REFLECTIONS.

From whom man received the spirit, and soul, and reason,
Understanding, and free will, and other excellences.
This being cannot be anything but eternal, or it excludes
An infinite chain of the working cause,
Which reason forbids us to believe.
Thus God's glory and eternal being soar above,
From whence the lesser [beings] received their inborn destiny.
This creature referring to man as a created being then points us to the uncreated God,
The highest excellence, from which all other excellences
Borrow their luster, both above and here below.

and from the fitness, rule, order, and the end of things.

One cannot deny that an all-wise power
Conducts and governs all, keeps everything through its strength
In order, arranges it all for some beneficial end
And purpose. This is God and the Godhead, whom one knows
Through this regularity of things, as it appears
Where each reaches its end, and deviates from no order,
In rising and setting, in procreating, and in dying.
This would be impossible for those who lack reason. original: "derven" (to lack). Vondel argues that because plants and inanimate objects follow complex laws without having their own "reason," they must be guided by an external Intellect.
Thus they are all guided and led by a higher hand,
A single supreme power, a supreme intellect.

The atheist ungodist: an archaic Dutch term for one who denies God's existence wrongly calls the world "God," or ascribes its origin to nature.

The denier of God, to give a fairer color
To his denial of God—driven by all things absurd—
Knows no Godhead but the heaven, earth, and sea,
And what one sees high and low, in length and breadth.
He melts down, to plausibly wring the proof of God from us,
Into a single name both the work and the cause of all things; This is a critique of Pantheism, the belief that the universe and God are identical.
Or denies the beginning and end of this universe,
And grants an eternity—to suit his dreams—
To that which has taken its origin from God alone.
To wrestle free of this, it seems to him that all things come forth
And spring, not from God, but from the essence of nature.
This [nature] sat, from eternity, according to his understanding, at the helm
Of affairs, which turn around in a circle:
Thus this "turner" original: "draeier." Vondel uses a wordplay here; a "draeier" is someone who turns things, but it also implies someone who is slippery, deceptive, or whose head is spinning with delusions. fancies he can satisfy himself in his dream.