EPISTLE I.
Awake, my St. John![961] leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.[962]
Let us, since life can[963] little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die,[964]
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;[965] 5
A mighty maze![966] but not without a plan;[967]
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;[968]
Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.[969]
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;[970] 10
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,[971]
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;[972]
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,[973]
And catch the manners living as they rise;[974]
Laugh where we must, be candid[975] where we can; 15
But vindicate the ways of God to man. [976]
Man can reason only from things known, and judge only with regard to his own system.
Man is not therefore a judge of his own perfection or imperfection, but is certainly such a being as is suited to his place and rank in creation.
His happiness depends on his ignorance to a certain degree.
And on his hope of a relation to a future state.
The pride of aiming at more knowledge and perfection, and the impiety of pretending to judge of the dispensations of Providence, the causes of man's error and misery.
The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.
The unreasonableness of the complaints against Providence, and that to possess more faculties would make us miserable.
There is an universal order and gradation through the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties.