When thou stood’st up his tempter to the pride

Of numbering Israel—which cost the lives

of threescore and ten thousand Israelites

By three days’ pestilence? Such was thy zeal

To Israel then, the same that now to me.

As for those captive tribes, themselves were they

Who wrought their own captivity, fell off

From God to worship calves, the deities

Of Egypt, Baal next and Ashtaroth,

And all the idolatries of heathen round,

Besides their other worse than heathenish crimes;

Nor in the land of their captivity

Humbled themselves, or penitent besought

The God of their forefathers, but so died

Impenitent, and left a race behind

Like to themselves, distinguishable scarce

From Gentiles, but by circumcision vain,

And God with idols in their worship joined.

Should I of these the liberty regard,

Who, freed, as to their ancient patrimony,

Unhumbled, unrepentant, unreformed,

Headlong would follow, and to their gods perhaps

Of Bethel and of Dan? No; let them serve

Their enemies who serve idols with God.

Yet He at length, time to himself best known,

Remembering Abraham, by some wondrous call

May bring them back, repentant and sincere,

And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,

While to their native land with joy they haste,

As the Red Sea and Jordan once he cleft,

When to the Promised Land their fathers passed.

To his due time and providence I leave them.”

So spake Israel’s true King, and to the Fiend

Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles.

So fares it when with truth falsehood contends.

THE FOURTH BOOK

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success

The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,

Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope

So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric

That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,

So little here, nay lost. But Eve was Eve;

This far his over-match, who, self-deceived

And rash, beforehand had no better weighed

The strength he was to cope with, or his own.

But—as a man who had been matchless held

In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,

To salve his credit, and for very spite,

Still will be tempting him who foils him still,

And never cease, though to his shame the more;

Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,

About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,

Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;

Or surging waves against a solid rock,

Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,

(Vain battery!) and in froth or bubbles end—

So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse

Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,

Yet gives not o’er, though desperate of success,

And his vain importunity pursues.

He brought our Saviour to the western side

Of that high mountain, whence he might behold

Another plain, long, but in breadth not wide,

Washed by the southern sea, and on the north

To equal length backed with a ridge of hills