This is a line from a Dryden poem:
The church itself he labours to assail,
And keeps fit tools to break the sacred pale.
Of those let him the guilty roll commence,
Who has betrayed a master and a prince ;
A man, seditious, lewd, and impudent ;
An engine always mischievously bent ;
One who from all the bans of duty swerves,
No tie can hold but that which he deserves ;
An author dwindled to a pamphleteer;
Skilful to forge, and always insincere;
Careless exploded practices to mend ;
Bold to attack, yet feeble to defend.
Fate's blindfold reign the atheist loudly owns,
And providence blasphemously dethrones.
In vain the leering actor strains his tongue
To cheat, with tears and empty noise, the throng j
Since all men know, whate'er he says or writes,
Revenge, or stronger interest, indites ;
And that the wretch employs his venal wit
How to confute what formerly he writ.
Next him the grave Socinian claims a place,
Endowed with reason, though bereft of grace ;
A preaching pagan of surpassing fame,
No register records his borrowed name.
O, had the qhild more happily been bred,
A radiant mitre would have graced his head :
But now unfit, the most he should expect,
Is to be entered of T F 's sect.
I think the meaning is that the evident absense of god (fate's blindfold) is the atheist's strongest argument.
