Standing at the "edge" of the nonexistent cliff, Gloucester address the "mighty gods": he is renouncing the world "in [their] sights" and that if he could bear their "great opposeless wills" any longer, he would live out his life (44-8). However, since he cannot, he asks them to bless Edgar. Then he "leaps"—falling to the ground in a faint. Edgar now pretends to be a new person who saw Gloucester leapfrom the "cliff," and approaches Gloucester. Although Gloucester asks to be left alone, Edgar refuses: he keeps telling Gloucester that it is a miracle that he has survived his fall and persuades Gloucester that the creature that led him to the edge of the cliff was in fact the devil. "The clearest gods," Edgar tells his father, "have preserved thee" (90-1).
Even though he has suffered so much, Gloucester still believes that a divine order exists. Speaking of the world in the gods' "sights," he further describes them as spectators who have the ultimate insight into human affairs. When Edgar approaches him after the "fall," he, too, describes the gods as looking out for humans.