The Universal Prayer failed to fulfil Pope's main design, and increased the confusion it was meant to remove. His defective material is cast in an unsuitable form, and, wanting to expound his opinions, he has introduced comments which are misplaced or offensive in a prayer. No worshipper of Jehovah would blasphemously address him as "Jehovah or Jove," and no one, except the persons who preach while they pray, would introduce such reflections as that "God is paid when man receives," and that "binding nature fast in fate he had left free the human will." The faulty conception is not redeemed by the exquisiteness of the poetry. The composition is tame and prosaic, and never rises above the level of a second rate hymn.
THE
UNIVERSAL PRAYER.
DEO OPT. MAX.
Father of all! in ev'ry age,
In ev'ry clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! [1585]
Thou Great First Cause, least understood! 5
Who all my sense confined[1586]
To know but this, that thou art good,[1587]
And that myself am blind;
Yet gave me in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill: 10
And binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.[1588]
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This teach me more than hell to shun, 15
That, more than heav'n pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives:
T' enjoy is to obey. [1589] 20
Yet not to earth's contracted span
The goodness let me bound,
Or think Thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round: