What weight of antient witness can prevail, If private reason hold the public scale? But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide For erring judgments an unerring guide! Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light, A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. O teach me to believe thee, thus concealed, And search no farther than thyself revealed; But her alone for my director take, Whom thou hast promised never to forsake! My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires; My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Followed false lights; and, when their glimpse was gone, My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am; Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame! Good life be now my task; my doubts are done;[103] What more could fright my faith, than three in one? Can I believe eternal God could lie } Disguised in mortal mould, and infancy? } That the great Maker of the world could die?} And after that trust my imperfect sense, Which calls in question his omnipotence? Can I my reason to my faith compel, And shall my sight, and touch, and taste rebel? Superior faculties are set aside; Shall their subservient organs be my guide? Then let the moon usurp the rule of day, And winking tapers shew the sun his way; For what my senses can themselves perceive, I need no revelation to believe. Can they, who say the host should be descried By sense, define a body glorified? Impassable, and penetrating parts? Let them declare by what mysterious arts He shot that body through the opposing might, } Of bolts and bars impervious to the light, } And stood before his train confessed in open sight.[104]} For since thus wondrously he passed, 'tis plain, One single place two bodies did contain; And sure the same Omnipotence as well Can make one body in more places dwell. Let reason then at her own quarry fly, But how can finite grasp infinity? 'Tis urged again, that faith did first commence By miracles, which are appeals to sense, And thence concluded, that our sense must be The motive still of credibility; For latter ages must on former wait, And what began belief, must propagate. But winnow well this thought, and you shall find 'Tis light as chaff that flies before the wind. Were all those wonders wrought by power divine, As means or ends of some more deep design? Most sure as means, whose end was this alone, To prove the Godhead of the Eternal Son. God thus asserted, man is to believe Beyond what sense and reason can conceive, And, for mysterious things of faith, rely On the proponent, heaven's authority. If, then, our faith we for our guide admit, Vain is the farther search of human wit; As when the building gains a surer stay,