But censure's to be understood
Th'authentic mark of the elect,
The public stamp Heaven sets on all that's great and good,
Our shallow search and judgment to direct.
The war, methinks, has made
Our wit and learning narrow as our trade;
Instead of boldly sailing far, to buy
A stock of wisdom and philosophy,
We fondly stay at home, in fear
Of every censuring privateer;
Forcing a wretched trade by beating down the sale,
And selling basely by retail.
The wits, I mean the atheists of the age,
Who fain would rule the pulpit, as they do the stage,
Wondrous refiners of philosophy,
Of morals and divinity,
By the new modish system of reducing all to sense,
Against all logic, and concluding laws,
Do own th'effects of Providence,
And yet deny the cause.
V
This hopeful sect, now it begins to see
How little, very little, do prevail
Their first and chiefest force
To censure, to cry down, and rail,
Not knowing what, or where, or who you be,
Will quickly take another course:
And, by their never-failing ways
Of solving all appearances they please,
We soon shall see them to their ancient methods fall,
And straight deny you to be men, or anything at all.
I laugh at the grave answer they will make,
Which they have always ready, general, and cheap:
'Tis but to say, that what we daily meet,
And by a fond mistake
Perhaps imagine to be wondrous wit,
And think, alas! to be by mortals writ,
Is but a crowd of atoms justling in a heap:
Which, from eternal seeds begun,
Justling some thousand years, till ripen'd by the sun:
They're now, just now, as naturally born,
As from the womb of earth a field of corn.