Must Virtue be preservèd by a lie? Virtue and Truth do ever best agree. By this, it seems to be a verity, Since the effects so good and virtuous be. For as the Devil, father is of lies, So Vice and Mischief do his lies ensue. Then this good doctrine did he not devise, But made this Lie which saith, "It is not true!" [Sidenote: The General Consent of all.] For how can that be false, which every tongue, Of every mortal man, affirms for true; Which truth hath, in all ages, been so strong, As loadstone-like, all hearts it ever drew. For not the Christian or the Jew alone; The Persian, or the Turk acknowledge this: This mystery to the wild Indian known, And to the Cannibal and Tartar, is. This rich Assyrian drug grows everywhere, As common in the North, as in the East! This doctrine doth not enter by the ear, But, of itself, is native in the breast! None that acknowledge GOD, or Providence, Their Soul's eternity did ever doubt; For all religion takes her root from hence, Which no poor naked nation lives without. For since the world for Man created was, (For only Man, the use thereof doth know) If Man do perish like a withered grass, How doth GOD's wisdom order things below? And if that wisdom still wise ends propound, Why made He Man, of other creatures king? When (if he perish here!) there is not found, In all the world so poor and vile a thing? If Death do quench us quite; we have great wrong; Since for our service, all things else were wrought: That daws, and trees, and rocks should last so long, When we must in an instant pass to nought. But, blest be that Great Power! that hath us blest With longer life, than heaven or earth can have Which hath infused into one mortal breast, Immortal Powers, not subject to the grave. For though the Soul do seem her grave to bear, And in this world is almost buried quick; We have no cause the Body's death to fear, "For when the shell is broke, out comes a chick." [Sidenote: Three kinds of Life answerable to the three powers of the Soul.] For as the Soul's _essential_ Powers are three, The Quick'ning Power, the Power of Sense, and Reason; Three kinds of Life to her designèd be, Which perfect these three Powers, in their due season. The first Life in the mother's womb is spent, Where She her Nursing Power doth only use; Where, when She finds defect of nourishment, Sh' expels her body, and this world She views. This, we call Birth! but if the child could speak, He, Death would call it! and of Nature, 'plain That She should thrust him out naked and weak; And in his passage, pinch him with such pain.