The pharifee the dupe of his own art,
Self-idolized and yet a knave at heart.

When nations are to perish in their fins,
'Tis in the church the leprofy begins;
The priest, whofe office is with zeal fincere
To watch the fountain and preserve it clear,
Carelessly nods and fleeps upon the brink,
While others poison what the flock muft drink ;
Or, waking at the call of luft alone,

Infufes lies and errors of his own;
His unfufpecting fheep believe it pure;
And, tainted by the very means of cure,
Catch from each other a contagious spot,
The foul fore-runner of a general rot.
Then truth is hushed that heresy may preach,
And all is trash that reafon cannot reach :
Then God's own image on the foul impreffed
Becomes a mockery, and a standing jeft;
And faith, the root whence only can arife
The graces of a life that wins the skies,
Lofes at once all value and esteem,

Pronounced by grey-beards a pernicious dream
Then ceremony leads her bigots forth,
Prepared to fight for shadows of no worth;
While truths, on which eternal things depend,
Find not, or hardly find, a fingle friend :

As foldiers watch the fignal of command, .
They learn to bow, to kneel, to fit, to ftand;
Happy to fill religion's vacant place

With hollow form, and gefture, and grimace.

Such, when the teacher of his church was there,

People and prieft, the fons of Ifrael were ;

Stiff in the letter, lax in the defign

And import, of their oracles divine;
Their learning legendary, falfe, absurd,
And yet exalted above God's own word;
They drew a curfe from an intended good,
Puffed up with gifts they never understood.
He judged them with as terrible a frown,

As if not love, but wrath, had brought him down :
Yet he was gentle as foft fummer airs,

Had grace for others' fins, but none for theirs ;
Through all he spoke a noble plainness ran-
Rhetoric is artifice, the work of man;
And tricks and turns, that fancy may devise,
Are far too mean for him that rules the skies.
The aftonished vulgar trembled while he tore
The mask from faces never feen before;
He ftripped the impoftors in the noon-day fun,
Showed that they followed all they seemed to fhun;
Their prayers made public, their exceffes kept
As private as the chambers where they flept;

The temple and its holy rites profaned

By mummeries, he that dwelt in it difdained;
Uplifted hands, that at convenient times
Could act extortion and the worst of crimes,
Washed with a neatnefs fcrupulously nice,
And free from every taint but that of vice.
Judgment, however tardy, mends her pace
When obftinacy once has conquered grace.
They faw diftemper healed, and life restored,
In answer to the fiat of his word;

Confeffed the wonder, and with daring tongue
Blafphemed the authority from which it sprung.
They knew by fure prognoftics seen on high,
The future tone and temper of the sky;
But, grave diffemblers! could not understand
That fin let loose fpeaks punishment at hand.
Ask now of hiftory's authentic page,
And call up evidence from every age;
Difplay with bufy and laborious hand

The bleffings of the moft indebted land;
What nation will you find, whose annals prove
So rich an intereft in almighty love?

Where dwell they now, where dwelt in ancient day

A people planted, watered, bleft as they?

Let Egypt's plagues and Canaan's woes proclaim

The favours poured upon the Jewish name;

Their freedom purchased for them at the cont
Qf all, their hard oppreffors valued moft;
Their title to a country not their own

Made fure by prodigies till then unknown;

For them the ftates, they left, made waste and void;
For them, the ftates, to which they went, deftroyed;
A cloud to measure out their march by day,
By night a fire to cheer the gloomy way;
That moving fignal fummoning, when best,
Their hoft to move, and when it stayed, to reft.
For them the rocks diffolved into a Apod,
The dews condenfed into angelic food,
Their very garments facred, old yet new,

And Time forbid to touch them as he flew ;
Streams, fwelled above the bank, enjoined to ftand,
While they paffed through to their appointed land;
Their leader armed with meeknefs, zeal, and love,
And graced with clear credentials from above;
Themselves fecured beneath the Almighty wing;
Their God their captain *, lawgiver, and king;
Crowned with a thousand victories, and at last
Lords of the conquered foil, there rooted fast,
In peace poffeffing what they won by war,
Their name far published, and revered as far;
Where will you find a race like theirs, endowed
With all that man ever wished, or heaven bestowed?
• vide Joshua v. 14.

Threy, and they only, amongst all mankind
Received the transcript of the eternal mind;
Were trufted with his own engraven laws,
And conftituted guardians of his caufe ;
Theirs were the prophets, theirs the priestly call,
And theirs by birth the Saviour of us all.

In vain the nations, that had seen them rife
With fierce and envious yet admiring eyes,
Had fought to crush them guarded, as they were
By power divine, and skill that could not err.
Had they maintained allegiance firm and fure,
And kept the faith immaculate and pure,
Then the proud eagles of all-conquering Rome
Had found one city not to be overcome ;
And the twelve standards of the tribes unfurled
Had bid defiance to the warring world.
But grace abused brings forth the fouleft deeds,
As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds.
Cured of the golden calves, their fathers' fin,
They set up self, that idol god within ;
Viewed a Deliverer with disdain and hate,
Who left them ftill a tributary state;
Seized faft his hand, held out to fet them free
From a worse yoke, and nailed it to the tree :
There was the confummation and the crown,
The flower of Ifrael's infamy full blown ;