Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars,
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is Reason to the soul,
begins the poem; but the poet thinks it necessary both in his preface and in his piece to argue with the deists in a fashion which must have entertained them as much as it embarrassed the more thoughtful orthodox, his simple thesis being that all ideas of deity were débris from the primeval revelation to Noah, and that natural reason could never have attained to a God-idea at all. And even at that, as regards the Herbertian argument:
No supernatural worship can be true,
Because a general law is that alone
Which must to all and everywhere be known:
he confesses that
Of all objections this indeed is chief