and as one

Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend.

Such touches of penetrative wisdom and piety, like many other precious
qualities, are of an age that had passed. In the poetry of 1700-1725,
religion forgoes mysticism and exaltation; the intellectual life, daring
and subtlety; the imagination, exuberance and splendor. Enthusiasm for
moral ideals declines into steadfast approval of ethical principles. Yet
these were changes in tone and manner rather than in fundamental views.
The poets of the period were conservatives. They were shocked by the
radicalism of Mandeville, the Nietzsche of his day, who derided the
generally accepted moralities as shallow delusions, and who by means of a
clever fable supported a materialistic theory which implied that in the
struggle for existence nothing but egotism could succeed:

Fools only strive
To make a great and honest hive.

Obloquy buried him; he was a sensational exception to the rule. As a
body, the poets of his time retained the orthodox traditions concerning
God, Man, and Nature.

Their theology is evidenced by Addison, Watts, and Parnell. It is a
Christianity that has not ceased to be stern and majestic. In Addison's
_Divine Ode_, the planets of the firmament proclaim a Creator whose power
knows no bounds. In the hymns of Isaac Watts, God is as of old a jealous
God, obedience to whose eternal will may require the painful sacrifice
of temporal earthly affections, even the sacrifice of our love for our