Yet authors here except a faithful band,
Which the prevailing faction did withstand;
And fome, who bravely ftood in the defence
Of baffled justice and their exil'd prince.
Thefe fhine to after-times, each facred name
Stands ftill recorded in the rolls of fame.
WHEN lawless men their neighbours difpoffefs,
The tenants they extirpate or opprefs;
And make rude havock in the fruitful foil,
Which the right owners ploughid with careful toil.
The fame proportion does in kingdoms hold,
A new prince breaks the fences of the old!
And will o'er carcafes and deferts reign,
Unless the land its rightful lord regain.
He gripes the faithlefs owners of the place,
And buys a foreign army to deface
The fear'd and hated remnant of their race.
He ftarves their forces, and obftructs their trade;
Vaft fums are given, and yet no native paid.
The church itfelf he labours to affail,
And keeps fit tools to break the facred pale.
Of those let him the guilty roll commence,
Who has betray'd a mafter and a prince;
A man, feditious, lewd, and impudent;
An engine always mifchievoufly bent;
One who from all the bands of duty fwerves;
No tye can hold but that which he deserves ;
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 blafphemously dethrones.
In vain the leering actor strains his tongue
To cheat, with tears and empty noise, the throng,
Since all men know, whate'er he says or writes,
Revenge or ftronger intereft 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 regifter 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 fruitless care of royal charity.
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 besh-t.
I need not brand the spiritual parricide,
Nor draw the weapon dangling by his side :
Th' aftonish'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.
These 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 scorn;
With a big fnout, caft in a crooked mould,
Which runs with glanders and an inborn cold.
His fubftance is of claminy fnot and phlegm ;
Sleep is his effence, and his life a dream.
To Capreæ this Tiberius does retire,
To quench with catamite his feeble fire.
Dear catamite! who rules alone the state,
While monarch dozes on his unpropt height,
Silent, yet thoughtless, and secure of fate.
Could you but fee the fulfome hero led
By loathing vaffals to his noble bed!
In flannen robes the coughing ghost 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.
PREFACE.
A Poem with fo bold a title, and a name prefixed
from which the handling of fo ferious 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 first 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 anfwer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of facred things; but, in the due fenfe 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 finall 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
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