As is demonstrated at full
By him that baited the Pope's Bull.1
Bears natʼrally are beasts of prey,
That live by rapine; so do they.
What are their Orders, Constitutions,
Church-censures, Curses, Absolutions,
But sev'ral mystic chains they make
To tie poor Christians to the stake;
And then set Heathen officers,
Instead of Dogs, about their ears?
For to prohibit and dispense,
To find out, or to make offence;
Of Hell and Heaven to dispose,
To play with souls at fast and loose;
To set what characters they please,
And mulcts on sin or godliness;
Reduce the Church to Gospel-order,
By rapine, sacrilege, and murder;
To make Presbytery supreme,
And Kings themselves submit to them;
And force all people, though against
Their consciences, to turn Saints;
Must prove a pretty thriving trade,
When Saints monopolists are made :
When pious frauds and holy shifts
Are Dispensations and Gifts;
Their godliness becomes mere ware,
And every Synod but a fair.
Synods are whelps of th' Inquisition,
A mongrel breed of like pernicion ;
Baited the Pope's bull:' a learned divine in King James's time wrote
a polemic work against the Pope, and gave it that unlucky nickname of 'The Pope's bull baited.'
And growing up, became the sires
Of Scribes, Commissioners, and Triers;
Whose business is, by cunning sleight,
To cast a figure for men's light;
To find, in lines of beard and face,
The physiognomy of grace;
And by the sound and twang of nose,
If all be sound within, disclose;
Free from a crack or flaw of sinning,
As men try pipkins by the ringing;
By black caps, underlaid with white,
Give certain guess at inward light ;
Which sergeants2 at the Gospel wear,
To make the Spiritual Calling clear.
The handkerchief about the neck
Canonical cravats of Smec,
From whom the institution came,
When Church and State they set on flame,
And worn by them as badges then
Of Spiritual Warfaring-men)
Judge rightly if Regeneration
Be of the newest cut in fashion :
Sure 'tis an orthodox opinion,
grace is founded in dominion.
Great piety consists in pride;
To rule is to be sanctify'd:
1 Triers the Houses appointed certain persons to try men for ruling elders in every congregation.-2 Sergeants '-at-law wore a coif.-3 'Canonical cravat: Smectymnus was a club of five parliamentarians; they wore handkerchiefs about their necks for a note of distinction (as the officers of the Parliament-army then did), which afterwards degenerated into cravats. About the beginning of the long Parliament, in the year 1641, these five wrote a book against Episcopacy and the Common Prayer, to which they all subscribed their names, being Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow, and from thence they and their followers were called Smectymnus.
To domineer, and to control,
Both o'er the body and the soul,
Is the most perfect discipline
Of Church-rule, and by right divine.
Bel and the Dragon's chaplains were
More moderate than these by far:
For they (poor knaves) were glad to cheat,
To get their wives and children meat;
But these will not be fobb'd off so ;
They must have wealth and power too :
Or else with blood and desolation
They'll tear it out o' th' heart o' th' nation.
Sure these themselves from primitive
And Heathen priesthood do derive;
When Butchers were the only clerks,
Elders, and Presbyters of Kirks,
Whose directory was to kill,
And some believe it is so still.
The only difference is, that then
They slaughter'd only beast, now men.
For then to sacrifice a bullock,
Or, now and then, a child, to Moloch,
They count a vile abomination,
But not to slaughter a whole nation.
Presbytery does but translate
The Papacy to a free state;
A commonwealth of Popery,
Where every village is a See
As well as Rome, and must maintain
A tithe-pig metropolitan ;
Where every Presbyter and Deacon
Commands the keys for cheese and bacon; every hamlet's governed
By's Holiness, the Church 's head,
More haughty and severe in 's place
Than Gregory or Boniface.
Such Church must (surely) be a monster,
With many heads; for if we conster1
What in th' Apocalypse we find,
According to th' Apostle's mind,
"Tis that the Whore of Babylon
With many heads did ride upon;
Which heads denote the sinful tribe
Of Deacon, Priest, Lay-elder, Scribe.
Lay-elder, Simeon to Levi,
Whose little finger is as heavy
As loins of Patriarchs, Prince-prelate,
And Bishop-secular. This zealot
Is of a mongrel, diverse kind,
Cleric before, and lay behind;
A lawless linsey-woolsey brother,
Half of one order, half another;
A creature of amphibious nature,
On land a beast, a fish in water;
That always preys on grace or sin,
A sheep without, a wolf within.
This fierce inquisitor has chief
Dominion over men's belief
And manners; can pronounce a saint
Idolatrous, or ignorant,
When superciliously he sifts
Through coarsest boulter others' gifts:
For all men live and judge amiss
Whose talents jump not just with his.
He'll lay on gifts with hands, and place
On dullest noddle Light and Grace,
The manufacture of the Kirk.
Those pastors are but th' handy-work
Of his mechanic paws, instilling
Divinity in them by feeling;
From whence they start up Chosen Vessels,
Made by contact, as men get measles.
So Cardinals, they say, do grope
At th' other end the new-made Pope.
Hold, hold (quoth Hudibras), soft fire,
They say, does make sweet malt. Good Squire,
Festina lente, Not too fast;
For haste (the proverb says) makes waste.
The quirks and cavils thou dost make
Are false, and built upon mistake:
And I shall bring you, with your pack
Of fallacies, t'Elenchi 1 back ;
And put your arguments in mood
And figure to be understood.
I'll force you by right ratiocination
To leave your vitilitigation,2
And make you keep to the question close,
And argue dialecticos.
The question then, to state it first,
Is, Which is better or which worst,
Synods or Bears? Bears I avow
To be the worst, and Synods thou.
But to make good th' assertion,
Thou say'st th' are really all one.
If so, not worse; for if they 're idem,
Why then tantundem dat tantidem;
For if they are the same, by course,
Neither is better, neither worse:
''Elenchi:' a logical figure. — Vitilitigation:' a perverse love of wrangling.
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