ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK. Which opens with reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former. Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow. Prodigies enumerated. Sicilian earthquakes. Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin. God the agent in them. The philosophy that stops at secondary causes, reproved. Our own late miscarriages accounted for. Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau. But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation. The Reverend Advertiser of engraved sermons. Petit maitre parson. The good preacher. Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved. Apostrophe to popular applause. Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated with. Sum of the whole matter. Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity. Their folly and extravagance. The mischiefs of profusion. Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the Universities. THE TASK. BOOK II. THE TIME-PIECE. OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness ', Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd, Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. 5 It does not feel for man. The natural bond Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax 10 That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour'd like his own2, and having power Abhor each other. Mountains interposed, 15 Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place, that I might leave my people and go from them.-Jeremiah, ix. 2. 2 Not remembering that he is (as old Fuller says) image of God cut in ebony." S. C.-9. H "the Make enemies of nations who had else 20 25 30 And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth I had much rather be myself the slave 35 And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. Sure there is need of social intercourse, 40 45 |