Chapter CLXI

“But Nature’s light shin’d not so bright
to teach us the right way:
We might have lov’d it and well improv’d it,
and yet have gone astray.“
The Judge most High makes this Reply:
“You ignorance pretend.
Dimness of sight, and want of light,
your course Heav’nward to bend.

CLXII. [135]

“How came your mind to be so blind?
I once you knowledge gave.
Clearness of sight and judgment light:
who did the same deprave?
If to your cost you have it lost,
and quite defac’d the same,
Your own desert hath caus’d the smart;
you ought not me to blame.

CLXIII. [136]

“Yourselves into a pit of woe,
your own transgression led;
If I to none my Grace had shown
who had been injured?
If to a few, and not to you,
I shew’d a way of life,
My Grace so free, you clearly see,
gives you no ground of strife.

CLXIV. [137]

“’Tis vain to tell, you wot fall well,
if you in time liad known
Your misery and remedy,
your actions had it shown:
You, sinful Crew, have not been true
unto the Light of Nature,
Nor done the good you understood,
nor owned your Creator.

CLXV. [138]

“He that the Light, because ’tis slight,
hath uséd to despise,
Would not the Light shining more bright,
be likely for a prize.
If you had lov’d, and well improv’d
your knowledge and dim sight,
Herein your pain ’had not been vain,
your plagues had been more light.“

_Reprobate Infants plead for themselves._

CLXVI. [139]

Then to the Bar all they drew near
Who died in infancy,
And never had or good or bad
effected pers’nally:
But from the womb unto the tomb
were straightway carried,
(Or at the least ere they transgress’d)
who thus began to plead: