Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EPIC APOLOGETICS. Paradise Lost, the Grandest of all Metrical Apologetics—Its Purpose to Assert and Justify Eternal Providence—Admits Uncertainty of Existence and Justice of the Almighty—Atheist Supposed—Argument Would Confuse More Than Convince Him—Incongruity Obscured by Grandeur, Extravagance, Metaphor, Etc—Occasion and Object of Creation—Imply Free-will and Katalism—Fall of Man, Bad Economy—Providence Responsible—Philosophy of Poem Overrated—Meant to Immo'talize Poet—Skepticism Overrated—Miracle, Prophecy, and Revelation, as Authoritative for One System as Another—Audacity of Theological Reasoning—Question Personal to Each Individual —Neither Freedom Nor Fatalism Can be Made to Appear Reasonable—Gibbon's Tribute to Christianity. Early in the period in which some have placed the so-called Christian Renaissance the blind Bard of Albion who has sung the grandest of all metrical apologetics, invoked the heavenly Muse to aid his adventurous song in pursuit of things theretofore unattempted in prose or rhyme; that he might assert eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to men. Such an avowal of such a purpose is sufficient to put a reader to thinking. The manner in which the purpose is prosecuted, and said to be executed, may suggest the thought which will result in a correct estimate of the proposed assertion and justification. If we can conceive that eternal Providence has not already sufficiently asserted itself, possibly we may then imagine that some inspired enthusiast might assert it, and justify the ways of the Almighty to men. But the questions occur:—what is any one of those ways? and—by what standard are they to be jus- titied ? If they are to be justified in reason, the effort is a foregone failure at its inception. The further questions o...