Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE
CLXIX
O great Creator, why was our nature
depraved and forlorn?
Why so del’d, and made so vild
Whilst we were yet unborn?
If it be just, and needs we must
transgressors reckon’d be,
Thy mercy, Lord, to us aord,
which sinners hath set free.
CLXX
Behold, we see Adam [. . .] et free,
and sav’d from his tre [. . .] pass,
Whose sinful fall hath split us all,
and brought us to this pass.
Canst thou deny us once to try,
or grace to us to tender,
When he nds grace before thy face,
that was the chief oender?
CLXXI
Then answered the Judge most dread;
God doth such doom forbid,
T [. . .] at men should die eternally
for what they never did.
But what you call old Adam’s Fall,
and only his Trespass,
You call amiss to call it his:
both his and yours it was.
CLXXII
He was design’d of all mankind
to be a publick Head,
A common Root whence all should shoot,
and stood in all their stead:
He stood and fell, did ill or well,
not for himself alone,
But for you all, who now his Fall
and trespass would disown.
CLXXIII
If he had stood, then all his brood
had been established
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