makes rebelling against kingsA good old cause?” “Administ’rings.”
“What makes all doctrines plain and clear?”
“About two hundred pounds a year.”
“And that which was prov’d true before,
Prov’d false again?” “Two hundred more.”
“What makes the breaking of all oaths
A holy duty?” “Food and clothes.”
“What, laws and freedom, persecution?”
“Being out of power and contribution.”
“What makes a church a den of thieves?”
“A dean and chapter, and white sleeves.”
“And what would serve, if these were gone,
To make it orthodox?” “Our own.”
“What makes morality a crime,
The most notorious of the time;
Morality, which both the saints
And wicked, too, cry out against?”
“’Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;
And therefore no true saint allows
They shall be suffered to espouse.”
DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND
A COUNTRY that draws fifty foot of water,
In which men live as in the hold of Nature,
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak;
That always ply the pump, and never think
They can be safe but at the rate they stink;
They live as if they had been run aground,
And, when they die, are cast away and drowned;
That dwell in ships, like swarms of rats, and prey
Upon the goods all nations’ fleets convey;
And when their merchants are blown up and crackt,
Whole towns are cast away in storms, and wreckt;
That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes:
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,
In which they do not live, but go aboard.
THE RELIGION OF HUDIBRAS
FOR his religion it was fit
To match his learning and his wit:
Twas Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery,
And prove their doctrine orthodox,
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly, thorough reformation.
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended;
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetic,
Than dog distract or monkey sick;
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,
By damning those they have no mind to;
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipped God for spite;
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for;
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow;
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin;
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with minc’d pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
SATIRE ON THE SCOTS
A LAND where one may pray with cursed intent,
Oh, may they never suffer banishment!
Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang’d his doom —
Not forc’d him wander, but confin’d him home.
Like Jews they spread and as infection fly,
As if the devil had ubiquity;
Hence ’tis they live as rovers, and defy
This or that place, rags of geography;
They’re citizens o’ th’ world, they’re all in all;
Scotland’s a nation epidemical.
And yet they ramble not to learn the mode
How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad…
No, the Scots errant fight, and fight to eat;
Their ostrich-stomachs make their swords their meat;
Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt,
Who use to string their teeth upon their belt…
Lord! what a godly thing is want of shirts!
How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!
They wanted food and raiment; so they took
Religion for their seamstress and their cook.
Unmask them well, their honours and estate,
As well as conscience, are sophisticate.
Shrive but their title and their moneys poize,
A laird and twenty pence pronounc’d with noise,
When constru’d but for a plain yeoman go,
And a good sober twopence, and well so.
Hence, then, you proud impostors! get you gone,
You Picts in gentry and devotion,
You scandal to the stock of verse – a race
Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace!
Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce
The ostracism, and sham’d it out of use.
The Indian that heaven did forswear,
Because he heard some Spaniards were there,
Had
