The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground;
  Cries [Greek:  eureka], the mighty secret’s found: 
  God is that spring of good; supreme and best;
  We made to serve, and in that service blest;
  If so, some rules of worship must be given,
  Distributed alike to all by Heaven: 
  Else God were partial, and to some denied
  The means his justice should for all provide. 
  This general worship is to praise and pray:  50
  One part to borrow blessings, one to pay: 
  And when frail nature slides into offence,
  The sacrifice for crimes is penitence. 
  Yet since the effects of Providence, we find,
  Are variously dispensed to human kind;
  That vice triumphs, and virtue suffers here—­
  A brand that sovereign justice cannot bear—­
  Our reason prompts us to a future state: 
  The last appeal from fortune and from fate;
  Where God’s all-righteous ways will be declared—­ 60
  The bad meet punishment, the good reward.

   Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar,
  And would not be obliged to God for more. 
  Vain, wretched creature, how art thou misled,
  To think thy wit these God-like notions bred! 
  These truths are not the product of thy mind,
  But dropp’d from heaven, and of a nobler kind. 
  Reveal’d religion first inform’d thy sight,
  And reason saw not, till faith sprung the light. 
  Hence all thy natural worship takes the source:  70
  ’Tis revelation what thou think’st discourse. 
  Else how com’st thou to see these truths so clear,
  Which so obscure to heathens did appear? 
  Not Plato these, nor Aristotle found: 
  Nor he whose wisdom oracles renown’d. 
  Hast thou a wit so deep, or so sublime,
  Or canst thou lower dive, or higher climb? 
  Canst thou by reason more of Godhead know
  Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero? 
  Those giant wits, in happier ages born, 80
  When arms and arts did Greece and Rome adorn,
  Knew no such system:  no such piles could raise
  Of natural worship, built on prayer and praise,
  To one sole God. 
  Nor did remorse to expiate sin prescribe,
  But slew their fellow-creatures for a bribe: 
  The guiltless victim groan’d for their offence;
  And cruelty and blood was penitence. 
  If sheep and oxen could atone for men,
  Ah! at how cheap a rate the rich might sin! 90
  And great oppressors might Heaven’s wrath beguile,
  By offering His own creatures for a spoil!

   Darest thou, poor worm, offend Infinity? 
  And must the terms of peace be given by thee? 
  Then thou art Justice in the last appeal;
  Thy easy God instructs thee to rebel: 
  And, like a king remote, and weak, must take
  What satisfaction thou art pleased to make.