140

Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mold,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate
The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage,
And that must end us; that must be our
cure,

145

To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallowed up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night, 150 Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows,

Let this be good, whether our angry foe
Can give it, or will ever? how he can,
Is doubtful; that he never will, is sure.
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire 155
Belike through impotence, or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger whom his anger saves
To punish endless? "Wherefore cease we
then?"

Say they who counsel war. "We are decreed,

160

Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapor; or, inured, not feel;
Or, changed at length, and to the place con-
formed

In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;

Through labor and endurance. This deep

world

Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst

Thick clouds and dark doth heaven's allruling Sire

Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 265 And with the majesty of darkness round Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar,

Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell!

As he our darkness, cannot we his light 269 Imitate when we please? This desert soil Wants not her hidden luster, gems and gold;

Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise

Magnificence; and what can heaven show more?

Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements; these piercing fires As soft as now severe, our temper changed Into their temper; which must needs re

280

The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are, and where; dismissing
quite

All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise.'

He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled

The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain 285

The sound of blustering winds which all night long

Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull

Seafaring men o'er-watched, whose bark by chance

Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay 289 After the tempest: such applause was heard As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,

Advising peace; for such another field They dreaded worse than hell; so much the

In doing what we most in suffering feel? Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With dangerous expedition to invade Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,

Or ambush from the deep. What if we find

Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven 346 Err not), another world, the happy seat Of some new race, called Man, about this time

To be created like to us, though less

In power and excellence, but favored more Of him who rules above; so was his will 351 Pronounced among the gods; and by an oath

That shook heaven's whole circumference confirmed.

Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn

What creatures there inhabit, of what mold Or substance, how endued, and what their -power,

356 And where their weakness, how attempted best,

By force or subtlety. Though heaven be shut,

And heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure In his own strength, this place may lie exposed,

360 The utmost border of his kingdom, left To their defense who hold it; here perhaps

Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset; either with hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess 365
All as our own, and drive, as we were
driven,

The puny habitants; or, if not drive,
Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting
hand

Abolish his own works. This would surpass

370

Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance, when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall

To him who reigns, and so much to him due Of hazard more, as he above the rest 455 High honored sits? Go, therefore, mighty powers,

Terror of heaven, though fallen; intend at home

(While here shall be our home) what best may ease

The present misery, and render hell
More tolerable; if there be cure or charm
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain 461
Of this ill mansion; intermit no watch
Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad
Through all the coasts of dark destruction
seek

Deliverance for us all: this enterprise 465
None shall partake with me.' Thus saying,

rose

The monarch, and prevented all reply; Prudent, lest from his resolution raised Others among the chief might offer now

and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgment have been persuaded that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæsar, preferred the natural wits of Britain, before the labored studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the favor and the love of Heaven we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her as out of Sion should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wyclif, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther, or of Calvin had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and the backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself: what does he then but reveal himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen; I say as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counsels, and are un