“A dangerous tenet that!” the Elder said; “A fallen angel doubtless she may be; If truth she find by natural reason’s aid, It ever leads her to some heresy; Indeed, the truth too often is betrayed To minds ill-fitted for inquiry free; From bad to worse, from worse to worst we go, And end our being in eternal woe. XXXI. “Nature’s own truths do oft the mind mislead; From partial glimpses men will judge the whole; And it were better if our Church’s creed Were learning’s object and its utmost goal; Reason would then no higher purpose need, Than, by it, point the yet erratic soul To her high hope and everlasting rest!” Williams this heard, and spake with kindling breast: XXXII. “God gave man reason, that his soul might be Free as his glance that spans the universe; All things around him prompt inquiry free, All do his reason to research coerce; The Heavens, the Earth, the many breeding sea, All have their shapes and qualities to nurse The soul’s aspirings, and, from blooming youth To ripe old age, provoke the quest of truth. XXXIII. “Truth! I would know thee wert thou e’er so bad, Bad as thy persecutors deem or fear, Wert thou in more than Gorgon terrors clad, Thy glance a death to every feeling dear; Taught thou that God a demon’s passions had, That Earth is Hell, and that the damned dwell here, And death the end of all;--still would I know The total Curse--the sum of being’s woe. XXXIV. “Yet fear not this, for each new truth reveals Of God a nearer and a brighter view; Anticipation lags behind, and feels How mean her thought at each discovery new; Her stars were stones fired in revolving wheels-- Truth! thine are worlds self-moved the boundless through Who checks man’s Reason in her heavenward flight, Would shroud, O God! thy glorious works in night! XXXV. “Whence didst thou learn that the Almighty’s plan Required thy wisdom to protect and save, That, when he sent his Gospel down to man, Thou to defend it must the soul enslave, Enthrone deceit, and place beneath its ban The honest heart, that dares its sentence brave? Full well I trow the Prince of Darkness fits The blood of martyrs shed by hypocrites. XXXVI. “Hearken for once; just as the conscience pure Is here God’s presence to my wayward will-- Not to constrain it, but to kindly lure It on by duty’s path, from every ill; So to the State the Christian Church, secure From human thrall, should be a conscience, still Ne’er to constrain, save by that heavenly light Which bares the Wrong, and maketh plain the Right.” XXXVII.