SSJ Y T. 3a7 Whether with particlesof heavenly fire The God of nature did his soul inspire, And borrowing from our earth, on that blest days Our new-made earth, a better sort of clay, And moulding up the mass in shape like ours, Form'd a bright imageof th' all -ruling powers. Whilst all the mute creation downwards bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft ; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies." One would almost imagine this heathen poet had read the account which Moses the Jewish historian givesof the original formationof man ; Gen. i. 26. AndGod said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let then; have dominion over the fish, and the foul, and the cattle. And chapter u. 7. And the Lord Godformed man of the dust of the ground, awl breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, andman became a living soul. If man was formed in the image of God, certainly he was a holyand a happy being ; but what is there like holiness or happiness now found running through the rank of creatures that is called by the name of MAN ? Are there any of the brutal kind that de not more regularly answer the design of their crea- tion, and act more agreeably to their nature, than this illustrions thing MAN, that was made to govern them all ? Are there any of the brutes of the land, the water or the air, that we ever fin4 acting so much below their original character as mankind does? And are there any tribes amongst them, through which pain, vexation and misery are so plentifully distributed as among the sons and daughters of the first man ? This globe of earth, if it were to be surveyed by some spirit, some immortal being of the superior regions, and ran- sacked through all the dimensions and corners of it ,which are inhabited by our species of creatures, it would be found such a theatre of folly and madness, such a maze of mingled vice and Misery, as wouldmove the compassion of his refined nature to a painful degree, and almost sink it into sympathy and sorrow, if it were not tempered and restrained by a clear sight of the just and wise conduct of providence, in permitting all this mis- chief. But if all these wide and dismal scenes could be grasped in oneview, by any mortal of a tender and compassionatemake, perhaps it would agonize his better powers into confusion and phreuzy. Should the poets or philosophers form a just idea of st, as far as our common capacities extend, there would be cri- mitial and absurd matter enough to furnish a Horace or a Juve- nal with a thousand jests and sarcasms on their own species, or rather with athousand full satires. There wouldbe follies enough to shake the lungs of a thousand Democrituseswith endless laughter, and there would be miseries enough to raise a fountain of tears for each single Heraclitus, if such a one had lived iu
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=