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, v.109, etc. 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, v.131, etc. VI. The unreasonableness
of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands
the Perfections 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, v.173, etc. VII. That
throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in
the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is 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, v.207. VIII. 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, v.233. IX. The
extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v.250. X. The
consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to
our present and future state, v.281, etc., 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,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace Him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe h