Shew'd erring pride, whatever is, is right;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim;
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. [1603]
[NOTES OF W. WARBURTON ON THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.]
Universal Prayer.] It may be proper to observe, that some passages in the preceding Essay, having been unjustly suspected of a tendency towards fate and naturalism, the author composed this prayer as the sum of all, to show that his system was founded in free-will, and terminated in piety; that the First Cause was as well the Lord and Governor of the Universe as the Creator of it; and that, by submission to his will (the great principle enforced throughout the Essay), was not meant suffering ourselves to be carried along by a blind determination, but resting in a religious acquiescence, and confidence full of hope and immortality. To give all this the greater weight, the poet chose for his model the Lord's Prayer, which, of all others, best deserves the title prefixed to his paraphrase.
| Ver. 29. | If I am right, thy grace impart,— |
| I am wrong, O teach my heart] |
As the imparting of grace, on the Christian system, is a stronger exertion of the divine power than the natural illumination of the heart, one would expect that right and wrong should change places, more aid being required to restore men to right, than to keep them in it. But as it was the poet's purpose to insinuate that revelation was the right, nothing could better express his purpose, than making the right secured by the guards of grace.
END OF VOL. II.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] This language, held by Warton in his Essay on the Genius of Pope, was subsequently reversed by him in his edition of Pope's Works. He then acknowledged that the notion of "a methodical regularity" in the Essay on Criticism was a "groundless opinion."
[2] Singer's Spence, p. 107.