For saints can need no conscience
That with morality dispense,
As virtue's impious when 'tis rooted
In nature only, and not imputed;
And so he proceeds to conclude, that
-A large conscience is all one,
And signifies the same as none. Such are the meetings of extremes in fanatical religions. And .he description is no caricature. By the ridiculous doctrine of "imputed merit,” God's creatures were to be all vice, in order to compliment the Creator with the exclusive possession of all vir. tue! The children were to be made pure scoundrels, in order to do the greater honor to the father! Such are the flatteries of superstition !
THE ASTROLOGERS.
Quoth Ralph, Not far from hence doth dwell
A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,
That deals in Destiny's dark counsels
And sage opinions of the moon sells ;
To whom all people far and near
On deep importances repair;
When brass and pewter hap to stray,
Or linen slinks out of the way,
When geese and pullet are seducd,
And sows of sucking pigs are chows’d.-
He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no;
That would as soon as e'er she shone, straight
Whether 'twere day or night demonstrate ;
Tell what her diameter to an inch is,
And prove that she's tiot made of green cheese.
A STATESMAN'S CONVERSATION
-All a subtle statesman says
Is half in words and half in face,
As Spaniards talk in dialogues
Of heads and shoulders, nods and shrugs ;
Intrust it under solemn vous
Of “mum,” and “silence,” and “ the rose,"
To be retail'd again in whispers
For th' easy credulous to disperse.
There was an ancient sage philosopher,
That had read Alexander Ross over,'
And swore the world, as he could prove,
Was made of fighting and of love.
Just so romances are, for what else
Is in them all, but love and battles ?
O'th' first of these w' have no great matter
To treat of, but a world o' the latter,
In which to do the injur'd right
We mean, in what concerns just fight.
Certes our authors are to blame,
For, to make some well-sounding name
A pattern fit for modern knights
To copy out in frays and fights
(Like those that a whole street do raze,
To build a palace in the place),
They never care how many others
They kill, without regard of mothers,
Or wives, or children, so they can
Make up some fierce, dead-doing man,
Compos'd of many ingredient valors,
Just like the manhood of nine tailors.
1. That had read Alexander Ross over."-A tedious and volumin ous writer of divinity.
'T is not restraint or liberty,
That makes men prisoners or free,
But perturbations that possess
The mind, or equanimities
The whole world was not half so wide
To Alexander when he cried
Because he had but one to subdue,
As was a paltry narrow tub to
Diogenes, who is not said
(For aught that ever I could read)
To wbine, put finger i' th' eye, and sob
Because he had ne'er another tub.!
' " Another tub.”—Diogenes, who desired Alexander to “stand out of his sunshine,” is Lere made to turn the tables a second time and in the happiest manner, on the great spoiled child of Victory.
* Strove e blink.”—This was Lord Shaftesbury. What an
idea of craft and self-deception ! a man's two eyes, the most united and friendly of all things, and which cannot stir but in unison, endeavoring to outwit one another !
The truest characters of ignorance,
Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;
As blind men use to bear their noses higher
Than those that have their eyes and sight entire.
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