On God's wondrous Works

Great are the works of God, and wonders all;
The first we hear of we do Chaos call;
But in the Scripture it is no-where said,
How, or of what, Chaos it self was made;
We only know from that confused Name,
That lump of something, Nothing, all things came.
Great and good was the work of the first hour,
'Cause Chaos then had no resisting power;
All things did naturally then submit
Without dispute, to what our God thought fit,
Till man was made, the Prince of all the rest,
And Free-will given, which taught him to contest
With his Creator, and resist his hand,
Whose word alone does Heav'n and Earth command.
To shew us greater wonders yet behind,
Miracles of a more transcendent kind,
Our Saviour's Birth, and Resurrection,
Pre-design'd by God for man's redemption!
'Tis strange to think, and wonderful to see,
That man to God so great concern should be!
Whose heart is full of high antipathy
To his Commands; fierce to impiety.
By nature cross, by industry so fram'd,
That by it self it never can be tam'd;
Which most accurs'd, resisting quality,
Only belongs to its carnality.
So that God's greatest work, we may conclude,
Is when man's heart by grace is so subdu'd,
That all its appetites converted be
From its own nature, unto purity
Of life towards God, which justly may be thought
The highest Miracle that e'er was wrought.