Reason by sense no more can understand;
The game is played into another hand.
Why chose we then like bilanders to creep
Along the coast, and land in view to keep,
When safely we may launch into the deep?
In the same vessel which our Savior bore,
Himself the pilot, let us leave the shore, 132
And with a better guide a better world ex-
plore.

Could he his godhead veil with flesh and blood

136

And not veil these again to be our food?
His grace in both is equal in extent;
The first affords us life, the second nourish-
ment.

And if he can, why all this frantic pain

To construe what his clearest words contain,

And make a riddle what he made so plain? To take up half on trust and half to try, 141 Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry. Both knave and fool the merchant we may call

To pay great sums and to compound the small,

For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all?

145

And stand, like Adam, naming every beast, Were weary work; nor will the Muse describe

A slimy-born and sun-begotten tribe, Who, far from steeples and their sacred sound,

In fields their sullen conventicles found. 240 These gross, half-animated lumps I leave, Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive.

But if they think at all, 't is sure no higher Than matter put in motion may aspire; Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of clay,

So drossy, so divisible are they

As would but serve pure bodies for allay,

245