Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/356

350 To me and to my offspring would torment me With cruel expectation.—Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die; Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod. Then in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? O thought Horrid, if true! Yet why? it was but breath Of life that sinned. What dies but what had life And sin? the body properly hath neither. All of me then shall die. Let this appease The doubt, since human reach no farther knows. For though the Lord of all be infinite, Is his wrath also? Be it, Man is not so, But mortal doomed. How can he exercise Wrath without end on Man, whom death must end? Can he make deathless death? That were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Impossible is held, as argument Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out, For anger's sake, finite to infinite In punished Man, to satisfy his rigor Satisfied never? That were to extend His sentence beyond dust and Nature's law, By which all causes else, according still To the reception of their matter, act,