Stable without circumvolution,
Eternal rest, joy without passing sound.”
(III. ii. 36.)
Finally in the last canto of his third book he testifies to the vanity of that knowledge of the reasons for the soul’s immortality, even as he had given them (III. ii. 11), and confesses that the only sure stay in the storm of life is a faith in “the first Good.”
“But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,
Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good,
That Faith that doth our souls to God unite
So strongly, tightly, that the rapid floud
Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud
Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity,