Hudibras - Samuel Butler (story reading txt) 📗

appease our jealousies and fears:
And yet for all these providences
W’ are offer’d, if we had our senses,
We idly sit like stupid blockheads,
Our hands committed to our pockets;
And nothing but our tongues at large,
To get the wretches a discharge:
Like men condemn’d to thunder-bolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts;
Or fools besotted with their crimes,
That know not how to shift betimes,
And neither have the hearts to stay,
Nor wit enough to run away;
Who, if we could resolve on either,
Might stand or fall at least together;
No mean or trivial solaces
To partners in extreme distress;
Who used to lessen their despairs,
By parting them int’ equal shares;
As if the more they were to bear,
They felt the weight the easier;
And ev’ry one the gentler hung,
The more he took his turn among.
But ’tis not come to that, as yet,
If we had courage left, or wit;
Who, when our fate can be no worse,
Are fitted for the bravest course;
Have time to rally, and prepare
Our last and best defence, despair;
Despair, by which the gallant’st feats
Have been achiev’d in greatest straits,
And horrid’st danger safely wav’d,
By being courageously outbrav’d;
As wounds by wider wounds are heal’d,
And poisons by themselves expell’d;
And so they might be now agen,
If we were, what we should be, men;
And not so dully desperate,
To side against ourselves with fate;
As criminals, condemn’d to suffer,
Are blinded first, and then turn’d over.
This comes of breaking covenants,
And setting up exaunts of saints,
That fine, like aldermen, for grace,
To be excus’d the efficace:
For spiritual men are too transcendent,
That mount their banks for Independent,
To hang like Mahomet i’ th’ air,182
Or St. Ignatius at his prayer,
By pure geometry, and hate
Dependence upon church or state;
Disdain the pedantry o’ th’ letter;
And since obedience is better
(The Scripture says) than sacrifice,
Presume the less on’t will suffice;
And scorn to have the moderat’st stints
Prescrib’d their peremptory hints,
Or any opinion, true or false,
Declar’d as such, in doctrinals;
But left at large to make their best on,
Without b’ing call’d t’ account or question:
Interpret all the spleen reveals,
As Whittington explain’d the bells;
And bid themselves turn back agen
Lord May’rs of New Jerusalem;
But look so big and over-grown,
They scorn their edifiers t’ own,
Who taught them all their sprinkling lessons,
Their tones, and sanctified expressions;
Bestow’d their gifts upon a saint,
Like charity on those that want;
And learn’d th’ apocryphal bigots
T’ inspire themselves with short-hand notes;
For which they scorn and hate them worse
Than dogs and cats do sow-gelders.
For who first bred them up to pray,
And teach, the House of Commons’ way?
Where had they all their gifted phrases,
But from our Calamys and Cases?
Without whose sprinkling and sowing,
Who e’er had heard of Nye or Owen?
Their dispensations had been stifled,
But for our Adoniram Byfield;
And had they not begun the war,
Th’ had ne’er been sainted, as they are:
For saints in peace degenerate,
And dwindle down to reprobate;
Their zeal corrupts like standing water,
In th’ intervals of war and slaughter;
Abates the sharpness of its edge,
Without the power of sacrilege.
And though they’ve tricks to cast their sins
As easy as serpents do their skins,183
That in a while grow out agen,
In peace they turn mere carnal men,
And from the most refin’d of saints,
As naturally grow miscreants,
As barnacles turn Soland geese
In th’ Islands of the Orcades.184
Their dispensation’s but a ticket,
For their conforming to the wicked:
With whom the greatest difference
Lies more in words, and show, than sense.
For as the Pope, that keeps the gate
Of heaven, wears three crowns of state,
So he that keeps the gate of hell,
Proud Cerberus, wears three heads as well:185
And if the world has any troth,
Some have been canoniz’d in both.
But that which does them greatest harm,
Their spiritual gizzards are too warm,
Which puts the overheated sots
In fevers still, like other goats.
For though the whore bends hereticks
With flames of fire, like crooked sticks,
Our schismatics so vastly differ,
Th’ hotter th’ are, they grow the stiffer;
Still setting off their spiritual goods
With fierce and pertinacious feuds.
For zeal’s a dreadful termagant,
That teaches saints to tear and rant,
And Independents to profess
The doctrine of dependences;
Turns meek, and secret, sneaking ones,
To raw-heads fierce and bloody bones:
And, not content with endless quarrels
Against the wicked and their morals,
The Gibellines, for want of Guelphs,186
Divert their rage upon themselves.
For now the war is not between
The brethren and the men of sin,
But saint and saint, to spill the blood
Of one another’s brotherhood:
Where neither side can lay pretence
To liberty of conscience,
Or zealous suff’ring for the cause,
To gain one groat’s worth of applause;
For though endur’d with resolution,
’Twill ne’er amount to persecution.
Shall precious saints and secret ones,
Break one another’s outward bones,
And eat the flesh of brethren,
Instead of kings and mighty men?
When fiends agree among themselves,
Shall they be found the greatest elves?
When Bel’s at union with the Dragon,
And Baal-Peor friends with Dagon;
When savage bears agree with bears,
Shall secret ones lug saints by th’ ears,
And not atone their fatal wrath,
When common danger threatens both?
Shall mastiffs, by the collar pull’d,
Engag’d with bulls, let go their hold,
And saints, whose necks are pawn’d at stake,
No notice of the danger take?
But though no pow’r of heav’n or hell
Can pacify fanatic zeal,
Who would not guess there might be hopes,
The fear of gallowses and ropes,
Before their eyes, might reconcile
Their animosities a while;
At least until they’d a clear stage,
And equal freedom to engage,
Without the danger of surprise
By both our common enemies?

This none but we alone could doubt,
Who understand their working-out,
And know them, both in soul and conscience,
Giv’n up t’ as reprobate a nonsense
As spiritual outlaws, whom the pow’r
Of miracle can ne’er restore:
We, whom at first they set up under,
In revelation only of plunder,
Who since have had so many trials
Of their encroaching self-denials,
That rook’d upon us with design
To out-reform, and undermine;
Took all our interest and commands
Perfidiously out of our hands;
Involv’d us in the guilt of blood
Without the motive gains allow’d,
And made us serve as ministerial,
Like younger sons of Father Belial;
And yet, for all th’ inhuman wrong
Th’ had done us and the cause so long,
We never fail’d to carry on
The work still as we had begun;
But true and faithfully obey’d,
And neither preach’d them hurt, nor pray’d;
Nor troubled them to crop our ears,
Nor hang us, like the cavaliers;
Nor put them to the charge of gaols,
To find us pill’ries and