So run the close Meanders of our mind
By this first Cause stil secretly inclin'd
This guidance of our thought
To this high power be brought
[OMITTED] and backward we must run
To that high Origin where all begun.
Nor can we justly say that we Possess
A Will which we can Govern as we please.
Who reasons thus his sense in terms confounds
Speaks one Idea in two different sounds.
Before we grant or Answer let us bring
Our pow'r of thinking to its pristin spring.
Trace we this Thought to its Original
Let Heav'n be justify'd in Adams fall.
All was settl'd by Gods primeval Will.
Nor do I ask whence Sin came, but it was such that to
Save the World from it the Son of God must Dye.
Could the Heathen by the dictates of Nature obtain Salvation,
where was the necessity of Christs coming, and if they
could not, how happens it that they were not called to pertake
the benefit of His passion.
Nor matters it that God gave a free Will to Man since by
his Prescience he had ordered that Man could not employ that
free will otherwise then he had forseen Man should employ it.
If we had not freedom of Will there would be neither
Good or ill in our Actions. There would be no occasion for
a Judgement, nor Punishment, nor reward.
Now if we have not Liberty of Will
How are our Deeds imbu'd with good or ill.
[OMITTED] is it in Our Choice
To love or hate to weep or to rejoice?
Are not the Texture of our Actions wrought
By something inward that directs our thought
And we perceive delight and suffer pain
Which we can neither quicken nor restrain?
Now change the Scene my friends & let us see
How are our Actions & our Motions free.
Whence else a Dying Saviors grief & fame
And dire Convulsion of this general frame
That shook the Earth, made frighted Nature groan.
And the great Fathers will that must be done.
[OMITTED] some middle means
Which Man but hardly comprehends
[OMITTED] and let us see
How destin'd Sentence and free Will agree.
