John Byrom: Verses about Book

Adam and
Eve
, by
Satan's
wiles decoy'd,

Did
what the kind Commandment said - avoid.
To them with justice therefore you impute
The sin of eating the forbidden fruit:
And ev'ry imputation must in fact,
If just, be built on some preceding act;
Without the previous deed suppos'd, the word
Becomes unjust, unnatural, and absurd.

If as you seem'd to think the other day,
All
Adam's
race, in some mysterious way,
Sinn'd when he sinn'd; consented to his fall,
With justice then impute it to them all:
But still it follows that they all contract
An imputation founded upon fact.
And
Righteousness of Christ
, in Christian heirs
Must be as deeply and as truly theirs;
A heav'nly life in order to replace,
As was the sin that made a guilty race.

Old
Eli
thus, not knowing what to think,
Imputed
Hannah's
viol'nt pray'r to drink.
Little supposing that it would prepare
A successor to him, her silent pray'er.
There may be other meanings of the phrase,
To be accounted for in human ways;
But God's imputing to the future Child,
The sin by which his Parents were beguil'd;
Seems to establish, an unrighteous blame,
That brings no honour to its Maker's name.

Imputed Righteousness! - beloved Friend,
To what advantage can this Doctrine tend?
If at the same time a Believer's breast,
Be not by
real
Righteousness possest?
And if it be, why volumes on it made,
With such a stress upon the
imputed
laid?

Amongst the Disputants of later days,
This in its turn, became a favourite phrase;
When much is divided in religious Schemes,
Contending Parties ran into extremes:
And now it claims th' attention of the age,
In
Hervey's
elegant and lively page:
This his
Aspasio
labours to impress,
With ev'ry turn of language and address.
With all the flow of eloquence, that shines
Through all his (full enough) embellish'd lines.

Though now so much exerting to confirm
Its vast importance, and revive the term,
He was himself, he lets his
Theron
know,
Of diff'rent sentiments not long ago.
And friends of yours, it has been thought, I find,
Have brought Aspasio to his present mind.
Now having read, but unconvinc'd I own,
What various Reasons for it he has shown;
Or rather Rhetoric - if it be true,
In any sense that has appear'd to you;
I rest secur'd of giving no offence
By asking - how you understand the sense?
By urging in a manner frank and free
What reasons, as I read, occur to me;
Why
Righteousness
, for man to rest upon,
Must be a
real
not
imputed
one.

To shun much novel sentiment and nice,
I take the thing from its apparent rise;
It should seem then, as if
imputed sin

Had made
imputed Righteousness
begin:
The one suppos'd, the other to be sure,
Would follow after - like disease and cure:
Let us examine then imputed guilt
And see on what foundation it is built.

As our first parent lost a heav'nly state,
All their descendants share their hapless fate,
Forewarn'd of God, when tempted not to eat,
Of the forbidden tree's pernicious meat;
Because incorporating mortal leaven
Would kill, of course, in them the life of heaven.
They disobey'd, both Adam and his wife,
And died of course to their true heav'nly life:
That life thus lost the day they disobey'd,
Could not by them be possibly convey'd;
No other life could children have from them,
But what could rise from the parental stem:
That love of God, alone, which we adore,
The life, so lost, could possibly restore:
Their children could not, being born to earth,
Be born to heaven, but by a heav'nly birth:
God found a way, (explain it how we will),
To save the human race from endless ill;
To save the very disobeying pair;
And mad their whole posterity his care.

Has this great Goodness any thing a-kin,
To God's
imputing
our first parents' sin
To their unborn posterity? - What sense
In such a strange, and scriptureless pretence?
For though men feel - (so far we are agreed)
The consequences of a sinful deed:
Yet where ascrib'd, by any sacred pen
But to the
doers
, is the
deed
of men?
Where to be found, in all the scripture through,
This
imputation
thus advanc'd anew?

What num'rous texts from
Paul
, from ev'ry saint,
Might furnish our citations, did we want?
And could not see, that Righteousness, or Sin,
Arise not from
without
, but from
within?

That
imputation
where they are not found,
Can reach no farther than an empty sound:
No farther than imputed health can reach
The cure of sickness, though a man should preach
With all the eloquence of zeal and tell,
How health imputed makes a sick man well.
indeed if sickness be imputed too,
Imputed remedy, no doubt may do;
Words may pour forth their entertaining store,
But things are just - as things were just before.

In so important a concern as that,
Which good
Aspasio's
care is pointed at;
A small mistake, which at the bottom lies,
May sap the building that shall thence arise;
Who would not wish that Architect, so skill'd,
On great mistakes might not persist to build;
But strictly search, and for sufficient while,
If the foundation could support a pile?
This
Imputation
, which he builds upon,
Has been the source of more mistakes than one:
Hence rose, to pass the intermediate train
Of growing errors, and observe the main,
That worse than
pagan
principle of fate,

Predestination's
partial love and hate;
By which, not tied like fancied
Jove
to look,
In stronger Destiny's decreeing book;
The God of
Christians
is suppos'd to will
That
some
should come to
good
and some to
ill
:
And for no reason, but to shew in fine,
Th' extent of
goodness
, and of
wrath divine
.

Whose doctrine this? I quote no less a man,
Than the renowned
Calvin
for the plan;
Who having labour'd, with distinction's vain,

Mere Imputation
only to maintain;
Maintains, when speaking on another head,
This horrid thought, to which the former led;
'Predestination here I call,' (says he
Defining) 'God's eternal, fix'd decree;
'Which having settl'd in his Will, he past,
What ev'ry man should come to at the last;'
And lest the terms should be conceiv'd to bear
A meaning less, than he propos'd, severe;
'For all mankind (he adds to definition),
Are not created on the same condition:'

Pari conditione
- is the phrase,
If you can turn it any other ways;
'But life to some, eternal, is restrain'd,
To some, damnation endless pre-ordain'd.'