On the Weakness of the Human Understanding, and the Incomprehensibility of the Deity

Are there, Lorenzo, who suppose
That man can nature's God disclose;
Their moral and religious schemes
Building on theologic dreams?
Expect not thou a point to hit,
Beyond the sight of human wit;
Nor ever think to judge of ought
Above the reach of sober thought.
Rul'd by no giant hopes or fears,
Whose stature grows with length of years,
In search of truth be sure to find
The labour suited to the mind;
With genius nature bearing part,
The strict, yet gentle, nurse of art.
For, say the voice of reason true;
Be ours a just abstracted view;
Be it the privilege of man,
To trace exactly nature's plan;
The scale of beings in his hands,
To know the point at which he stands,
Compar'd with all he boasts to know,
As well above him as below;
Yet, if, of human logick vain,
He link to heaven a kindred chain,
Conclusions idle soon he draws;
And heav'n prescribes by human laws.

Imagine thou in what degree
A seraph stands 'tween God and thee;
The neck how lowly dost thou bend
Before thy bright seraphic friend?
But place thyself a mite unseen
And Being infinite between;
In this comparison, says pride,
A seraph thou, to God allied.

Thy pride, Lorenzo, disbelieve;
Let Locke nor Addison deceive;
For tho creation's varied plan
Assigns degrees respecting man;
Yet, bigot, know, and learn to fear,
God is beyond thy proper sphere.
Created beings, all his care,
Doth he with them creation share?
Ah no! the system all his own,
God, the creator, stands alone;
At equal distance all his plan,
The mite, the seraph, and the man.
If 'tis not so, the passive clay
Of yon corinthian column gay,
That gilt entablature and base,
Or marble of yon shining vase,
Resemble more the artist's mind
Than if to meaner use consign'd.
Absurd! is Jones's genius known
By the great model or the stone?
The pile, erect to Trajan's name,
Affected not by empty fame,
The cross rever'd, the honour'd bust,
And trodden floor, are kindred dust:
For all in one degree respect
Their sov'reign lord the architect.
How justly then soe'er we plead
That reason Nature's book doth read,
As by her known establish'd laws
Of each effect we trace the cause,
Those laws themselves can ne'er consine
The legislative power divine;
Whose will those very laws decreed
And bad th' effect the cause succeed;
Agent, in some superior scheme,
Of which in this we can but dream.

Beyond the science of mankind,
In nature's fane our God enshrin'd;
Content, Lorenzo, let us trace
The lines and shadow of his face
In humble boldness seek to know
No more than heaven permits below.

To face the sun, to beat the sky,
Demand an eagle's wing and eye.
Ah! let not, then, mere birds of night,
Whose wings, whose opticks, check their flight,
Encourag'd by the morning ray
To risk the sun-shine of the day,
Their feeble powers too highly rate,
And rush absurdly on their fate;
As in the noon-tide beams they gaze
Struck blind by heav'ns meridian blaze;
For ever after, to their cost,
To grope in endless error lost.

Bear Atticus the critick's rod;
In vain we then define a God;
In vain we attributes bestow,
Or reason, here, from what we know.
Tho science teach, religion warm,
What wild ideas still we form?
Imperfect embrios of the brain,
That strive to scale the heav ns in vain:
Too short to reach beyond the sky
The focus of the mental eye;
Too cold our most transporting zeal
To paint what heav'ns and light conceal.

Yet will the skeptick ask me why?
Go, rise and to the dog-star fly—
Thou canst not; nor the cause unknown,
Central attraction holds thee down;
A pow'r occult, which, ere thy birth,
Fast bound thee to thy native earth:
From which thou ne'er canst hope to rise
To lunar plains or solar skies.
Nor less within its sphere confin'd
The subtile essence of the mind.
What tho' it boasts the pow'r to rove
In freedom through the plains above;
Tho' wing'd its active feet to run,
With Merc'ry round the central sun;
Giv'n it far distant worlds t' explore,
And seas of space without a shore:
Yet, still, within creation's round,
Within our narrow system bound;
Of what's above or what without
We harbour universal doubt.
Say light prevails, no contrast shade
Outlines the void we would prevade:
Say darkness reigns, no chearing ray
Delineates blind inquiry's way.
Destin'd thy erring way to trace
Thro' nature's wide and gloomy space,
Hence, mortal man, must ever be
Thy author, God, unknown to thee.

