In that you make so small account of the example of almost all the approved poets, ancient and modern, who thought fit in the beginning, and sometimes also in the progress of their poems, to invoke a Muse, or some other deity, that should dictate to them, or assist them in their writings; they that take not the laws of art, from any reason of their own, but from the fashion of precedent times, will perhaps accuse your singularity. For my part, I neither subscribe to their accusation, nor yet condemn that heathen custom, otherwise than as accessory to their false religion. For their poets were their divines; had the name of prophets; exercised amongst the people a kind of spiritual authority; would be thought to speak by a divine spirit; have their works which they writ in verse (the divine style) pass for the word of God, and not of man, and to be hearkened to with reverence. Do not the divines, excepting the style, do the same, and by us that are of the same religion cannot justly be reprehended for it? Besides, in the use of the spiritual calling of divines, there is danger sometimes to be feared, from want of skill, such as is reported of unskilful conjurers, that mistaking the rites and ceremonious points of their art, call up such spirits, as they cannot at their pleasure allay again; by whom storms are raised, that overthrow buildings, and are the cause of miserable wrecks at sea. Unskilful divines do oftentimes the like; for when they call unseasonably for _zeal_, there appears a spirit of _cruelty_; and by the like error, instead of _truth_, they raise _discord_; instead of _wisdom_, _fraud_; instead of _reformation_, _tumult_; and _controversy_, instead of _religion_. Whereas in the heathen poets, at least in those whose works have lasted to the time we are in, there are none of those indiscretions to be found, that tended to the subversion, or disturbance of the commonwealths wherein they lived. But why a Christian should think it an ornament to his poem, either to profane the true God, or invoke a false one, I can imagine no cause, but a reasonless imitation of custom; of a foolish custom, by which a man enabled to speak wisely from the principles of nature, and his own meditation, loves rather to be thought to speak by inspiration, like a bagpipe.