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DIVINE EPIGRAMS.
God, when he's angry here with any one,
His wrath is free from perturbation;
And when we think his looks are sour and grim,
The alteration is in us, not him.
* * * * *
God can't be wrathful; but we may conclude
Wrathful he may be by similitude:
God's wrathful said to be when he doth do
That without wrath, which wrath doth force us to.
* * * * *
'Tis hard to find God; but to comprehend
Him as he is, is labour without end.
* * * * *
God's rod doth watch while men do sleep, and then
The rod doth sleep while vigilant are men.
* * * * *
A man's trangression God does then remit,
When man he makes a penitent for it.
* * * * *
God, when he takes my goods and chattels hence,
Gives me a portion, giving patience:
What is in God is God: if so it be
He patience gives, he gives himself to me.
* * * * *
Humble we must be, if to heaven we go;
High is the roof there, but the gate is low.
* * * * *
God who's in heaven, will hear from thence,
If not to the sound, yet to the sense.
* * * * *
The same who crowns the conqueror, will be
A coadjutor in the agony.
* * * * *
God is so potent, as his power can that.
Draw out of bad a sovereign good to man.
* * * * *
Paradise is, as from the learn'd I gather,
A choir of blest souls circling in the Father.
* * * * *
Heaven is not given for our good works here;
Yet it is given to the labourer.
* * * * *
One more for the sake of Martha, smiled at by so many because they are
incapable either of her blame or her sister's praise.
The repetition of the name, made known
No other than Christ's full affection.
And so farewell to the very lovable Robert Herrick.
Francis Quarles was born in 1592. I have not much to say about him,
popular as he was in his own day, for a large portion of his writing
takes the shape of satire, which I consider only an active form of
negation. I doubt much if mere opposition to the false is of any benefit.
Convince a man by argument that the thing he has been taught is false,
and you leave his house empty, swept, and garnished; but the expulsion of
the falsehood is no protection against its re-entrance in another mask,
with seven worse than itself in its company. The right effort of the
teacher is to give the positive--to present, as he may, the vision of
reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of
falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so
people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove
all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer
the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of
truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were
possible, in the midst of an absolute vision, clear as the hyaline, but
only repellent of falsehood, not receptive of truth. It is the positive
by which a man shall live. Truth is his life. The refusal of the false is
not the reception of the true. A man may deny himself into a spiritual
lethargy, without denying one truth, simply by spending his strength for
that which is not bread, until he has none left wherewith to search for
the truth, which alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive
does the negative find its true vocation.
I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No
doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work,
but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the
like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am
not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the
elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.
At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from the Emblems named
of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates. There is
something in it remarkably fine.
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