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The Hind and the Panther.
9
His grace in both is equal in extent,
The first affords us life, the second nourishment.
And if he can, why all this frantick pain
To construe what his clearest words contain,
And make a riddle what He made so plain?
To take up half on trust, and half to try,
Name it not faith, but bungling biggottry.
Both knave and fool the Merchant we may call
To pay great summs, and to compound the small.
For who wou’d break with heav’n, and wou’d not break for all?
Rest then, my soul, from endless anguish freed;
Nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed.
Faith is the best ensurer of thy bliss;
The Bank above must fail before the venture miss.
But heav’n and heav’n-born faith are far from Thee
Thou first Apostate to Divinity.
Unkennel’d range in thy Polonian Plains;
A fiercer foe th’ insatiate Wolf remains.
The first affords us life, the second nourishment.
And if he can, why all this frantick pain
To construe what his clearest words contain,
And make a riddle what He made so plain?
To take up half on trust, and half to try,
Name it not faith, but bungling biggottry.
Both knave and fool the Merchant we may call
To pay great summs, and to compound the small.
For who wou’d break with heav’n, and wou’d not break for all?
Rest then, my soul, from endless anguish freed;
Nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed.
Faith is the best ensurer of thy bliss;
The Bank above must fail before the venture miss.
But heav’n and heav’n-born faith are far from Thee
Thou first Apostate to Divinity.
Unkennel’d range in thy Polonian Plains;
A fiercer foe th’ insatiate Wolf remains.
G
Too
