Scribbleomania Or, The Printer's Devil's Polichronicon. A Sublime Poem. Edited by Anser Pen-drag-on [i.e. S. W. H. Ireland] |
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Infidel Writers.
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Infidel Writers.
Neque id verum existimo, quod vulgo dicitur
Fortuna, humana finget artatque, ut lubet.
Terence.
There can be no doubt but a Divinity exists, who sees and hears all that we do and say. I disbelieve what is ordinarily affirmed, that we are indebted to Fortune alone for all the vicissitudes incidental to human affairs.
From anarchy's tide, that o'erwhelm'd Gallia's plain,
When nature appeal'd to the bosom in vain;
Till, shrinking with terror, she paralyz'd stood
To view children moisten the land with their blood;
E'en Atheists vaunted—if such there can be:
And shroud the bright beams of eternal salvation.
Such comments as once were with vulgar the rage,
When of Reason Paine printed his blasphemous Age,
And allur'd shallow wits, while pretending to scan
Superlative Rights of the uninform'd Man.
For works of this stamp, ev'ry evil uniting,
No lash dipp'd in gall is sufficiently biting;
Since the vulgar, at all times by novelty caught,
To infidel tenets submit void of thought;
Wherefore he that converts to such use sense's pow'r,
To the world is a tiger, let loose to devour.
There never was a time when so many enemies surrounded the pure Christian faith, and with such persevering contumacy, as at the present period. Some step forward as affectionate friends, and, by painting her doctrines as painful to be followed, and her commands as impracticable to be obeyed, thus discourage and force into Deism all such as despair of attaining to a state of perfection. Others, with a well-feigned delicacy and respect, trace Christianity from its source, and pursue it from its tenderest age to maturity with invidious sarcasms and masqued sneers. But the most effectual, and consequently the most dangerous, foes to revealed religion, are a phalanx of Polemics, who perhaps enter into these disputations without being aware of the extent of the mischief they are doing. Heated by controversies on Trinity or Unity, on Socinianism or Arianism, they scruple not to call in any auxiliary to their aid rather than relinquish an iota of argument, and thus permit the purity of faith to be ravaged by fiery Methodists on the one side, and obdurate Jews on the other, to the no small gratification of the sneering Deist, who imagines that he thus acquires a great advantage on the score of natural religion, as he denominates his system, by thus exposing the numerous divisions, persecutions, scurrilities, and anathemas of those who have taught, and still pretend to inculcate, the precepts of divine revelation. Without, therefore, entering into a controversy, which the writer condemns, he merely ventures to remark, that every attempt to solve the counsels of the Supreme, to investigate mysteries which are enveloped in darkness, and which, if revealed, would prove of no concern to man's future happiness, seems an effort but of petulant curiosity, and as such may probably be displeasing to the sublime Arbiter of fate, who, had he intended the nature of his government to be understood on earth, would certainly have precluded all necessity of disputations upon the subject.
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