rend Mr. Collier has fet this awful fcene before them in juft and flaming colours. If the application were not too rude and uncivil, that noble ftanza of my Lord Rofcommon, on Pfalm cxlviii. might be addressed to them:

"Ye dragons, whofe contagious breath "Peoples the dark retreats of death,

"Change your dire hiffings into heavenly fongs, "And praise your

Maker with forked tongues."

your

This profanation and debasement of so divine an art, has tempted fome weaker Chriftians to imagine that poetry and vice are naturally akin; or at least, that verfe is fit only to recommend trifles, and entertain our loofer hours, but it is too light and trivial a method to treat any thing that is ferious and facred. They fub-. mit, indeed, to use it in divine pfalmody, but they love the drieft tranflation of the pfalm beft. They will venture to fing a dull hymn or two at church, in tunes of equal dulnefs; but ftill they perfuade themselves, and their children, that the beauties of poefy are vain and dangerous. All that arifes a degree above Mr. Sternhold is too airy for worship, and hardly escapes the fentence of "unclean and abominable."

It is

ftrange, that perfons that have the Bible in their hands, fhould be led away by thoughtlefs prejudices to fo wild and rafh an opinion. Let me entreat them not to indulge this four, this cenforious humour too far, left the facred writers fall under the lafh of their unlimited and nguarded reproaches. Let me entreat them to look

into their Bibles, and remember the ftyle and way of writing that is used by the ancient prophets. Have they forgot, or were they never told, that many parts of the Old Teftament are Hebrew verfe? and the figures are ftronger, and the metaphors bolder, and the images more furprizing and strange, than ever I read in any profane writer. When Deborah fings her praises to the God of Ifrael, while he marched from the field of Edom, she sets the " earth a-trembling, the heavens "drop, and he mountains diffolve from before the "Lord. They fought from heaven, the stars in their "courfes fought against Sifera: When the river of "Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the "river Kishon. O my foul, thou haft trodden down ftrength." Judg. v. &c. When Eliphaz, in the book of Job, fpeaks his sense of the holiness of God, he introduces a machine in a vifion: "Fear came upon me, "trembling on all my bones; the hair of my flesh stood

up; a spirit paffed by and ftood ftill, but its form " was undiscernible; an image before mine eyes; and "filence; Then I heard a voice, faying, Shall mortal "man be more just than God?" &c. Job iv. When he describes the safety of the righteous, he "hides him "from the scourge of the tongue, he makes him laugh at “ destruction and famine, he brings the stones of the field "into league with him, and makes the brute animals "enter into a covenant of peace." Job v. 21, &c. When Job speaks of the grave, how melancholy is the gloom that he spreads over it!" It is a region to which I must "shortly go, and whence I fhall not return; it is a "land

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"land of darkness, it is darkness itself, the land of the "fhadow of death; all confufion and disorder, and, "where the light is as darkness. This is my house,

there have I made my bed: I have faid to corrup

❝tion, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou "art my mother and my fifter: As for my hope, who "fhall fee it? I and my hope go down together to the "bars of the pit." Job x. 21, and xvii. 13. When he humbles himself in complainings before the almightinefs of God, what contemptible and feeble images doth he ufe! "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and “fro? Wilt thou pursue the dry ftubble? I confume away like a rotten thing, a garment eaten by the "moth," Job xiii. 25, &c." Thou lifteft me up to the "wind, thou causeft me to ride upon it, and diffolvest

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my fubftance." Job xxiii. 22. Can any man invent more defpicable ideas, to reprefent the fcoundrel herd and refufe of mankind, than those which Job uses? chap. xxx. and thereby he aggravates his own forrows and reproaches to amazement : " They that are younger "than I have me in derifion, whofe fathers I would "have difdained to have set with the dogs of my flock: "for want and famine they were folitary; fleeing into "the wilderness defolate and wafte: They cut up mal"lows by the bushes, and juniper-roots for their meat: "They were driven forth from among men, (they "cried after them as after a thief) to dwell in the cliffs "of the valleys, in the caves of the earth, and in rocks: "Among the bushes they brayed, under the nettles

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"fools, yea, children of base men; they were viler "than the earth: And now I am their fong, yea, I am "their by-word," &c. How mournful and dejected is the language of his own forrows! "Terrors are "turned upon him, they pursue his foul as the wind, "and his welfare paffes away as a cloud; his bones are pierced within him, and his soul is poured out; "he goes mourning without the fun, a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls; while his harp and organ are turned into the voice of them that weep.” I must transcribe one half of this holy book, if I would fhew the grandeur, the variety, and the juftness of his ideas, or the pomp and beauty of his expreffion; I muft copy out a good part of the writings of David and Isaiah, if I would represent the poetical excellencies of their thoughts and ftyle: nor is the language of the leffer prophets, especially in fome paragraphs, much inferior to these.

Now, while they paint human nature in its various forms and circumftances, if their defigning be so just and noble, their difpofition fo artful, and their colouring fo bright, beyond the moft famed human writers, how much more muft their defcriptions of God and heaven exceed all that is poffible to be faid by a meaner tongue? When they speak of the dwelling-place of God, "He inhabits eternity, and fits upon the throne "of his holiness, in the midft of light inacceffible,” When his holiness is mentioned, "The heavens are not "clean in his fight, he charges his angels with folly : "He looks to the moon, and it fhineth not, and the << stars

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"stars are not pure before his eyes: He is a jealous "God, and a confuming fire." If we speak of strength, "Behold, he is ftrong: He removes the mountains, "and they know it not: He overturns them in his anger: He shakes the earth from her place, and her pillars tremble: He makes a path through the mighty "waters, he difcovers the foundations of the world: "The pillars of heaven are astonished at his reproof." And after all, "These are but a portion of his ways: "The thunder of his power who can understand ?” His fovereignty, his knowledge, and his wisdom, are revealed to us in language vaftly fuperior to all the poe tical accounts of heathen divinity. "Let the pot"fherds ftrive with the potsherds of the earth; but "fhall the clay fay to him that fashioneth it, What "makeft thou? He bids the heavens drop down from "above, and let the fkies pour down righteousness. "He commands the fun, and it rifeth not, and he "fealeth up the ftars. It is he that faith to the deep, "be dry, and he drieth up the rivers. Woe to them

that feek deep to hide their counfel from the Lord; "his eyes are upon all their ways, he understands their “thoughts afar off. Hell is naked before him, and de"struction hath no covering. He calls out all the stars "by their names, he fruftrateth the tokens of the liars, "and makes the diviners mad: He turns wife men "backward, and their knowledge becomes foolish.” His tranfcendent eminence above all things is most nobly represented, when he "fits upon the circle of "the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grafs"hoppers: