John Byrom: Verses about Destiny

Flatter me not with your Predestination,
Nor sink my spirits with your Reprobation.
From all your high disputes I stand aloof,
Your
Pres
and
Res
, your Destiny, and your Proof;
And formal Calvinistical pretence,
That contradicts all Gospel, and good sense.

When God declares, so often, that he wills
All sort of blessings, and no sort of ills;
That his severest purpose never meant
A sinner's death, but that he should repent:
For the whole world, when his beloved Son
Is said to do whatever he has done;
To become man, to suffer, and to die,
That
all
might live, as well as you, and I:
Shall rigid Calvin, after this, or you,
Pretend to tell me that it is not true?

But that eternal, absolute decree
Has damn'd before-hand either you, or me,
Or any body else? That God design'd,
When he created, not to save mankind;
But only
some
? The rest, this man maintain'd,
Were so decreed, Damnation pre-ordain'd.
No, Sir; not all your metaphysic skill
Can prove the Doctrine, twist it as you will.

I hate the man for Doctrine so accurst,
In Book the third, and Chapter twenty-first;
Section the fifth - a horrid, impious lore,
That one would hope was never taught before;
How it came after to prevail away,
Let them who mince the damning matter say;
And others judge, if any Christian fruit,
Be like to spring from such a pagan root.

Pagan - said I - I must retract the word,
For the poor Pagans were not so absurd:
Their Jupiter, of gods and men the king,
Whenever he ordain'd a hurtful thing,
Did it because he was oblig'd to look,
And act as Fate had bid him, in a book:
For gods and goddesses were subjects, then,
To dire necessity, as well as men;
Compell'd to crush a Hero, or a Town,
As Destiny had set the matter down.

But in your scheme, 'tis God that orders ill,
With sov'reign pow'r, and with resistless will;
He in whose blessed Name in understood
The one eternal will to ev'ry good,
Is represented, thought untied by fate
With a decree of damning, to create.
Such as you term the Vessels of his wrath,
To shew his power, according to your faith:
Just as if God, like some tyrannic man,
Would plague the world, to shew them that he can
While others, (they for instance of your sect)
Are mercy's Vessels, precious and elect;
Who think, God help them! to secure their bliss,
By such a partial, fond conceit as this.

Talk not to me of Popery and of Rome,
Nor yet foretell its Babylonish doom;
Nor canonize reforming saints of old,
Because they held the doctrine that you hold;
For if they did, although of Saint-like stem,
In this plain point we must reform from them:
While freed from Rome we are not tied I hope,
To what is wrong in a Geneva Pope;
Nor what is right, should sirname supersede,
Of Luther, Calvin, Bellarmine, or Bede.
Rome has been guilty of excess, 'tis true,
And so have some of the reformers too;
If in their zeal against the Roman seat,
Plucking up tares, they pluck'd up also wheat;
Must we to children, some what they have said,
Give this Predestination stone for bread?
Sir, it is worse, this your Predestination,
Ten thousand times than transubstantiation:
Hard is the point, that Papists have compil'd,
With sense and reason to be reconcil'd;
But yet it leaves to our conception, still,
Goodness in God, and holiness of Will;
A just, impartial Government of all;
A saving love; a corresponding call
For ev'ry man, and, in the fittest hour,
For him to hear, all offer'd grace and pow'r;
Which he may want, and have, if he will crave
From him, who willeth nothing but to save.

Whereas, this Reprobation Doctrine, here,
Not only Sense and Reason would cashier;
But take, by its pretext of sov'reign sway,
All goodness from the Deity away;
Both heav'n and hell confounding with the cant,
Virtue and Vice, the Sinner and the Saint;
Leaving (by irresistible decree,
And purpose absolute what man shall be),
Nothing in Sinners to detest so much
As God's contrivance how to make them such.

That ever Christians blest with Revelation,
Should think of his decreeing men's damnation!
The God of Love! the Fountain of all good!

Who made
, says Paul,
all Nations of one blood,


To dwell on earth; appointed time
and
place,

And for what end this pre-ordaining grace?
That they might seek, and feel, and surely find,
The life in God, which God for man design'd.

