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“ I yield it just/* said Adam, and submit. 
But is there yet no other way, besides 
These painful passages, how we may come 
To death, and mix with our connatural dust ? 
“ There is,” said Michael, “ if thou well observe 
The rule of not too much, by temp ranee taught. 
In what thou eat’st and drink’st, seeking from thence 
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, 
Till many years over thy head return: 
So may’st thou live, till like fruit thou drop 
Into thy mother’s lap, or be with ease 
Gather’d, not harshly pluck’d, for death mature: 
This is old age; but then thou must outlive 
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change 
To wither’d, weak, and gray; thy senses then 
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego 
To what thou hast; and for the air of youth. 
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood shall reign 
A melancholy damp of cold and dry 
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume 
The balm of life.” To whom our Ancestor: 
“ Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong 
Life much, bent rather how I may be quit 
Fairest and easiest of this cumbrous charge, 
Which I must keep till my appointed day 
Of rendering up, and patiently attend 
My dissolution.” Michael reply’d: 
“ Nor love thy life, nor hate: but what thou liv’st 
Live well; how long or short permit to Heav’n.” 
Michael then shews, that God tempers his judgments with mercy , and points out to Adam the pro¬ 
mise of redemption of mankind through Christ. For as there is a chain of exalted beings, cherubs, 
cherubims, and seraphims, so at the summit is Christ , so exalted in nature as to be equal to God, 
and being a direct emanation from that inconceivable spirit, the nearest approximation to the God¬ 
head, therefore one part of the holy Trinity. With the utmost condescension this emanation, whose 
act it was to produce our globe amidst applauding angels, is embodied in a human form, reveals the will 
of God, and satisfies infinite justice, by an atonement for the sins of the whole world, and thus over¬ 
comes death. “ Oh grave, where is now thy victory.” How comforting the words, « I am the 
resurrection and the life!” In the divine volume we are also informed of administering angels. We 
are objects of their special concern. They first receive our departed spirits, when we shake off the 
mortal coil. How friendly the office to lessen our astonishment at the opening splendour of a new 
world! Tide Petitpierre on Divine Goodness, proving the Universal Redemption as a Scriptural 
Doctrine. 
That there were no infernal regions and eternity of punishments, was also conjectured by the wisest 
among the ancients. Lucretius, Lib. III. 991. J 
-The dismal tales that poets tell 
Are verified on earth, and not in hell. 
No Tityus, torn by vultures, lies in hell, 
Nor could the lobes of his small liver swell 
Fo that prodigious mass, for their eternal meal: 
But he’s the Tityus, who, by love oppress’d. 
Or tyrant passion preying on his breast. 
And ever anxious thoughts, is robb’d of rest. 
The Sisiphus is he, whom noise and strife 
Seduce from all the soft retreats of life. 
