Classic Poem

How! Liberty of Conscience! that's a change
Bilks the crape-gowns and mortifies L'Estrange;
Two lines of brisk Gazette in pieces tears
The Observator's pains of many years;
The clergy-guide himself is left i'th'lurch,
To which he quail-piped easy daughter church;
So the foul fiend at Halberstadt, they say,
In fiddler's guise so charmingly did play
That all the buxom youth of the mad town
Followed his tweedling music up and down,
Till the whole troop an unseen gulf did drown.

What's now become of our informing crew,
The Browns, the Hiltons? O loyal men and true!
Once pillars of our church — true church by law —
For more were bugbeared to her out of awe
Then all our sermon-readers e'er could draw;
Those useful sparks, implements orthodox,
Soon as they found their church was i'th'wrong box,
Fled from her faster than from whore with pox —
So rats by instinct quit a falling house,
So dying beggar's left by every louse.

Pinfold, that spiritual dragoon, who made
By soul-money a pretty thriving trade,
Gave to old Nick each refractory ninny
But whisked him back for a repentant guinea,
Is now grown bankrupt, weary of his life,
And almost wild and frantic as his wife.

Those that erewhile no mortal sin could spy
So bad, so gross as Nonconformity
Are now become the only malcontents,
And each in sullen sighs his passion vents;
Passive Obedience once was all their clutter,
But soon as their own nails were pared they mutter:
" Dear Whigs! dissenting brethren! pray forbear
To meet. Indulgence is a royal snare,
This declaration is a Trojan horse;
The form's illegal and the matter worse;
There is a snake i'th'grass! " — That, that's their cry,
Which is in short to give their prince the lie
And charge the best of kings with treachery.
Is this your Church of England loyalty?

Hark! the hunt's up, backwards they chime their bells,
And every one a frightful story tells;
The doctors stand aghast, and country vicar
Fancies there's holy water in his liquor;
Each pulpit echoes, Bellarmine, thou li'st,
And Pelling swears the pope is Antichrist.
Does not the inundation make you quake:
The Roman Sea joined with the Leman Lake?
How soon will Father Peters make a hand on's,
When Baxter's self has seized on petty canons?
Turn out, my masters! aloft! aloft, all hands —
Religion that's our tithe-pigs and glebe lands —
The Protestant religion now will fall;
Bel and the Dragon will devour us all!

O tender, zealous hearts! O sad condition!
Idolatry will eat up superstition;
The calf at Bethel fears the calf at Dan:
The English cannot Latin mass withstand;
And now the jacks have lost their wonted prey,
They dread the sharks will carry all away;
So conjurers grow toward their end in fear
That their familiar devil will them tear.

But why this sudden zeal when t'other day
With popery you could so freely play?
Their church you then acknowledged was true —
A rev'rence to the western patriarch due —
And from that coast no danger you could view;
On each occasion Papists favor found,
And all your cry was knock Dissenters down!
Yet now you bawl Tiber the Thames will drown,
But why, pray, must our faith be quite undone
Because your persecuting pow'r is gone?
The wise suspect religion's not your fear,
But you are vext, you cannot domineer,
And rail at Jesuits for cruel elves,
Because you'd have none spoil us but yourselves.

Well, rev'rend sirs, if popery must be,
You'll find the nuns are pretty company,
And if the fiery trial should return,
Most of you wet yourselves too much to burn.
But though you will not hazard your dear lives,
You may be glad to part with your old wives.
At worst —
'Tis but conforming t'other step and then,
Jure divino , whip and spur again.