John Byrom: Verses about Sick

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.'