John Byrom: Verses about Faith

Indeed, Sir Peter, I could wish, I own,
That parsons would let politics alone;
Plead, if they will, the customary plea,
For such like talk, when o'er the dish of tea:
But when they tease us with it from the pulpit,
I own, Sir Peter, that I cannot help it.

If on their rules a justice should intrench,
And preach, suppose a sermon, from the bench,
Would you not think your brother magistrate
Was a little touched in his hinder pate?
Now which iw worse, Sir Peter, on the total
The lay vagary, or the sacredotal?

In ancient times, when preachers preached indeed
Their sermons, ere the learned learnt to read,
Another spirit, and another life,
Shut the church doors against all party strife:
Since then, how often heard, from sacred rostrums,
The lifeless din of Whig and Tory nostrums!

'Tis wrong, Sir Peter, I insist upon't;
To common sense 'tis plainly an affront:
The parson leaves the Christian in a lurch,
Whene'er he brings his politics to church;
His cant, on either side, if he calls preaching,
The man's wrong-headed, and his brains want bleaching.

Recall the time from conquering William's reign,
And guess the fruits of such a preaching vein:
How oft its nonsense must have veered about,
Just as the politics were in, or out:
The pulput governed by no gospel data,
But new success still mending old errata.

Were I a king (God bless me) I should hate
My chaplains meddling with affairs of state;
Nor would my subjects, I should think, be fond,
Whenever theirs the Bible went beyond.
How well, methinks, we both should live together,
If these good folks would keep within their tether!

A Local union, on the other hand,
Though crowded numbers should together stand,
Joining in one same Form of pray'r and praise,
Or Creed express'd in regulated phrase;
Or ought beside - though it assume the name
Of Christian-Church, may want to real claim.

For if it want the spirit and the sign,
That constitute all worship as divine,
The love within, the test of it without,
In vain the union passes for devout:
Heartless, and takenless if it remain,
It ought to pass, in strictness, for profane.

At first, an unity of heart and soul,
A distribution of an outward dole,
And ev'ry member of the body fed,
As equally belonging to the head,
With what it wanted, was, without suspense,
True Church-Communion in the Christian sense.

Whether averse the many, or the few,
To hold communion in this right'ous view,
Their thought commences heresy, their deed
Schismatical, though they profess the Creed;
Ways of distributing, if new, should still
Maintain the old communicative will.

Broken by ev'ry loveless, thankless thought,
And not behaving as a Christian ought;
By want of meekness, or a show of pride,
Tow'rds any soul for whom our Saviour died;
While this continues, men may pray and preach,
In all their forms, but none will heal the breach.

Whatever helps an outward form may bring,
To Church-communion, it is not the thing;
Nor a Society, as such, nor place,
Nor any thing besides uniting grace:
They are but accessaries at the most,
To true communion of the Holy Ghost.

This is th' essential fellowship, the tie,
Which all true Christians are united by:
No other union does them any good,
But that which Christ cemented with his blood,
As God and Man; that having lost it, men
Might live in unity with God again.

What he came down to bring us from above,
Was grace, and peace, and law-fulfilling love;
True spirit-worship which his Father sought,
Was the sole end of what he did and taught:
That God's own Church and Kingdom might begin,
Which Moses and the Prophets usher'd in.

A Christian, in so catholic a sense,
Can give to none, but partial minds offence;
Forc'd to live under some divided part,
He keeps entire the union of the heart,
The sacred tie of love; by which alone
Christ said that his disciples should be known.

He values no distinction, as profest
By way of separation from the rest;
Oblig'd in duty, and inclin'd by choice,
In all the good of any to rejoice;
From ev'ry evil, falsehood, or mistake,
To wish them free, for common comfort's sake.

Freedom, to which the most undoubted way
Lies in Obedience (where it always lay)
To Christ himself, who with an inward call
Knocks at the door, that is, the heart of all.
At the reception of this heav'nly guest
All good comes in, all evil quits the breast.

The free receiver, then becomes content
With what God orders, or does not prevent
To them that love him, all things, he is sure,
Must work for good, though how, may be obscure;
Even successful wickedness when past,
Will bring to them some latent good at last.

Fall'n as divided churches are, and gone
From the perfection of the Christian one.
Respect is due to any that contains,
The venerable, though but faint remains.
Of ancient rule, which had not, in its view
The letter only, but the spirit too.

When that variety of new-found ways,
Which people so run after in our days,
Has done its utmost, - when,
Lo here, lo there,

Shall yield to inward seeking and sincere;
What was at first, may come to be again,
The praise of Church-assemblies amongst men.

Mean while, in that to which we now belong,
To mind in public lesson, pray'r and song,
Teaching and preaching what conduces best,
To true devotion in the private breast,
Wishing increase of good to ev'ry soul
Seems to be our concern upon the whole.

To God, and Christ and holy angels stand,
Dispos'd to ev'ry Church, in ev'ry land,
The growth of good still helping to compleat,
Whatever tares be sown among the wheat;
Who would not wish to have, and to excite,
A disposition so divinely right?

If once establish'd the essential part,
The inward Church, the Temple of the Heart,
Or house of God, the substance, and the sum
Of what is pray'd for in -
thy kingdom come
;
To make an outward correspondence true,
We must recur to Christ's example too.

Now in his outward life we plainly find,
Goodness demonstrated of ev'ry kind;
What he was born for, that he show'd throughout,
It was the business that he went about:
Love, kindness, and compassion, to display
Towards ev'ry object coming in his way.

