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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

UNIVERSAL GOOD, THE OBJECT OF THE DIVINE WILL; AND EVIL by JOHN BYROM

Poet Analysis

First Line: THE GOD OF LOVE, DELIGHTING TO BESTOW
Last Line: MAY BOTH BE FOUND SELF-EVIDENTLY TRUE.
Subject(s): GOOD; GRATITUDE; LOVE;
THE God of love, delighting to bestow,
Sends down his blessing to the world below:
A grateful mind receives it, and above
Sends up thanksgiving to the God of love:
This happy intercourse could never fail,
Did not a false, perverted will prevail.

For love divine, a rightly understood,
Is an unalterable will to good:
Good is the object of His blessed will,
Who never can concur to real ill;
Much less @3decree, predestinate, ordain@1—
Words oft employ'd to take His name in vain.

"But he permits it to be done," say you—
Plain, then, I answer, that He does not @3do@1;
That, having will'd created angels free,
He still permits or wills them so to be;
Were His permission ask'd, before they did
An evil action, He would soon forbid.

Before the doing He forbids indeed,
But disobedient creatures take no heed:
If He, according to your present plea,
Withdraws his grace, and @3so@1 they disobey,
The fault is laid on Him, not them at all;
For who can stand whom He shall thus let fall?

Our own neglect must be the previous cause,
When it is said @3the grace of God withdraws@1;
In the same sense, as when the brightest dawn,
If we will shut our windows, is withdrawn;
Not that the sun is ever the less bright,
But that our choice is not to see the light.

Free to receive the grace, or to reject,
@3Receives@1 only can be God's @3elect;
Rejecters@1 of it, @3reprobate@1 alone,
Not by @3Divine Decree@1, but by their @3own:@1
His love to all, his willing none to sin,
Is a decree that never could begin.

It is the order, the eternal law,
The true free grace, that never can withdraw;
Observance of it will, of course, be blest,
And opposition to it self-distress'd;
@3To them, who love its gracious Author, all
Will work for good@1, according to St. Paul.

An easy key to each abstruser text,
That modern disputants have so perplex'd;
With arbitrary fancies on each side,
From God's pure love, or man's free-will denied;
Which, in the breast of saints, and sinners too,
May both be found self-evidently true.



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