[fit

When faith and duty vanish'd, and no more The name of father and of king he bore: A king, whofe right his foes could ne'er difpute; So mild, that mercy was his attribute; Afable, kind, and easy of access; Swift to relieve, unwilling to opprefs; Rich without taxes, yet in payment juft; So honeft, that he hardly could distrust : His active foul from labours ne'er did cease, Valiant in war, and vigilant in peace; Studious with traffic to enrich the land; Strong to protect, and skilful to command; Liberal and fplendid, yet without excess; Prone to relieve, unwilling to distress; In fum, how godlike must his nature be, Whofe only fault was too much piety! This king remov'd, th' affembled states thought That Tarquin in the vacant throne should fit; Veted him regent in their fenate-house, And with an empty name endow'd his spouse, The elder Tullia, who, fome authors feign, Drove o'er her father's corse a rumbling wain: But the more guilty numerous wains did drive To crush her father and her king alive; And in remembrance of his haften'd fall, Refolv'd to inftitute a weekly ball. The jolly glutton grew in bulk and chin, Feafted on rapine, and enjoy'd her fin'; With luxury fhe did weak reafon force, [morse; Debauch'd good-nature, and cram'd down reYet when the drank cold tea in liberal sups, The fobbing dame was maudling in her cups. But brutal Tarquin never did relent, Too hard to melt, too wicked to repent; Cruel in deeds, more mercilefs in will, And bleft with natural delight in ill.

VOL. VI.

From a wife guardian he receiv'd his doom
To walk the change, and not to govern Rome.
He fwore his native honours to disown,
And did by perjury ascend the throne.
Oh! had that oath his fwelling pride represt,
Rome had been then with peace and plenty bleft.
But Tarquin, guided by deftructive fate,
The country wafted, and embroil'd the state,
Transported to their foes the Roman pelf,
And by their ruin hop'd to fave himself.
Innumerable woes opprefs the land,
When it fubmitted to his curs'd command.
So just was heaven, that 'twas hard to tell,
Whether its guilt or loffes did excel,
Men that renounc'd their God for dearer trade,
Were then the guardians of religion made.
Rebels were fainted, foreigners did reign,
Outlaws return'd, preferment to obtain,
With frogs, and toads, and all their croaking

train.

No native knew their features nor their birth;
They feem'd the greafy offspring of the earth.
The trade was funk, the fleet and army spent ;
Devouring taxes fwallow'd leffer rent;
Taxes impos'd by no authority;
Each lewd collection was a robbery.
Bold felf-creating men did ftatutes draw,
Skill'd to establish villainy by law;
Fanatic drivers, whose unjust careers
Produc'd new ills exceeding former fears.
Yet authors here except a faithful band,
Which the prevailing faction did withstand;
And fome, who bravely ftood in the defence
Of baffled juftice and their exil'd prince.
These fhine to after-times, each facred name
Stands ftill recorded in the rolls of fame.

WHEN lawless men their neighbours difpoffefs,
The tenants they extirpate or opprefs;
And make rude havock in the fruitful foil,
Which the right owners plough'd with careful
toil,

The fame proportion does in kingdoms hold,
A new prince breaks the fences of the old!
And will o'er carcafes and deferts reign,
Unless the land its rightful lord regain.
He gripes the faithlefs owners of the place,
And buys a foreign army to deface

The fear'd and hated remnant of their race.
He ftarves their forces, and obftructs their trade;
Vaft ums are given, and yet no native paid.
The church itself he labours to affail,
And keeps fit tools to break the facred pale.
Of thofe let him the guilty roll commence,
Who has betray'd a master and a prince;
A man, feditious, lewd, and impudent;
An engine always mifchievously bent:
One who from all the bands of duty fwervers;
No tye can hold but that which he deferves;
An author dwindled to a pamphleteer;
Skilful to forge, and always infincere;
Careless exploded practices to mend ;
Bold to attack, yet feeble to defend.
Fate's blindfold reign the atheift loudly owns,
And providence blafphemously dethrones.
In vain the leering actor ftrains his tongue
To cheat, with tears and empty noife, the throng,
Since all men know, whate'er he fays or writes,
Revenge or ftronger intereft indites,

And that the wretch employs his venal wit
How to confute what formerly he writ.

