O GLORIOUS 1 God! how much is man | |
| For ever bound to praise thy Name, | |
| No mortall wight can rightly scan, | |
| As well thy workes expresse the same. | |
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| If man look up with fixed eyes, | 5 |
| How wonderfully doth appeare | |
| Thy workmanship in azure skyes, | |
| With all thy creatures planted there; | |
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| The sunne and moone above the rest, | |
| To guide and rule each day and night, | 10 |
| With glistering starrs all ready prest, | |
| To pleasure us by shining bright; | |
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| The clouds that hang above our heads, | |
| As times and seasons do require, | |
| Their fruitfull showers abroad do spread, | 15 |
| To satisfy our hartes’ desire. | |
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| If man cast down his eyes below, | |
| To view God’s creatures here on earth, | |
| How do they all his love foreshew, | |
| Still to preserve man’s vitall breath; 2 | 20 |
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| The foules that flye in firmament, | |
| And all kind fishes in the sea, | |
| To take and use for his content, | |
| With beastes on th’ earth to rule away; 3 | |
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| And for man’s meat did God provide | 25 |
| All fruitfull trees (save only one), | |
| With every herb that beareth seed, | |
| For man all times to feed upon. 4 | |
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| A pleasant place, cal’d Parradice, | |
| God planted mankind first therein, | 30 |
| To have all times what hart could wish, | |
| So long as he avoided sinne; 5 | |
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| And that man might live in this state, | |
| And never die (unlesse he would), | |
| The tree of life, thereon to eate, | 35 |
| God planted in the sacred mould: 6 | |
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| How truely then might mankind say, | |
| How much are we, Lord, bound to thee, | |
| For all thy favours every way, | |
| Inlarged so aboundantly! 7 | 40 |
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| Much more if thou lift up thy mind, | |
| To meditate God’s love to thee, | |
| A thousand fold thou shalt it finde | |
| Exceeding others in degree: | |
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| For, in creating all things else, | 45 |
| God only said, Let it be so; | |
| And so they were (as Scripture tells), | |
| His mighty power, by word to shoe; 8 | |
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| But in creating man, God said, | |
| Let us make man; whereby we see | 50 |
| His perfect person to be made | |
| Even by the blessed Trinity: | |
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| Which proveth man did farre excell | |
| All former workes, it is most plaine; | |
| As that which followes (marke it well), | 55 |
| In our own image, doth containe. 9 | |
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| For by God’s image, in this place, | |
| Is meant these special qualities, 10 | |
| (His knowledge, truth, and holinesse,) | |
| All which in man were pure likewise: 11 | 60 |
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| For knowledge, Adam first did name | |
| All living creatures in their kind; | |
| His life also was without blame, | |
| And all the graces of his minde: 12 | |
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| So that in these was no dissent | 65 |
| ’Twixt God and man, (for gifts most cleare,) | |
| Save (all in God were permanent,) | |
| But man might change, as did appeare. 13 | |
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| Behold God’s love to man yet more, | |
| In placing him the supreame lord | 70 |
| Of all his creatures made before, | |
| To guide and governe by his worde. 14 | |
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| And that which most did shew God’s love, | |
| There was but one excepted tree, | |
| Which he forbad that man should proue, | 75 |
| On pain of death eternally. 15 | |
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| What could God more have done for man, | |
| Or how much is man to him bound, | |
| No earthly wight can rightly scan; | |
| Then be not slacke his praise to sound. 16 | 80 |
