Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/408

Within himself unworthy powers to reign
Over free reason, God, in judgement just,
Subjects him from without to violent lords.
Who, oft as undeservedly, enthral
His outward freedom. Tyranny must be;
Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet sometimes nations will decline so low
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong
But justice, and some fatal curse annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty,100
Their inward lost: witness the irreverent son
Of him who built the ark, who, for the shame
Done to his father, heard this heavy curse,
Servant of Servants, on his vicious race.
"Thus will this latter, as the former world,
Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last,
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw
His presence from among them, and avert
His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth
To leave them to their own polluted ways,110
And one peculiar nation to select
From all the rest, of whom to be invoked;
A nation from one faithful man to spring.
Him on this side Euphrates yet residing,
Bred up in idol-worship; Oh, that men
—Canst thou believe?—should be so stupid grown,
While yet the patriarch lived who scaped the Flood,