A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;

Others in virtue placed felicity,

But virtue joined with riches and long life;

In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;

The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,

Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,

Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

As fearing God nor man, contemning all

Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—

Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;

For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the World began, and how Man fell,

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;

And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves

All glory arrogate, to God give none;

Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who, therefore, seeks in these

True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

An empty cloud. However, many books,

Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Or, if I would delight my private hours

With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language can I find

That solace? All our Law and Story strewed

With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon

That pleased so well our victor’s ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived—

Ill imitated while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid

As varnish on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,

Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling,

Where God is praised aright and godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies and his Saints

(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);

Unless where moral virtue is expressed

By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.

Their orators thou then extoll’st as those

The top of eloquence—statists indeed,

And lovers of their country, as may seem;

But herein to our Prophets far beneath,

As men divinely taught, and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government,

In their majestic, unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,