Now let the Atheist tremble; Thou alone
Canst bid his conscious heart the Godhead own.
Whom shall thou not reform? O thou hast seen,
How God descends to judge the souls of men.
Thou heard'st the sentence how the guilty mourn,
Driv'n out from God, and never to return.
Yet more, behold ten thousand thunders fall,
And sudden vengeance wrap the flaming ball:
When nature sunk, when every bolt was hurl'd,
Thou saw'st the boundless ruins of the world.
When guilty Sodom felt the burning rain,
And sulphur fell on the devoted plain;
The patriarch thus, the fiery tempest past,
With pious horror view'd the desert waste;
The restless smoke still wav'd its curls around
For ever rising from the glowing ground.
But tell me, oh! what heav'nly pleasure tell,
To think so greatly, and describe so well!
How wast thou pleas'd the wond'rous theme to try,
And find the thought of man could rise so high?
Beyond this world the labour to pursue,
And open all ETERNITY to view?