Next him the grave Socinian claims a place,
Endow'd with reafon, though bereft of grace;

A preaching pagan of furpaffing faite
No regifter records his borrow'd name.
O, had the child more happily been bred,
A radiant mitre would have grac'd his head
But now unfit, the moft he should expect,
Is to be enter'd of T- F's fec.

To him fucceeds, with looks demurely fad,
A gloomy foul, with revelation mad;
Falfe to his friend, and carelefs of his word;
A dreaming prophet, and a griping lord;
He fells the livings which he can't poffefs,
And farms that fine-cure his diocefe.
Unthinking man to quit thy barren fee,
And vain endeavours in chronology,
For the more fruitlefs care of royal charity.
Thy hoary noddle warns thee to return,
The treafon of old age in Wales to mourn,
Nor think the city-poor may loss sustain,
Thy place may well be vacant in this reign.
I fhould admit the booted prelate now,
But he is even for lampoon too low :
The fcum and outcaft of a royal race;
The nation's grievance, and the gown's dgrace.
None fo unlearn'd did e'er at London fit;
This driveler does the facret chair befh—t.
I need not brand the fpiritual parricide,
Nor draw the weapon dangling by his fide:
Th' aftonish'd world remembers that offence,
And knows he ftole the daughter of his prince.
'Tis time enough, in fome fucceeding age,
To bring this mitred captain on the stage.
Thefe are the leaders in apoftacy,

The wild reformers of the liturgy,
And the blind guides of poor elective majesty
A thing which commonwealth's-men did devife,
Till plots were ripe, to catch the people's eyes

Their king's a monster, in a quagmire born, Of all the native brutes the grief and scorn; With a big snout, caft in a crooked mould, Which runs with glanders and an inborn cold. His fubftance is of clammy fnot and phlegm; Sleep is his effence, and his life a dream. To Caprex this Tiberius does retire, To quench with catamite his feeble fire. Dear catamite! who rules alone the state, While monarch dozes on his unpropt height, Silent, yet thoughtless, and secure of fate.

A roEM with fo bold a title, and a name prefixed from which the handling of so serious a fsubject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the author to fay fomewhat 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 myfelf with fpeculations, which belong to the profeflion of divinity; I could answer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of facred things; but, in the due fenfe 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 confeffion of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, but wait on it with the reverence that becomes me at at a distance. In the next place I will ingeniously confefs, 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; fo that the weapons with which I combat irreligion, are already confecrated; though I fuppofe they may be taken down as lawfully as the fword of Goliah was by David, when they are to be employed for

the common cause against the enemies of piety, I intend not by this to intitle them to any of my errors, which yet I hope are only those of charity to mankind; and fuch as my own charity has caufed me to commit, that of others may mors easily excufe. Being naturally inclined to scepticifm in philofophy, I have no reason to impofe my opinions in a fubject which is above it; but, whatever they are, I fubmit them with all reverence to my mother church, accounting them no further mine, than as they are authorised, or at leaft uncondemned, by her. And, indeed, to secure myself on this fide, I have used the neceffary precaution of fhewing this paper before it was publifhed to a judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the fervice of the church and ftate; and whofe writings have highly deferved of both. He was pleafed to approve the body of the discourse, and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of complaifance: it is true he had too good a taste to like it all; and amongft fome other faults recommended to my fecond view, what I have written perhaps too boldly on St Athanafius, which he advised me

