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What frenzy makes of rev'rend grandsires

Ecclesiastical drawcansirs !

Discretion 's to Polemic Courage
The same as pepper to pease porridge;'
Which, when 'tis eat unpepper'd, gripes
With flatulency mortal tripes;
And sets the chitterlingian clan t
At variance in our inward man;
Where, as our tubes intestine soak,
Porridge excites pneumatic croak,

Tuning to base or treble key 'em ;
And discord fills peritoneum :

Thus Zeal, not pepper'd with discretion, ‡
To the evangelical profession

Noxious alike, has often rent

The bowels of th' Establishment:

* The better part of valour is discretion.

Shakspeare. Hen. IV. Parti.

+ A most irritable and contentious clan. See the relation of its fierce and tragical rencounter with Colonels Mawl-chitterling, and Cut-pudding, the younger; as given by Master Francis Rabelais, Book IV. c. xli.

Vis consilî expers.

Hor. Od. Lib. III. Od. iv.

Each varying blast of doctrine vain

Inflames her disputatious train;

Oft vex her frame intestine drubs,
And military mulligrubs;

And controversial cholic wrings
Our Mother Church's chitterlings.-
What's worse this pestilent explosion
Of controversy puts in motion

The spawn of Godwin and Tom Paine;
Who tell their dupes that worldly gain
Is the true cause which sets by th' ears
Her venerable cavaliers.

That, while they "Orthodoxy" bawl,
They're squinting at Prebendal Stall;

While they protest "our Faith's in danger,"
Pant for preferment's rack and manger.-
This too Dissenters sets agog,

Who, hank'ring for the Church's prog,
And, sour'd with spleen, are ever ready
To scandalize the good Old Lady:
These fain would jealousies create
Betwixt her and her spouse, the state:

"Who's bound in duty to discard her

"Because she excludes them from her larder,

#

"And keeps for her own pamper'd chits
"Her dainty morsels and tid-bits.”—
This is th' offence and stone of stumbling
That sets their godly gizzards grumbling:
Hence, mad with spleen, Sectarian Shrews
Lay halters in her desks and pews;
O'erleap her pale, her pastures forage,
And ratsbane strew beside her porridge;
With lunatic bans stun and fright her,
Threat'ning with Unitarian nitre
T' involve, in sudden conflagration,
Her ancient orthodox foundation. †
Hence, as his pockets empty grow,
Sectary, by inverse ratio,
Presuming his idea-case

Is full of inward light and grace,

* Who gives any thing to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge, &c. Lear, Act III. Scene iv.

+ See Dr. Priestley's exultation while he is anticipating the overthrow of the Hierarchy, and the grand explosion of our Church Establishment by those trains of gunpowder which he has been properly disposing in order to blow up its old Building of Error and Superstition.

Priestley's Importance of Free Enquiry, &c. p. 40. &c.

Concludes to hide would be a scandal

The flame of Reformation-candle

Beneath a bushel or a bed;

*

So from brass candlestic, his head,
Makes hypocritical pretence
Illumination to dispense,

And light us to discern each rent
And wrinkle of th' establishment.

Pious munificence arraigns,

Vows betwixt benefice and brains

He cannot find the least conjunction,
But (so debas'd each sacred function!)

That cauliflower wig the wearer

Serves for a cloud t' envelop error;

Short cassoc's figleaf to defect

And nakedness of intellect;

And blocks from timber-yards and quarries

Are symbols of church dignitaries.

Sectarians thus the church assail,

(Losers are privileg❜d to rail)

* Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a

bed, and not to be set on a candlestic?

Luke iv. 22.

And sacrilegiously make sport

Of Grizzle-wig and Cassoc short;
While churchmen the false charge repel,
And could, if it were true, as well:
For if tall greyhounds useless grown
May into terriers be cut down ;*

If beards of kings make jerkins' trimming, t
And superannate wits old women; †

If wig that grac'd a judge's nob

Moult to an under-sheriff's bob;

And if, oblivious of its buckle,

That bob to serve a shoe-black truckle; §

*See Baron Monchaussen's Travels.

+ See the barbarous requisition which Ryance made to King Arthur, for his beard to serve (together with the beards of eleven vanquished princes) for fringe to his mantle.-Old Ballad. "When Arthur at Camelford kept his court royal."—Percy.

"I fear," said the late Lord Chesterfield, complaining of ill health and incapacity to Mrs. Ann Pitt-" I fear, Madam, that I am growing an old woman.”—“ I am glad of it, my Lord, I was afraid you were growing an old man, which, your Lordship knows to be a much worse thing."

§ of the evanescent nature of sublunary grandeur we have a melancholy exemplification in the fate of a Judge's cast-off Perriwig, whose decline and fall may be easily traced from the bench to the council-table, and from thence to the living blocks of under-sheriff, clerk of the court, and javelin-man, till it is at

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