An author dwindled to a pamphleteer;
Skilful to forge, and always infincere ;
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 ftrains his tongue

To cheat, with tears and empty noise, the throng,
Since all men know, whate'er he fays or writes,
Revenge or ftronger 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,
Endow'd with reason, though bereft of grace;
A preaching pagan of furpaffing fame :
No register records his borrow'd name.
Oh, had the child more happily been bred,
A radiant mitre would have grac'd his head :
But now unfit, the most he should expect,
Is to be enter'd of T— F's fect.

To him fucceeds, with looks demurely fad,
A gloomy foul, with revelation mad;
Falfe to his friend, and careless of his word;
A dreaming prophet, and a griping lord;
He fells the livings which he can't poffefs,
And farms that fine-cure his diocefe.
Unthinking man! to quit thy barren see,
And vain endeavours in chronology,
For the more fruitlefs care of royal charity.

}

Thy

Thy hoary noddle warns thee to return,
The treafon of old age in Wales to mourn;
Nor think the city-poor will lofs sustain,
Thy place may well be vacant in this reign.
I fhould admit the booted prelate now
But he is even for lampoon too low:
The fcum and outcast of a royal race;

The nation's grievance, and the gown's difgrace.
None fo unlearn'd did ere at London fit;
This driveler does the facred chair befh-t.
I need not brand the fpiritual parricide,
Nor draw the weapon dangling by his fide:
Th' astonish'd world remembers that offence,
And knows he ftole the daughter of his prince.
'Tis time enough, in fome fucceeding age,
To bring this mitred captain on the stage.
Thefe are the leaders in apoftacy,

The wild reformers of the liturgy,

And the blind guides of poor elective majesty;
A thing which commonwealth's-men did devife,
Till plots were ripe, to catch the people's eyes.

Their king's a monster, in a quagmire born,
Of all the native brutes the grief and fcorn;
With a big fnout, cast in a crooked mould,
Which runs with glanders and an inborn cold.
His fubftance is of clammy fnot and phlegm ;
Sleep is his effence, and his life a dream.
To Caprex this Tiberius does retire,

To quench with catamite his feeble fire.

}

Dear

}

Dear catamite! who rules alone the state,
While monarch dozes on his unpropt height,
Silent, yet thoughtless, and fecure of fate.
Could you but fee the fulfome hero led
By loathing vaffals to his noble bed!

In flannen robes the coughing ghoft does walk,
And his mouth moates like cleaner breech of hawk.

Corruption, fpringing from his canker'd breast,
Furs up the channel, 'and disturbs his rest.
With head propt up the bolster'd engine lies;
If pillow flip afide, the monarch dies.

RELIGIO LAI CI:

OR, A LAY MAN'S

ΑΝ

FAITH.

EPISTLE.

THE PREFACE.

A Poem with fo bold a title, and a name prefixed

from which the handling of so serious a subject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the author to fay fomewhat in defence, both of himself and of his undertaking. In the firft place, if it be objected to me, that, being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myself with fpeculations, which belong to the profeffion of divinity; I could answer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of facred things; but, in the due sense of my own weakness and want of learning, I plead not this: I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confeffion of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, but wait on it with the reverence that becomes me at a distance. In the next place I will ingenuously confefs, that the helps I have used in this small treatise, were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the church of England; fo that the weapons with which I combat irreligion, are already confecrated; though I fuppofe they may be taken down .

as lawfully as the fword of Goliah was by David, when they are to be employed for the common cause against the enemies of piety. I intend not by this to intitle them to any of my errors, which yet I hope are only thofe of charity to mankind; and fuch as my own charity has caufed me to commit, that of others may more eafily excufe. Being naturally inclined to fcepticism in philofophy, I have no reason to impose my opinions in a fubject which is above it; but, whatever they are, I fubmit them with all reverence to my mother church, accounting them no further mine, than as they are authorised, or at least uncondemned, by her. And, indeed, to fecure myself on this fide, I have used the neceffary precaution of fhewing this paper before it was published to a judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the fervice of the church and state; and whose writings have highly deserved of both. He was pleased to approve the body of the difcourfe, and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of complaifance: it is true he had too good a taste to like it all; and amongst some other faults recommended to my fecond view, what I have written perhaps too boldly on St. Athanafius, which he advised me wholly to omit. I am fenfible enough that I had done more prudently to have followed his opinion: but then I could not have satisfied myself that I had done honeftly not to have written what was my own. It has always been my thought, that heathens who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Chrift, were yet in a poffibility of falvation. Neither will it enter eafily