EPISTLE DEDICATORY, To the Most reverend Father in God, WILLIAM, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metropolitan. "MY LORD, "The favourable reception which the larger part of this poem (when lately published under another title) was honoured with by your Grace, and many other persons of great candor and judgment, encouraged me to revise and enlarge it. This carried my thoughts into a wider compass, on the most amiable subject of peace, and the blessings which naturally flow from it. "In the pleasing prospect of our common happiness, I was induced to attempt a sketch of the distinguishing favour and goodness of heaven to these nations; and of the universal joy and gratitude arising from his Majesty's happy accession to the crown; as the only visible security of our most excellent constitution, liberties, and laws. "The primary end which I had in view, was to illustrate the truth, harmony, and inestimable benefits of the Christian institution, against the insolent attacks which have been recently made upon it, by men of vile and degenerate minds; and to shew the necessary influence of religion on the happiness of civil societies, as well as on the wise conduct of private life. "As the design is truly great and noble, I heartily wish that the too faint embellishments, wherewith I have endeavoured to set it off, bore some proportion to its dignity. "A consciousness of my unavoidable defects, is the best apology I can make to your Grace, for aspiring to so high a patronage; animated by a very large experience of your particular favours, as well as general goodness. "May your grace very long continue a public blessing to this happy church and nation. May you live to see the daring efforts of infidelity, weak and groundless in themselves, entirely sunk in their deserved shame and confusion; and the more dangerous progress of vice, immorality, and profaneness, so generally discountenanced by all persons in public stations, that true piety may once more shine out in its native lustre; peace, truth and righteousness be the stability of our times; and this renowned church, the glory and chief bulwark of reformed Christendom, for ever continue to have a name and praise in the earth. These are the invariable wishes, and ardent desires of "My Lord, "Your Grace's most dutiful, THE PREFACE. "Poesy, in its original design, was a lively incentive to universal virtue, and the pursuit of actions truly great and worthy, by raising the soul, in a beautiful climax of the most noble and abstracted thoughts, set off with the resistless force of metaphor, simile, number, and sound, towards the supreme happiness appointed for reasonable beings. As the art itself, when managed according to the native purity of its intentions, qualifies the religious votary to be much conversant in the sacred mysteries of heaven; it may be allowed to make the nearest approaches to a divine inspiration : or, if that sounds too harsh, it must be esteemed, at least, an innocent and useful sort of enthusiasm; being furnished with intellectual charms, powerful enough to lead away the superior faculties into a pleasing captivity; whilst they are engaged in a contemplative search into the wonders of nature and providence, teeming in the infinite perfections of the most lovely and adorable Being. But, when it becomes miserably perverted to a quite contrary end, it is capable of spreading the most dangerous and mortal infection; by inciting loose and unguarded minds, with an amazing boldness, into a debauched and vitiated taste, beyond the propensions of human nature. Happy therefore would it be, if those daring agents for the infernal world, who have enlisted themselves under the grand apostate spirit, to affront the sovereign majesty of heaven, and draw down vengeance on mankind, would at last be so wise for themselves, and so compassionate to others, as to make a timely retreat; and like the penitent Earl of Rochester, as far as possible, atone for the madness of their past conduct; that the sad effects of their pestilential wit, in promoting the ruin of many thousands whom they never knew, may not be placed to their final account, and terribly charged upon them by the Supreme Judge, and the righteous rewarder of all men. "That divine Poesy bore an honourable place in the earliest of those sacred records with which we are eminently blessed, is plain from the sublime Song of Moses after the complete destruction of Pharaoh and his host by the miraculous hand of heaven. In this, as well as in his rapturous prophetic blessing on the twelve tribes, an exalted strain of religious homage was solemnly paid to the great deliverer and God of Israel. And this kind of sacred inspiration was continued through after ages among that happy people, whom God had signally chosen and appropriated to himself. "Nor were the excellent advantages of the chaste and untainted Muse, in the furtherance of religion and virtue, confined to the Jewish nation. For we have still, some lively remains of that kind, handed down from the hoathen world, as old as Orpheus and Hesiod, and afterwards, in the pious fragments of Theognis, Phocylides, Pythagoras, Solon, &c. But more especially, in the fine contemplations of Boetius. Of the ancient Christians, Prudentius, Prosper, and some others, have signalized themselves in this way.Among the Christian moderns, none have succeeded more happily than the wonderful Buchanan and Casimire; men of such distinguishing abilities, as scarce any age can boast of, since Rome was in the full zenith of its glory. If we descend yet lower, even to the last and present age, almost every nation has afforded shining instances; but none, so many and bright as our own. Some indeed, among the latter Pagan Poets, and some of a much fresher date, who unworthily bear the name of Christian, have prostituted that noble talent to serve the basest purposes; by varnishing over the grossest of vices with a beautiful dress, softening debauchery with the dangerous charms of wit, and scattering temptations with a liberal hand, where the common propensity of corrupted nature needs the most watchful care to restrain it. Such profanation of an art, useful and commendable itself, and one of the best helps for raising the affections to an excellent pitch of true devotion and piety, has prevailed upon some weak though serious minds, to treat it with contempt and prejudice; as if they thought it had a necessary tendency to relax the principles, and corrupt the morals of mankind; or, at least, to deaden the affection towards those subjects which are most eminently sacred and awful. But the charge is altogether unjust, when applied not only to the abuse, but to the general use of it. And they who yield too far to such an unguarded censure, would do well to consider what indignity they offer to those inspi od writings which they would be thought to hold in the highest esteem and veneration. Since the choicest of these divine monuments, left by the ancient Prophets, run in a poetic strain, especially such parts of them as tend most to exalt the glorious attributes of God, and to raise the soul into a frame suitable to the purest acts of adoration and praise. "It must unavoidably be acknowledged, even by such candid and impartial judges, as, through unhappy prejudice, pay no great regard to the divine authority of those most ancient and invaluable books, that the celebrated works of Homer, Pindar, or Virgil, bear no proportion to many parts of these; in respect of a true majesty of style, sublimity of thought, and the most surprising beauty, strength, and boldness of the figures, of which it would be easy to collect numberless instances. * "But how low and pitiful, how ridiculous and unworthy of all human credit, are the heathen fictions of their elysian happiness; and of their snaky furies, their |