Note 1588 — THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.
Reading edition
First edition:
Left conscience free and will.
Here followed, if it is genuine, a suppressed stanza, which Mrs. Thrale repeated to Dr. Johnson, and which she said a clergyman of their acquaintance had discovered:
Can sins of moments claim the rod Of everlasting fires? And that offend great nature's God Which nature's self inspires
Mrs. Thrale called the stanza "licentious," Johnson observed that it was borrowed from the Pastor Fido of Guarini, and Boswell pointed out that a "rod of fires" was an incongruous metaphor. "I warrant you, however," said Johnson, "Pope wrote this stanza, and some friend struck it out." The folly of the lines is transparent. The "sins" with which "nature's self inspires" man, "conscience warns him not to do," ver. 14, and Pope assumes that God will never be "offended" if we disregard conscience, and yield to temptation.