University of Virginia Library

XVI. NATURAL RELIGION.

Search ye the Heart of man until ye find
That which is deepest. Raise your eyes again
Up through the loftiest region of his Mind:
And in each spacious, and serene domain
The same calm Presence ye shall mark enshrined:
The Thought of God—For pleasure, or for pain
It fills the one great soul of all our kind:
And Conscience to her breast this Truth doth strain.

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Away with blind, empiric argument
To 'stablish that which is the ultimate,
The ground, o'er which all other notions pass!
Man may distort God's Image, not create—
We dim too closely o'er the semblance bent,
With our own breath pure Reason's mystic glass.