AN ESSAY ON MAN. ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I. Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the Universe. Of man in the abstract.-I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, ver. 17, &c. II. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the crea tion, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown, ver. 35, &c. III. 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, ver. 77, &c. IV. 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 unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his dispensations, ver. 109, &c. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, ver. 131, &c. VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfection 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, ver. 17%, &c. VII. 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, and of all creatures to man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that reason alone countervails all the other faculties, ver. 207. VIII. How much farther 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, ver. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, ver. 250. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, ver. 281, to the end. EPISTLE I. AWAKE, my St. John ! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan : A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise: Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man. I. 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, Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own. Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole? Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind? Of systems possible, if 'tis confest, May, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, though labour'd on with pain, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain: In God's, one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So man, who here seems principal alone, When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; What matter, soon or late, or here, or there? As who began a thousand years ago. III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, 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, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar, Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore. What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Yet simple nature to his hope has given, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense, Aspiring to be angels men rebel : And who but wishes to invert the laws Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause. V. 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; |