John Byrom: Verses about Evil

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?

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.