Let Ignorance, then, her idol dress
In justice, love, and happiness;
Adorn with mercy's golden chain,
With all the virtues grace its train;
And then adore in humble plight,
Calling those fopperies infinite.
The pagan thus, despis'd as blind,
Creates his idol to his mind;
Thinking his deity express'd
By bird or beast he likes the best;
Then bows before the painted shrine;
And calls his wooden god divine.
Cast the presumptuous thought aside:
'Tis not humility, but pride;
Unless that truly humble we,
T' adore the god Humanity.
And such it is; for whence arise
Our virtues but from moral ties;
Whose known relations thus define
That essence mortals call divine?

Lorenzo, ready for reply,
Lay not thy prompt objection by.
Thou sayst "thy friend himself deceives,
"Nor God adores nor God believes:
"For tho the mind the pow'r descry,
"If left its essence in the sky,
"If none imagin'd or display'd,
"To nothing adoration's paid:
"In me no certain faith is found;
"My deity an empty sound."
Not so: for, granting, I confess,
Thy attributes a God express;
Thou sayst thyself "still undefin'd
"The perfect, by th' imperfect, mind;"
And to thy attributes must join
Thy Infinite or thy Divine.
As jugglers, who, t' enhance deceit,
To sacred science give their cheat,
While, with the curtain still they hide
The slight of hand too closely ey'd;
So sly theologists impart
The hocus pocus of their art;
Holding religion's sacred veil,
Where slights of understanding fail.
For know, alas, their wisest plan
Displays but a superiour man,
Whom Infinite the conjurer's rod,
Presto, converts into a god.
Till, then, they solve our problem right,
And tell us what is infinite,
They still must be reduc'd to own
Their compound deity unknown:
To all, or reasoning or inspir'd,
This infinite a term requir'd.
Differs Lorenzo, then, with me?
In terms alone we disagree:
Perfection infinite is thine,
Indefinite perfection mine.

Condemn not, then, half understood.
I not deny that perfect, good,
All-gracious, merciful, and wise,
God reigns, supreme, beyond the skies.
Neither, 'tis true, my terms imply;
But, granting none, I none deny:
Requiring but to acquiesce
That thou thy Infinite express.
Idly doth Bolingbroke refine;
Granting that wisdom is divine,
While, as absurdly, he denies
Justice and goodness to the skies.
Ideas, equally our own,
Our goodness as our wisdom's known;
To both as hard to reconcile
Or nature's frown or nature's smile,
Alas! no attributes of thine
Can e'er the Deity define;
Impossible to judge, or know,
Of God above from man below:
Reserv'd the prospect of the skies
To gratify immortal eyes.

Lorenzo, let us reason right.
No finite spans an infinite;
Unless, with Matho, vers'd in arts,
We hold th' infinity of parts.
But none th' absurdity will plan,
That God can be contain'd in man;
Tho, as absurdly, they suppose
Our partial gifts the God disclose.

Join'st thou with Florio the dispute,
T' enhance each moral attribute?
Pretending "these, however crude,
"Divine perfection doth include;
"As species in a genus they,
"Or parts, which, join'd, the whole display."
So, with the grandeur all t' inspire
Of the gay mansion of his sire,
An idiot heir, his mother's fool,
Taught his synecdochè at school,
Conceiv'd by part the whole was shown;
And took a sample of the stone.
Convinc'd, doth Polydore, with me,
That God's indefinite agree,
Yet argue "that our partial view
"May still be relatively true:
"For, if no abstract light we gain,
"'Tis just our best to entertain;
"Our God to call that wond'rous cause,
"In nature trac'd, by nature's laws?"
Mistake not here, nor God dethrone:
The first mechanic cause be known;
'Tis of some prior cause th' effect;
Which no known similars respect.
The God which, then, we so define
Nor self-existent nor divine.
Be known creation's various ties,
Whence physical relations rise;
Of each effect the various cause;
Attraction and repulsion's laws;
That primum mobilè be found
That drove Des Cartes' whirlpools round;
Let matter, motion, aether, join,
To form thy attributes divine;
Striving if possible to rise
To the first agent in the skies:
Be next explain'd to moral sense,
The wond'rous scheme of providence;
Down from those great important springs,
On which rebounds the fate of kings,
To those, so exquisitely small,
Destin'd to let the sparrow fall:
Say'st thou the knowledge hence deriv'd
Of him those systems hath contriv'd?
Alas! from hence we only trace
The features of creation's face;
The front it bears to human kind;
But not its self-existing mind.
Should we, presuming to display
The spirit of the golden day,
Thus call its essence its result,
Attraction, fire, alike occult;
Or say 'tis vegetation green;
Who'd think it is the sun we mean?
So here t' absurdity we fall,
Nor thus define a God at all.

