With holy water, like a sluice, 1500 To overflow all avenues:
But those who 're utterly unarmed,
T'oppose his entrance, if he stormed,
He never offers to surprise,
Although his falsest enemies;
But is content to be their drudge,
And on their errands glad to trudge:
For where are all your forfeitures
Intrusted in safe hands, but ours?
Who are but jailers of the holes
1510 And dungeons where you clap up souls;
Like under-keepers, turn the keys
mittimus anathemas,
And never boggle to restore
The members you deliver o'er
1515 Upon demand, with fairer justice,
Than all your covenanting trustees;
Unless, to punish them the worse,
You put them in the secular powers,
And pass their souls, as some demise
The same estate in mortgage twice:
When to a legal utlegation
You turn your excommunication,
And, for a groat unpaid that's due,
Distrain on soul and body too.'
Thought he, ''Tis no mean part of civil
State-prudence to cajole the devil,
And not to handle him too rough,
When h' has us in his cloven hoof.'
'Tis true,' quoth he, 'that intercourse Has passed between your friends and ours, That, as you trust us, in our way,
To raise your members, and to lay,
We send you others of our own, Denounced to hang themselves, or drown, 1535 Or, frighted with our oratory,
To leap down headlong many a story;
Have used all means to propagate
Your mighty interests of state,
Laid out our spiritual gifts to further
Your great designs of rage and murther:
For if the saints are named from blood,
We only 'ave made that title good;
And, if it were but in our power,
We should not scruple to do more,
1545 And not be half a soul behind
Of all dissenters of mankind.'
'Right,' quoth the Voice, and, as I scorn To be ungrateful, in return
Of all those kind good offices,
1550 I'll free you out of this distress,
And set you down in safety,—where,
It is no time to tell you here.
The cock crows, and the morn draws on,
When 'tis decreed I must be gone;
And if I leave you here till day,
You'll find it hard to get away.'
With that the Spirit groped about
To find th' enchanted hero out,
And tried with haste to lift him up,
1560 But found his forlorn hope, his crup,
Unserviceable with kicks and blows,
Received from hardened-hearted foes.
He thought to drag him by the heels,
Like Gresham-carts, with legs for wheels;
1565 But fear, that soonest cures those sores,
In danger of relapse to worse,
Came in t' assist him with its aid,
And up his sinking vessel weighed.
No sooner was he fit to trudge,
1575 But both made ready to dislodge;
The Spirit horsed him, like a sack,
Upon the vehicle his back,
And bore him headlong into th' hall,
With some few rubs against the wall;
1575 Where finding out the postern locked,
And th' avenues as strongly blocked,
H' attacked the window, stormed the glass,
And in a moment gained the pass;
Through which he dragged the worsted soldier's 1580 Fore-quarters out by th' head and shoulders, And cautiously began to scout
To find their fellow-cattle out;
Nor was it half a minute's quest,
Ere he retrieved the champion's beast,
1585 Tied to a pale, instead of rack,
But ne'er a saddle on his back,
Nor pistols at the saddle bow,
Conveyed away, the Lord knows how.
He thought it was no time to stay,
And let the night, too, steal away;
But, in a trice, advanced the knight
Upon the bare ridge, bolt upright,
And, groping out for Ralpho's jade,
He found the saddle, too, was strayed,
1595 And in the place a lump of soap,
On which he speedily leaped up;
And, turning to the gate the rein,
He kicked and cudgelled on amain;
While Hudibras, with equal haste,
1600 On both sides laid about as fast,
And spurred, as jockies use, to break, Or padders to secure, a neck: Where let us leave 'em for a time, And to their churches turn our rhyme; 1605 To hold forth their declining state, Which now come near an even rate.
The saints engage in fierce contests
About their carnal interests,
To share their sacrilegious preys
According to their rates of grace:
Their various frenzies to reform,
When Cromwell left them in a storm;
Till, in th' effige of Rumps, the rabble
Burn all their grandees of the cabal.
'HE learned write, an insect breeze Is but a mongrel prince of bees, That falls before a storm on cows, And stings the founders of his house; From whose corrupted flesh that breed Of vermin did at first proceed.
So, ere the storm of war broke out, Religion spawned a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, 10 The maggots of corrupted texts, That first run all religion down, And after every swarm its own: For as the Persian Magi once Upon their mothers got their sons, 15 That were incapable t' enjoy That empire any other way;
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