But if you ask me now what sect I own,
I swear a blind obedience unto none.—Wakefield.
[1560] Bolingbroke's Letters to Pope: "The modest enquirer follows nature, and nature's God."—Wakefield.
[1561] MS.:
Let us, my S[t. John], this plain truth confess,
Good nature makes, and keeps our happiness;
And faith and morals end as they began,
All in the love of God, and love of man.
In his second epistle Pope maintains that we are born with the germ of an unalterable ruling passion which grows with our growth, and swallows up every other passion. Among these ruling passions he specifies spleen, hate, fear, anger, etc., which are dispensed by fate, absorb the entire man, and of necessity exclude love. Here, on the contrary, we are told, ver. 327-340, that "the sole bliss heaven could on all bestow," is the virtue which "ends in love of God and love of man."
[1562] He hopes, indeed, for another life, but he does not from hence infer the absolute necessity of it, in order to vindicate the justice and goodness of God.—Warton.
[1563] The "other kind" is the animal creation, which, says Pope, has not been given any abortive instinct. Nature, which furnishes the impulse, never fails to provide appropriate objects for its gratification.
[1564] The meaning of this couplet comes out clearer in the prose explanation which Pope has written on his MS.: "God implants a desire of immortality, which at least proves he would have us think of, and expect it, and he gives no appetite in vain to any creature. As God plainly gave this hope, or instinct, it is plain man should entertain it. Hence flows his greatest hope, and greatest incentive to virtue."
[1565] "His greatest virtue" is benevolence; "his greatest bliss" the hope of a happy eternity. Nature connects the two, for the bliss depends on the virtue.
[1566] Pope exalts the duty of "benevolence," which, ver. 371, causes "earth to smile with boundless bounty blessed." But bounty cannot benefit the recipients, if the poet is right in maintaining that happiness is independent of externals.