Yet if unhappy think tis He's unjust,
which is the reading of the first edition, except that "thou" is substituted for "if."
[1029] The meaning cannot be that the caviller complained that other creatures were made perfect as well as himself, because nobody supposed that either men or animals were perfect. Pope apparently means that these persons complained that man was not an exception to the general law of imperfection and mortality, although he "alone" would then have been "perfect" in this world, and immortal in the next. It follows that the objectors disbelieved in the immortality of the soul, and that Pope thought their demand for immortality unreasonable.
[1030] The "balance" in which qualities are weighed; the "rod" with which offences are chastised.
[1031] Divines maintained that there must be a future state, or that many of the phenomena of this life would be inexplicable. Bolingbroke rejected a future state, and argued that this life was a scheme complete in itself. All who did not concur in his view "joined," he said, "in a clamour against Providence," and "murmured against his justice." Not that they had ever uttered a syllable against Providence, for they were devout and humble adorers of his perfections, but they denied that Bolingbroke's scheme was God's scheme, and Bolingbroke in his arrogance and passion insisted that whoever repudiated his philosophy set himself up against God. Pope versified the declamation of Bolingbroke, without pointing it to the class against whom it was originally directed.
[1032] The first edition reads "In pride, my friend, in pride," and the edition of 1735, "In reas'ning pride, my friend."
[1033] Verbatim from Bolingbroke: "Men would be angels, and we see in Milton that angels would be gods."—Warton.
Sir Fulk Greville, "Works, 1633, p. 73:
Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be gods."—Hurd.
[1034] Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning, ed. Montagu, p. 267: "Aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell; aspiring to be like God in knowledge, man transgressed and fell."