Classic Poem

Vast Superstition! Glorious stile of Weaknesse!
Sprung from the deepe disquiet of Man's passion,
To desolation, and despaire of Nature:
Thy texts bring Princes' Titles into question:
Thy Prophets set on worke the sword of Tyrants:
They manacle sweet Truth with their distinctions;
Let Vertue blood; teach Crueltie for Gods sake;
Fashioning one God, yet him of many fashions,
Like many-headed Error, in their Passions.
Mankinde! Trust not these Superstitious dreames;
Feare's Idoles, Pleasure's Relikes, Sorrowe's Pleasures.
They make the willful hearts their holy Temples;
The Rebells unto Government their Martyrs.
No: Thou childe of false miracles begotten!
False Miracles, which are but ignorance of Cause,
Lift up the hopes of thy abjected Prophets:
Courage and Worth abjure thy painted Heavens.
Sicknesse, thy blessings are: Miserie, thy triall;
Nothing, thy way unto eternall being;
Death, to salvation; and the Grave to Heaven.
So Blest be they, so Angel'd, so Eterniz'd
That tie their senses to thy senseless glories,
And die, to cloy the after-age with stories.
Man should make much of Life, as Nature's table,
Wherein she writes the Cypher of her glorie.
Forsake not Nature, nor misunderstand her:
Her mysteries are read without Faith's eye-sight:
She speaketh in our flesh; and from our Senses
Delivers downe her wisdomes to our Reason.
If any man would breake her lawes to kill,
Nature doth, for defence, allow offences.
She neither taught the Father to destroy;
Nor promis'd any man, by dying, joy.