We are his offspring - for in that Decree,
The pagan Poet and St. Paul agree:
We are his offspring - now, Sir, put the case
Of some great man, and his descending race;
Conceive this common Parent of them all,
As willing some to stand, and some to fall:
Master, suppose of all their future lot,
Decreeing some to happiness, some not;
In some to bring his kindness into view,
To shew in others what his wrath can do;
To lead the chosen children by the hand,
And leave the rest to fall - who cannot stand.

I might proceed, but that the smallest sketch
Shows an absurd, and arbitrary wretch;
Treating his offspring so, as to forbid
To think that ever God Almighty did;
To think that creatures, who are said to be
His offspring, should be hurt by his decree;
Which had they always minded, Good alone,
And not a spark of Evil, had been known:
For his Decree, Appointment, Order, Will,
Predestinating Goodness, Pow'r and Skill,
Is, of itself, the unbeginning Good,
The pouring forth of an un-ending flood:
Of ever-flowing bliss, which only rolls,
To fill his vessels, his created souls.

Happy Himself the true divine desire,
The love that flames through that eternal fire;
Which generates in him th' eternal light,
Source of all blessing to created light,
Longs with a holy earnestness to spread,
The boundless glories of its Fountain-head?
To raise the possibilities of life,
Which rest, in him, into a joyful strive;
Into a feeling sense of him, from whom
The various gifts of various blessings come.

To bless is his immutable decree,
Such as could never have begun to be:
Decree (if you will use the word decreed)
Did from his love eternally proceed,
To manifest the hidden pow'rs, that reign
Through outward Nature's universal scene:
To raise up creatures from its vast abyss,
Form'd to enjoy communicated bliss.

Who does not see that ill, of any kind,
could never come from an all-perfect mind?
That its perception never could begin,
But from a creature's voluntary sin.
Made in its Maker's image, and imprest
With a free pow'r of being ever blest:
From ev'ry evil, in itself so free,
That none could rise but by its own decree?

To certain truths, which you can scarce deny,
You bring St. Paul's expressions in reply:
Some few obscurer sayings prone to chuse,
Where he was talking to the Roman-Jews;
You never heed the num'rous texts, so plain;
That will not suit with your decreeing strain:

Who willeth all men to be saved
- is one,
Too plain for comment to be made upon;
So that if
some
be not the same as
all
,
You must directly contradict St. Paul.

Paul's open, gen'rous, and enlighten'd soul,
Preach'd to Mankind a Saviour of the Whole,
No part of human race; the blinded Jew
Might boast himself in this conceited view:
Boast of his Father Abraham, and vent
The carnal claims of family descent:
But the whole family of heav'n and earth,
Paul knew if blest must have another birth:
Paul never tied salvation to a Sect,
All who love God, with him are God's Elect.

All who love God - how certain is the key!
Whate'er disputed passages convey;
In Paul's Epistles if some things are read,
Hard to be understood, as Peter said,
Must this be urg'd to prove in men's condition,
This pre-election, and their preterition,
Of all absurd decree, the most absurd,
Is into form definition wrought,
By your Divines - unstartled at the thought
Of sov'reign pow'r, decreeing to become
The Author of salvation but to some;
To some, resembling others, they admit,
Who are rejected - why? He so thought fit:
Hath not the potter power to make his clay
Just what he pleases? - Well. And tell me pray,
What kind of potter must we think a man,
Who does not make the best of it he can?
Who, making some fine vessels of his clay,
To shew his pow'r, throws all the rest away.
Which, in itself, was equally as fine?
What an idea this pow'r divine!

Who can conceive the infinitely Good
To shew less kindness than he really could!
To pre-concert damnation, and confine
Himself, his own beneficence divine?
An impotency this, in evil hour,
Ascrib'd to God's beatifying pow'r,
Though true in earthly monarchs it may be,
That majesty and love can scarce agree;
In his Almighty Will who rules above,
The pow'r is grace, the majesty is love;
What best describes the giver of all bliss,
Glorious in all his attributes is this,
The sov'reign Lord all creatures bow before,
But they who love him most, the most adore.