Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,

Confounded though immortal! But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him. Round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride, and steadfast hate;
At once, as far as angels ken, he views

The dismal situation waste and wild;
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed!
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God, and light of Heaven,
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell !
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beëlzebub. To whom the Arch-enemy,

(And thence in Heaven called Satan) with bold words Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:

'If thou beest he-But oh how fallen! how changed From him, who in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine Myriads though bright! If he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope

And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest,

From what height fallen; so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder! and till then who knew

The force of whose dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage

Can else inflict, do I repent, or change

(Though changed in outward lustre) that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome ;-
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power,
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire;-that were low indeed!
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall! since, by fate, the strength of gods,
And this empyreal substance cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
(In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,)
We may, with more successful hope, resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcileable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and, in the excess of joy
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of Heaven.'

So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:

'O Prince! O Chief of many throned Powers,
That led the embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King,

And put to proof his high supremacy,

Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate !
Too well I see and rue the dire event,

That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and heavenly essences
Can perish; for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,

Though all our glory extinct, and happy state,
Here swallowed up in endless misery!

But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now

Of force believe almighty, since no less

Than such could have o'erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains;
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service, as his thralls
By right of war, what'er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?'

Whereto with speedy words the Arch-fiend replied:
' Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, (if I fail not), and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.—
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

Back to the gates of Heaven; the sulphurous hail,

Shot after us in storm, o'er-blown, hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice

Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep;
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair;
How overcome this dire calamity;

What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not what resolution from despair.'

THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH

(From the Areopagit ica)

TRUTH indeed came once into the world with her divine. master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of

loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.

We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those planets that are oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament, where they may be seen evening or morning? The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, and the removing him from off the presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation: no; if other things as great in the church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin have beaconed-up to us, that we are stark blind.

There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. It is their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing, who neither will hear with meekness, nor can convince, yet all must be suppressed which is not found in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces, which are yet wanting to the body of truth. To be still searching what we know not, by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it, (for all her body is homogeneal, and proportional,) this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.