The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me
And I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert
That God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time
That they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition

Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception
But my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing
And as I was then perswaded, and remain confirm'd
That the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God
I cared not for consequences but wrote

Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?

He replied, all poets that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains
But many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing

Then Ezekiel said, the philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception:
Some nations held one principle for the origin and some another
We of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it)
Was the first principle and all other others merely derivative
Which was the cause of our despising the priests and Philosophers of other countries
And prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours and to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius
It was this that our great poet King David desired so fervently and invokes so patheticly
Saying by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms
And we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all deities of surrounding nations
And asserted that they had rebelled
From these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews

This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass
For all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be?
I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction
After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works
He said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years?
He answer'd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian

I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, and lay so long on his right and left side?
He answer'd, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite
This the North American tribes practise
And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?