, dormant matter waits a call to life;

Half-life, half death, join there; here, life and sense; There, sense from reason steals a glimm'ring ray; Reason shines out in man. But how preserved

The chain unbroken upward, to the realms

Of incorporeal life? those realms of bliss

Where death hath no dominion? Grant a make
Half mortal, half immortal; earthy, part;
And part ethereal; grant the soul of man
Eternal; or in man the series ends.

Wide yawns the gap; connection is no more;
Check'd reason halts; her next step wants support;
Striving to climb, she tumbles from her scheme;
A scheme analogy pronounced so true:
Analogy, man's surest guide below.

Thus far, all nature calls on thy belief.
And will Lorenzo, careless of the call,
False attestation on all nature charge,
Rather than violate his league with death?
Renounce his reason, rather than renounce
The dust beloved, and run the risk of heav'n?
O what indignity to deathless souls!
What treason to the majesty of man!
Of man immortal! Hear the lofty style:
If so decreed, th' Almighty will be done.
Let earth dissolve, yon pond'rous orbs descend,

And grind us into dust: The soul is safe;
The man emerges; mounts above the wreck,
As tow'ring flame from nature's fun'ral pyre :
O'er devastation as a gainer smiles;

His charter, his inviolable rights,

Well pleased to learn from thunder's impotence,
Death's pointless darts, and hell's defeated storms.'
But these chimeras touch not thee, Lorenzo !
The glories of the world thy sev'nfold shield.
Other ambition than of crowns in air,
And superlunary felicities,

Thy bosom warm. I'll cool it, if I can;

And turn those glories that enchant, against thee.
What ties thee to this life proclaims the next.
If wise, the cause that wounds thee is thy cure.
Come, my ambitious! let us mount together
(To mount Lorenzo never can refuse ;)

And from the clouds, where pride delights to dwell, Look down on earth.---What seest thou? Wondrous things!

Terrestrial wonders, that eclipse the skies.

What lengths of labour'd lands! what loaded seas! Loaded by man, for pleasure, wealth, or war! Seas, winds, and planets, into service brought, His art acknowledge, and promote his ends. Nor can th' eternal rocks his will withstand: What levell'd mountains! and what lifted vales! O'er vales and mountains sumptuous cities swell, And gild our landscape with their glitt'ring spires. Some 'mid the wond'ring waves majestic rise; And Neptune holds a mirror to their charms. Far greater still! (what cannot mortal might ?? See wide dominions ravish'd from the deep; The narrow'd deep with indignation foams. Or southward turn, to delicate and grand; The finer arts there ripen in the sun. How the tall temples, as to meet their gods, Ascend the skies! the proud triumphal arch Shows us half heav'n beneath its ample bend. High through mid air, here streams are taught to flow Whole rivers, there, laid by in basons, sleep. Here, plains turn oceans; there, vast oceans join Thro' kingdoms chaunell'd deep from shore to shore ; And changed creation takes its face from man. Beats thy brave breasts for formidable scenes, Where fame and empire wait upon the sword? See fields in blood; hear naval thunders rise; Britannia's voice ! that awes the world to peace. How yon enormous mole prejecting breaks The mid-sea, furious waves! their roar amidst, Out speaks the Deity, and says, ' O main! Thus fa, not farther: new restraints obey."

Earth's disembowel'd measured are the skies!
Stars are detected in their deep resess!
Creation widens, vanquish'd nature yields !
Her secrets are extorted! Art prevails!
What monument of genius, spirit, pow'r !
And now, Lorenzo, raptured at this scene,
Whose glories render heav'n superfluous! say,
Whose footsteps these ?---Immortals have been here.
Could less than souls immortal this have done?
Earth's cover'd o'er with proofs of souls immortal;
And proofs of immortality forgot.

To flatter thy grand foible, I confess,

These are ambition's works; and there are great:
But this the least immortal souls can do:

Transcend them all.--- But what can these transcend?
Dost ask me, What?---One sigh for the distrest.
What then for infidels ---A deeper sigh !
'Tis moral grandeur makes the mighty man:
How little they, who think aught great below!
All our ambitions death defeats but one;
And that it crowns. Here cease we But, ere ong,
More pow'rful proof shall take the field against thee,
Stronger than death, and smiling at the tomb.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

PART II

OF

THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED.

S we are at war with the power, it were well if we were at war with the manners, of France. A land of levity is a land of guilt. A serious mind is the vative soil of every virtue, and the single character that does true honour to mankind. The soul's immortality has been the favourite theme with the serious of all ages. Nor is it strange; it is a subject by far the most interesting and important that can enter the mind of man. Of highest moment this subject always was, and always will be. Yet this its highest moment seems to admit of increase, at this day; a sort of occasional importance is superadded to the natural weight of it, if that opinion which is advanced in the Preface to the preceding Night he just. It is there supposed that all our infidels, whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to keep themselves in countenance, they patronise, are betrayed into their deplorable error, by some doubt of their immortality at the bottom. And the more I con sider this point, the more I am persuaded of the truth of that opinion. Though the distrust of a futurity is a strange error; yet it is an error into which bad men may naturally be distressed. For it is impossible to hid defiance to final ruin, without some refuge in imagination, some presumption of escape. And what presumption is there? There are but two in nature; but two within the compass of human thought: and these