220 PREFACE. of nature, plunged early into diseases and death, and stink down to damnation in multitudes. Was it for this, that poesy was endued with all those allurements that lead the mind away in a pleasing captivity ? Was it for this, she was furnished with so many intellectual charms, that she might seduce the heart from God, the original beauty, and the most lovely of beings ? Can I ever be persuaded, that those sweet and resistless forces of metaphor, wit, sound, and number, were given with this de- sign, that they should be all ranged under the banner of the great malicious spirit, to invade the rights of heaven, and to bring swift and everlasting destruction upon men ? How will these allies of the nether world, the lewd and profane versifiers, stand aghast before the great Judge, when the blood of many souls, whom they never saw, shall be laid to the charge of their writings, and be dreadfully required at their hands ? The Rev. Mr. Collier has set this awful scene before them in just and flaming colours. If the application were not too rude and uncivil, that noble stanza df my lord Roscommon, oh psalm cxlviii. might be addressed to them. "Ye dragons, whose contagious breath " Peoples the dark retreats of death, "Change your dire hissings into heav'nly songs, " And praise your Maker with your forked tongues." This profanation and debasement of so divine an art, has tempted some weaker christians to imagine that poetry and vice are naturally a-kin ; or, at least, that verse is fit only to recommend trifles, and entertain our looser hours, but it is too light and trivial a method to treat any thing that is serious and sacred. They submit, indeed, to use it in divine psalmody, but they love the driest translation of the psalm best. They will venture to sing a dull hymn or two at church, in tunes of equal dulness ; but still they persuade themselves, and their children, that the beau- ties of poesy are vain and dangerous. All that arises a degree above Mr. Sternhold is too airy for worship, and hardly escapes the sentence of unclean and abominable. It is strange, thatpersons that have the bible in their hands, should he led away by thoughtless prejudices to so wild and rash an opinion. Let me entreat them not to indulge this sour, this censorious humour too far, lest the sacred writers fall under the lash of their unlimited and unguarded reproaches. Let me entreat them to look into their bible, and remember the style and way of writing that is used by tiiean- cientprophets. Have they forgot, or were they never told, that many parts of the Old Testament are hebrery verse? And the figures are stronger, and the metaphors bolder, and the imagesmore surprising and strange than even Had in any profane writer. When Deborah sings her praises to the God of Israel, while he marched from the field of Edom, she sets the " Earth a trembling, the heavens drop, and the mountains dissolve from before the Lord. They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera : W hel the river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength." Judges, v. Le. When F,.liphaz, in the book of Job, speaks his sense of the holiness of God, he introduces a machine in a vision e " Fear came upon me, trembling on all my bones, the hair of my flesh stood up ; a spirit passed by and stood still, but its form was undiscernible ; an image before mine eyes ; and silence ; then I heard a voice,siying, Shall mortal man be more just than God ? &c." Job iv. When he describes the safety of the righteous, he hides him "from the scourge of the tongue, he makes him laugh at destruction and famine, he brings the stones of the field into league with him, and makes the Unite animals enter into a covenant of peace," Job v. 21, &c. When Job speaks of the grave, how melancholy is the gloom that he spreads over it' It is a region to which I must shortly go, " and whence I shall not return : it is a land of darkness, it is darkness itself, the land of the shadow of death ; all confusion and disorder, and where the light is as darkness. This is my house, there hare I made my bed : I have said to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister: As for my hopo, rho shall see it ? I and my hope go down together to the bars of the pit." Job z. 21. and 2:ü. 13. When he humbles himself in complainings before the alnightines, of God, what contemptible and feeble images 'loth he use ! " Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro ? Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble ? I emraume away site a rotten thing, a garment eaten by the meth ;" Job xiii. 25. &e.
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