Which from all stink can, with peculiar art,
Extract perfume and essence from a f―t:
Expecting supper is his great delight;

He toils all day but to be drunk at night;
Then o'er his cups this night-bird chirping sits,
Till he takes Hewet and Jack Hall 5 for wits.
Rochester I despise for want of wit,

Though thought to have a tail and cloven feet;
For while he mischief means to all mankind,
Himself alone the ill effects does find:
And so, like witches, justly suffers shame,
Whose harmless malice is so much the same.
False are his words, affected is his wit;
So often he does aim, so seldom hit;
To every face he cringes while he speaks,
But when the back is turn'd, the head he breaks:
Mean in each action, lew'd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him:
A proof that Chance alone makes every creature,
A very Killigrew, without good nature.
For what a Bessus has he always liv'd,

And his own kickings notably contriv'd?
For, there's the folly that's still mix'd with fear,
Cowards more blows than any hero bear;
Of fighting sparks some may their pleasures say,
But 'tis a bolder thing to run away:

The world may well forgive him all his ill,
For every fault does prove his penance still :
Falsely he falls into some dangerous noose,
And then as meanly labours to get loose.

4 Probably Sir George, who was called beau Hewet. See Censura Literaria, vol. i. p. 174.

Perhaps Jacob Hall, the famous rope-dancer. Granger.

See

A life so infamous is better quitting,
Spent in base injury and low submitting.
I'd like to have left out his poetry,
Forgot by all almost as well as me.
Sometimes he has some humour, never wit,
And if it rarely, very rarely, hit,

"Tis under so much nasty rubbish laid,
To find it out's the cinder-woman's trade,
Who for the wretched remnants of a fire,
Must toil all day in ashes and in mire.
So lewdly dull his idle works appear,

The wretched texts deserve no comments here ;
Where one poor thought sometimes, left all alone,
For a whole page of dulness must atone.

How vain a thing is Man, and how unwise! E'en he, who would himself the most despise! I, who so wise and humble seem to be, Now my own vanity and pride can't see. While the world's nonsense is so sharply shown, We pull down others but to raise our own: That we may angels seem, we paint them elves, And are but satires to set up ourselves. I, who have all this while been tinding fault, E'en with my master, who first satire taught, And did by that describe the task so hard, It seems stupendous, and above reward, Now labour, with unequal force, to climb That lofty hill unreach'd by former time; "Tis just that I should to the bottom fall, Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

RELIGIO LAICI;

OR,

A LAYMAN'S FAITH.

AN EPISTLE.

1682.

THE PREFACE.

A POEM with so bold a title, and a name prefixed, from which the handling of so serious a subject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the Author to say somewhat in defence both of himself and of his undertaking. In the first place, if it be objected to me, that being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myself with speculations which belong to the profession of divinity; I could answer, that, perhaps, laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of sacred things. But in the due sense of my own weakness and want of learning, I plead not this; I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confession of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark; but wait on it, with the reverence

that becomes me, at a distance. In the next place, I will ingenuously confess, that the helps I have used in this small treatise were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the church of England: so that the weapons with which I combat irreligion are already consecrated; though, I suppose, they may be taken down as lawfully as the sword of Goliath was by David, when they are to be employed for the common cause against the enemies of piety. I intend not by this to entitle them to any of my errors; which yet, I hope, are only those of charity to mankind; and such as my own charity has caused me to commit, that of others may more easily excuse.

Being naturally inclined to scepticism in philosophy, I have no reason to impose my opinions in a subject which is above it: but, whatever they are, I submit them with all reverence to my Mother-church, accounting them no farther mine than as they are authorized, or at least uncondemned, by her. And, indeed, to secure myself on this side, I have used the necessary precaution of showing this paper before it was published to a judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the service of the Church and State, and whose writings have highly deserved of both. He was pleased to approve the body of the discourse, and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of complaisance. Tis true, he had too good a taste to like it all; and amongst some other faults, recommended to my second view what I have written, perhaps too boldly, on St. Athanasius, which he advised me wholly to omit. I am sensible enough that I had done more pru

dently to have followed his opinion; but then I could not have satisfied myself that I had done honestly, not to have written what was my own. It has always been my thought that heathens, who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Christ, were yet in a possibility of salvation. Neither will it enter easily into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour, the whole world, excepting only the Jewish nation, should lie under the inevitable necessity of everlasting punishment, for want of that revelation which was confined to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the sons of Noah we read of one only who was accursed; and if a blessing in the ripeness of time was reserved for Japheth, (of whose progeny we are) it seems unaccountable to me why so many generations, of the same offspring, as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, should be all involved in one common condemnation, and yet that their posterity should be entitled to the hopes of salvation: as if a bill of exclusion had passed only on the fathers, which debarred not the sons from their succession; or that so many ages had been delivered over to hell, and so many reserved for heaven; and that the devil had the first choice, and God the next. Truly, I am apt to think, that the revealed religion which was taught by Noah to all his sous might continue for some ages in the whole posterity: that afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Shem is manifest; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet swarmed into colonies, and those colonies were subdivided into many others, in process of time their descendents lost, by little and little, the