light;
  With Socrates may see their Maker’s face, 210
  While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place. 
  Nor does it balk my charity to find
  The Egyptian bishop[88] of another mind: 
  For though his creed eternal truth contains,
  ’Tis hard for man to doom to endless pains
  All who believed not all his zeal required;
  Unless he first could prove he was inspired. 
  Then let us either think he meant to say
  This faith, where publish’d, was the only way;
  Or else conclude that, Arius to confute, 220
  The good old man, too eager in dispute,
  Flew high; and as his Christian fury rose,
  Damn’d all for heretics who durst oppose.

   Thus far my charity this path has tried,
  (A much unskilful, but well meaning guide:)
  Yet what they are, even these crude thoughts were bred
  By reading that which better thou hast read,
  Thy matchless author’s work:  which thou, my friend,
  By well translating better dost commend;
  Those youthful hours which, of thy equals most 230
  In toys have squander’d, or in vice have lost,
  Those hours hast thou to nobler use employ’d;
  And the severe delights of truth enjoy’d. 
  Witness this weighty book, in which appears
  The crabbed toil of many thoughtful years,
  Spent by thy author, in the sifting care
  Of Rabbins’ old sophisticated ware
  From gold divine; which he who well can sort
  May afterwards make algebra a sport: 
  A treasure, which if country curates buy, 240
  They Junius and Tremellius[89] may defy;
  Save pains in various readings, and translations;
  And without Hebrew make most learn’d quotations. 
  A work so full with various learning fraught,
  So nicely ponder’d, yet so strongly wrought,
  As nature’s height and art’s last hand required: 
  As much as man could compass, uninspired. 
  Where we may see what errors have been made
  Both in the copiers’ and translators’ trade;
  How Jewish, Popish interests have prevail’d, 250
  And where infallibility has fail’d.

   For some, who have his secret meaning guess’d,
  Have found our author not too much a priest: 
  For fashion-sake he seems to have recourse
  To Pope, and Councils, and Tradition’s force: 
  But he that old traditions could subdue,
  Could not but find the weakness of the new: 
  If Scripture, though derived from heavenly birth,
  Has been but carelessly preserved on earth;
  If God’s own people, who of God before 260
  Knew what we know, and had been promised more,
  In fuller terms, of Heaven’s assisting care,
  And who did neither time nor study spare,
  To keep this Book untainted, unperplex’d,
  Let in gross errors to corrupt the text,
  Omitted paragraphs, embroil’d the