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

BECOMING AMERICA
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE
In Gods true love, never to move,
nor once awry to tread:
Then all his Race my Fathers Grace
should have enjoy’d for ever,
And wicked Sprights by subtil sleights
could them have harmed never.
CLXXIV
Would you have griev’d to have receiv’d
through Adam so much good,
As had been your for evermore,
if he at rst had stood?
Would you have said, We ne’r obey’d
nor did thy Laws regard;
It ill bets with benets
us, Lord, so to reward?
CLXXV
Since then to share in his welfare
you could have been content,
You may with reason share in his treason,
and in the punishment.
Hence you were born in state forlorn,
with natures so dep [. . .] aved:
Death was your due, because that you
had thus your selves behaved.
CLXXVI
You think if we had been as he,
whom God did so betrust,
all for a paltry lust.
Had you been made in Adam’s stead,
you would like things have wrought;
And so into the self-same wo
your selves and yours have brought.
CLXXVII
I may deny you once to try,
or Grace to you to tender,
Though he nds grace be [. . .] ore my face
who was the chief oender:
Else should my Grace cease to be Grace,
for it should not be free,
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