1

of the heathen philofophers of feveral nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the fun of it was fet in the race of Noah. That there is fomething above us, fome principle of motion, our reafon can apprehend, though it cannot discover what it is by its own virtue. And indeed it is very improbable, that we, who by the ftrength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any being, not fo much as of our own, should be able to find out by them, that fupreme nature, which we cannot otherwise define than by faying it is infinite; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a fubject for our narrow underftanding. They who would prove religion by reafon, do but weaken the cause which they endeavour to support: it is to take away the pillars from our faith, and to prop it only with a twig; it is to defign a tower like that of Babel, which if it were poffible, as it is not, to reach heaven, would come to nothing by the confufion of the workmen. For every man is building a feveral way; impotently conceited of his own model and his own materials: reafon is always ftriving, and always at a lofs; and of neceflity it muft fo come to pafs, while it is exercifed about that which is not its proper object. Let us be content at last to know God by his own methods; at least, so much of him as he is pleafed to reveal to us in the facred fcriptures: to apprehend them to be the word of God, is all our reafon has to do; for all beyond it is the work of faith, which is the feal of heaven impreffed upon our human underftanding.

wholly to omit. I am fenfible enough that I had done more prudently to have followed his opiDion: but then I could not have fatisfied 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 Chrift, were yet in a poffibility of falvation. Neither will it enter eafily into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour, the whole world, excepting only the Jewish | nation, fhould lie under the inevitable neceflity of everlafting punishment, for want of that revelation which was confined to fo fmall a fpot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the fons of Noah we read of one only who was accurfed; and if a bleffing in the ripeness of time was referved for Japhet (of whofe progeny we are), it seems unaccountable to me, why fo many generations of the fame offspring, as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, fhould be all involved in one common condemnation, and yet that their pofterity should be entitled to the hopes of falvation: as if a bill of exclufion had paffed only on the fathers, which debarred not the fons from their fucceffion. Or that fo many ages had been delivered over to hell, and fo many referved 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 fons, might continue for fome ages in the whole pofterity. That afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Sem, is manifeft; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet fwarmed into colonies, and thofe colonies, were fubdivided into many others: in procefs of time their defcendants loft by little and little the primitive and purer rites of divine worship, rctaining only the notion of one deity; to which fucceeding generations added others: for men took their degrees in thofe ages from conquerors to gods Revelation being thus eclipfed to almost all mankind, the light of nature as the next in dignity was fubftituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judged. If my fuppofition be true, then the consequence which I have affumed in my poem may be also true; namely, that Deifm, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah and that our modern philofophers, nay and fome of our philofophifing divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our fouls, when they Have maintained that, by their force, mankind has been able to find out that there is one fupreme agent or intelle&ual being, which we call God: that praife and prayer are his due worship; and the rest of those deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our discourse, I mean as fimply confidered, and without the benefit of divine illumination. So that we have not lifted up ourselves to God, by the weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to defcend to us; and what SoHates faid of him, what Plato writ, and the reft

And now for what concerns the holy bishop Athanafius, the preface of whofe creed feems inconfiftent with my opinion; which is, that heathens may poffibly be faved: in the first place I defire it may be confidered that it is the preface only, not the creed itfelf, which, till I am better informed, is of too hard a digeftion for my charity. It is not that I am ignorant how many several texts of fcripture feemingly fupport that caufe; but neither am I ignorant how all those texts may receive a kinder and more mollified interpretation. Every man who is read in church history, knows that belief was drawn up after a long conteftation with Arius, concerning the divinity of our bleffed Saviour, and his being one fubftance with the fa ther; and that thus compiled, it was fent abroad among the chriftian churches, as a kind of teft, which whofoever took was looked upon as an orthodox believer. It is manifeft from hence, that the heathen part of the empire was not concerned in it; for its bufinefs was not to diftinguish betwixt Pagans and Chriftians, but betwixt Heretics and true Believers. This, well confidered, takes off the heavy weight of cenfure, which I would willingly avoid from fo venerable a man; for if this propofition, whofoever will be faved,' be reftrained only to thofe to whom it was intended, and for whom it was compofed, I mean the Chriftians; then the anathema reaches not the Heathens, who had never heard of Christ, and were nothing interested in that difpute. After all, I ar