58
SATYR.
We only in their Mercy trust,
To be more wicked and unjust:
15 All our Devotions, Vows, and Pray'rs
Are our own Interest, not theirs:
Our Off'rings, when we come t' adore,
But begging Presents, to get more :
The purest Business of our Zeal
20 Is but to err, by meaning well,
And make that Meaning do more harm,
Than our worst Deeds, that are less warm:[1]
For the most wretched and perverse
Does not believe himself, he errs.
25 Our holy'st Actions have been
Th' Effects of Wickedness and Sin;
Religious Houses made Compounders
For th' horrid Actions of the Founders;[2]
Steeples, that totter'd in the Air,
30 By Letchers sin'd into Repair;
As if we had retain'd no Sign,
Nor Character of the divine
And heav'nly Part of human Nature,
But only the coarse earthy Matter.
To be more wicked and unjust:
15 All our Devotions, Vows, and Pray'rs
Are our own Interest, not theirs:
Our Off'rings, when we come t' adore,
But begging Presents, to get more :
The purest Business of our Zeal
20 Is but to err, by meaning well,
And make that Meaning do more harm,
Than our worst Deeds, that are less warm:[1]
For the most wretched and perverse
Does not believe himself, he errs.
25 Our holy'st Actions have been
Th' Effects of Wickedness and Sin;
Religious Houses made Compounders
For th' horrid Actions of the Founders;[2]
Steeples, that totter'd in the Air,
30 By Letchers sin'd into Repair;
As if we had retain'd no Sign,
Nor Character of the divine
And heav'nly Part of human Nature,
But only the coarse earthy Matter.
- ↑ 21, 22. And make that Meaning do more harm—Than our worst Deeds, that are less warm.] This was but too plainly exemplified in the preceding Times of civil Combustion, when the mistaken Zeal of a Set of mad Enthusiasts did more Mischief in these Kingdoms, than the Vices of all our Kings put together.
- ↑ 27, 28. Religious Houses made Compounders—For the horrid Actions the Founders]. It is almost too obvious to observe, that it was
very