But Love so high, Humility so low,
And all the Virtues which his actions show;
His doing good, and his enduring ill,
For Man's salvation, and God's holy will:
Exceed all terms - his inward, outward plan,
Was Love to God, express'd by Love to Man.

Mark of the Church which he establish'd then,
Is the same Love, same proof of it to Men;
Without let Sects parade it how they list,
Nor Church nor unity can ne'er subsist:
The name may be usurp'd, but want of pow'r,
Will shew the Babel, high or low the Tow'r.

And where the same behaviour shall appear,
In outward form, that was in Christ so clear;
There is the very outward Church that he
Will'd all mankind to shew, and all to see;
Of which whoever shews it from the heart,
Is both an inward and an outward part.

What Excommunication can deprive
A pious soul that is in Christ alive,
Of Church-Communion? or cut off a limb,
That life and action both unite to him?
For any circumstance of place or time,
Or mode or custom, which infers no crime?

If he be that which his beloved
John

Calls him, -
The Light, enlightening every one

That comes into the world - will he exclude
One from his Church, whose mind he has renew'd,
To such degree, as to exert, in fact,
Like inward Temper, and like outward Act?

Invisible, and visible effect
Of true Church Membership, in each respect,
Let the one Shepherd from above behold,
The Flocks, howe'er dispers'd, are his one Fold:
Seen by their hearts, and their behaviour too,
They all stand present in his gracious view.

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.

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.'

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.

’TIS Man’s own Nature, which in its own Life,
Or Centre, stands in Enmity and Strife,
And anxious, selfish, doing what it lists,
(Without God’s Love) that tempts him, and resists;
The Devil also shoots his fiery Dart,
From Grace and Love to turn away the Heart.

This is the greatest Trial; ’tis the Fight
Which Christ, with His internal Love and Light,
Maintains within Man’s Nature, to dispel
God’s Anger, Satan, Sin, and Death, and Hell;
The human Self, or Serpent, to devour,
And raise an Angel from it by His Pow’r.

Now if God’s Love in Christ did not subdue
In some Degree this Selfishness in you,
You would have no such Combat to endure;
The Serpent, then, triumphantly secure,
Would unoppos’d exert its native Right,
And no such Conflict in your Soul excite.

For all the huge Temptation and Distress
Rises in Nature, tho’ God seeks to bless;
The Serpent feeling its tormenting State,
(Which of itself is a mere anxious Hate,)
When God’s amazing Love comes in, to fill
And change the selfish to a God-like Will.

Here Christ, the Serpent-bruiser, stands in Man,
Storming the Devil’s hellish, self-built Plan;
And hence the Strife within the human Soul,—
Satan’s to kill, and Christ’s to make it whole;
As by Experience, in so great Degree,
God in His Goodness causes you to see.…

The next Temptation, which befalls of Course
From Satan and from Nature’s selfish Force,
Is, when the Soul has tasted of the Love
And been illuminated from above;
Still in its Self-hood it would seek to shine,
And as its own possess the Light Divine.

That is, the soulish Nature,—take it right,
As much a Serpent, if without God’s Light,
As Lucifer,—this Nature still would claim
For own Propriety the Heav’nly Flame,
And elevate its Fire to a Degree
Above the Light’s Good Pow’r, which cannot be.

This domineering Self, this Nature-Fire,
Must be transmuted to a Love-Desire.
Now, when this Change is to be undergone,
It looks for some own Pow’r, and, finding none,
Begins to doubt of Grace, unwilling quite
To yield up its self-willing Nature’s Right.

It never quakes for Fear, and will not die
In Light Divine, tho’ to be blest thereby:
The Light of Grace it thinks to be Deceit,
Because it worketh gently without Heat;
Mov’d too by outward Reason, which is blind,
And of itself sees nothing of this Kind.

Who knows, it thinketh, whether it be true
That God is in thee, and enlightens too?
Is it not Fancy? For thou dost not see
Like other People, who as well as thee
Hope for Salvation by the Grace of God,
Without such Fear and Trembling at his Rod.…

The own Self-will must die away, and shine,
Rising thro’ Death, in Saving Will Divine;
And from the Opposition which it tries
Against God’s Will such great Temptations rise;
The Devil too is loth to lose his Prey,
And see his Fort cast down, if it obey.

For, if the Life of Christ within arise,
Self-Lust and false Imagination dies,—
Wholly, it cannot in this present Life,
But by the Flesh maintains the daily Strife,—
Dies, and yet lives; as they alone can tell
In whom Christ fights against the Pow’rs of Hell.

The third Temptation is in Mind and Will,
And Flesh and Blood, if Satan enter still;
Where the false Centres lie in Man, the Springs
Of Pride and Lust, and Love of earthly Things,
And all the Curses wish’d by other Men,
Which are occasion’d by this Devil’s Den.

These in the Astral Spirit make a Fort,
Which all the Sins concentre to support;
And human Will, esteeming for its Joy
What Christ, to save it, combats to destroy,
Will not resign the Pride-erected Tow’r,
Nor live obedient to the Saviour’s Pow’r.…

Let go all earthly Will, and be resign’d
Wholly to Him with all your Heart and Mind!
Be Joy or Sorrow, Comfort or Distress,
Receiv’d alike, for He alike can bless,
To gain the Victory of Christian Faith
Over the World and all Satanic Wrath!