Yet while, to thee I freely own,
I reverence a God unknown;
Think not, thro ignorance or pride,
A God was ever yet denied.
No atheist e'er was known on earth
Till fiery zealots gave him birth,
For controversy's sake, their trade,
And damn'd the heretick they made.
Doth Clody, impudent and vain,
Deny a God in skeptic strain,
And yet in ignorance advance
That nature is the work of chance?
Theologists, absurdly wise,
With their anathemas despise;
For well may Clody these inflame,
Whose God exists but in a name;
A technic term, devis'd at school,
I pity Clody as a fool.
To Epicurus' strains belong
The censures of an idle song.
For say "united words might join
"By accident, and not design;
"Atoms might luckily contrive,
"And strangely find themselves alive;
"Or, by some other scheme as wild,
"The world be fortune's fav'rite child."
Explain the terms, —say what is meant
By atoms, fortune, accident.
What meanst thou but th' efficient cause
Of nature's works and nature's laws?
O, think not, then, th' eternal mind
To term or epithet confin'd;
But take away or change the name;
And Clody's God and mine's the same.

Say'st thou "in chance a pow'r defin'd,
"Fortuitous, absurd, and blind,
"Unworthy that stupendous plan,
"Which nature's scenes display to man;
"When grace with harmony allied,
"And wisdom strike, on ev'ry side."
Alas! to Clody these unknown:
For wond'rous wisdom's all his own.
In nature nothing he surveys
That actuates his soul to praise:
In vain the planets run their course,
Obedient to impulsive force;
Th' excentric comets, far and wide,
Pursue the same unerring guide;
In vain describes their varied race
In equal times an equal space:
In vain thro microscopic eyes,
Innumerable wonders rise;
On the green leaf whole nations crawl,
And myriads perish in its fall.
Ah me! what bears the barren mind!
What beauty can affect the blind!
Should Clody then his chance disclaim,
And own a Deity, by name,
The blund'ring deist would advance
A God, no wiser than his chance.

Boasts nature, therefore, no design?
Say whence, Lorenzo, yours and mine.
Did wisdom's sons themselves create?
Their birth 'tis own'd they owe to fate;
To fate capricious blind and dull;
Design lock'd up in th' atheist's skull.
But say, my friend, how came it there?
Lit chance upon occasion fair,
From odds and ends of matter join'd,
To form an intellecual mind?
Egregious blunder! gross surmize!
"Nature's a fool, yet man is wise!"
Is there a mortal, found of brain,
Who such a tenet can maintain?
O, no.—For words let fools contest,
Atheism's a mere, tho impious, jest.

How obvious is the truth! and yet,
What learned volumes have been writ;
How scholiasts labour to refute,
What none do actually dispute!
Of the first-cause, or fools or wise,
The pure existence none denies;
But in its essence disagree:
For who defines infinity?

Blush not, Lorenzo, then, to own,
Th' eternal God a God unknown;
Whose face, to mortal eye denied,
Can never gratify thy pride.
To him your votive altars raise,
As Athens did in ancient days;
Nor dare pollute his sacred shrine
With human sacrifice divine;
But humble adoration bring,
And silent praise; fit offering!
So the Peruvian, pure in heart,
Strange to the guile, or guilt, of art;
Unaw'd by tenet, text, or tale.
Erects his temple in the vale,
Sacred to th' universal mind,
The God and guide of human kind.
No firstlings here affront the skies,
No clouds of smoking incense rise:
No hypocrite with crabbed face;
No convert tortur'd into grace;
No solid skull, in wisdom's cowl;
No hooded hawk, nor solemn owl,
Nor blind, nor ominous invade
This spotless consecrated shade:
But, as the native of the spray,
Man hails his maker, with the day;
By nature taught, heaven asks no more,
In spirit and in truth t' adore.