[1384] The image is derived from the old engines of war, such as the catapult which threw stones. The Flamen made an engine of his god, and assailed foes by threatening them with chastisement from heaven.
[1385] Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 5: "At the first, it may be, that all was permitted unto their discretion which were to rule, till they saw that to live by one man's became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to unto laws."—Warton.
In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:
For say what makes the liberty of man?
'Tis not in doing what he would but can.
The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an infringement of liberty, and were probably cancelled because the reason was as applicable to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon Pope's principle the worst despotism would not interfere with the liberty of the subject, provided only that resistance was hopeless.
[1386] When the proprietor is asleep the weak rob him by stealth, and when he is awake the strong rob him by violence.
[1387] Bolingbroke, Fragment 6: "Private good depends on the public."
[1388] The inspired strains of the Hebrew Scriptures are the only instance in which poetry has "restored faith and morals." The heathen poets adopted the absurd and profligate fables current in their day, and christian poets have never done more than reflect the prevalent christianity. The term "patriot" is commonly applied to political benefactors, and not to the preachers and disseminators of righteousness. Pope fell back on the fiction of regenerating poets and patriots to avoid all mention of the saints and martyrs who really performed the mighty work. Bolingbroke hated the apostles of genuine religion, and his pupil had no reverence for them.
[1389] Pope breaks down in his comparison of a mixed government to a stringed instrument. An instrument would not be "set justly true," but rendered worthless, when in "touching one" string the musician "must strike the other too."
[1390] This is the very same illustration that Tully uses, De Republica: "Quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia."—Warton.