Hear me, O God! 
A broken heart
Is my best part: 
Use still thy rod,
That I may prove
Therein thy love.

  If thou hadst not
    Been stern to me,
    But left me free,
  I had forgot
    Myself and thee.

  For sin’s so sweet
    As minds ill bent that.
    Rarely repent
  Until they meet
    Their punishment.

  Who more can crave
    Than thou hast done? 
    Thou gay’st a Son

  To free a slave,
    First made of nought,
    With all since bought.

  Sin, death, and hell
    His glorious name
    Quite overcame;
  Yet I rebel,
    And slight the same.

  But I’ll come in
    Before my loss
    Me farther toss,
  As sure to win
    Under his cross.

  3.—­AN HYMN ON THE NATIVITY OF MY SAVIOUR.

  I sing the birth was born to-night,
  The author both of life and light;
    The angels so did sound it. 
  And like the ravished shepherds said,
  Who saw the light, and were afraid,
    Yet searched, and true they found it.

  The Son of God, the eternal King,
  That did us all salvation bring,
    And freed the soul from danger;
  He whom the whole world could not take,
  The Word which heaven and earth did make,
    Was now laid in a manger.

  The Father’s wisdom willed it so;
  The Son’s obedience knew no No;
    Both wills were in one stature;
  And, as that wisdom had decreed,
  The Word was now made flesh indeed,
    And took on him our nature.

  What comfort by him do we win,
  Who made himself the price of sin,
    To make us heirs of glory! 
  To see this babe, all innocence,
  A martyr born in our defence!—­
    Can man forget this story?

Somewhat formal and artificial, no doubt; rugged at the same time, like him who wrote them.  When a man would utter that concerning which he has only felt, not thought, he can express himself only in the forms he has been taught, conventional or traditional.  Let his powers be ever so much developed in respect of other things, here, where he has not meditated, he must understand as a child, think as a child, speak as a child.  He can as yet generate no sufficing or worthy form natural to himself.  But the utterance is not therefore untrue.  There was no professional bias to cause the stream of Ben Jonson’s verses to flow in that channel.  Indeed, feeling without thought, and the consequent combination of impulse to speak with lack of matter, is the cause of much of that common-place utterance concerning things of religion which is so wearisome, but which therefore it is not always fair to despise as cant.

About the same age as Ben Jonson, though the date of his birth is unknown, I now come to mention Thomas Heywood, a most voluminous writer of plays, who wrote also a book, chiefly in verse, called The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, a strange work, in which, amongst much that is far from poetic, occur the following remarkable metaphysico-religious verses.  He had strong Platonic tendencies, interesting himself chiefly however in those questions afterwards pursued by Dr. Henry More, concerning witches and such like subjects, which may be called the shadow of Platonism.