Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/356

To me and to my offspring would torment me
With cruel expectation.—Yet one doubt
Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die;
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod. Then in the grave,
Or in some other dismal place, who knows
But I shall die a living death? O thought
Horrid, if true! Yet why? it was but breath
Of life that sinned. What dies but what had life790
And sin? the body properly hath neither.
All of me then shall die. Let this appease
The doubt, since human reach no farther knows.
For though the Lord of all be infinite,
Is his wrath also? Be it, Man is not so,
But mortal doomed. How can he exercise
Wrath without end on Man, whom death must end?
Can he make deathless death? That were to make
Strange contradiction, which to God himself
Impossible is held, as argument800
Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out,
For anger's sake, finite to infinite
In punished Man, to satisfy his rigor
Satisfied never? That were to extend
His sentence beyond dust and Nature's law,
By which all causes else, according still
To the reception of their matter, act,