And force all people, tho' against
Their consciences, to turn saints;
Must prove a pretty thriving trade,
When saints monopolists are made:
When pious frauds, and holy shifts,1145
Are dispensations and gifts;
There godliness becomes mere ware,
And ev'ry synod but a fair.
Synods are whelps o' th' Inquisition,
A mungrel breed of like pernicion,[1]1155
And growing up, became the sires
Of scribes, commissioners, and triers;[2]
- ↑ The word pernicion appears to have been coined by our author from the Latin pernicies, and means destructive effect. It is given in Webster's Dictionary.
- ↑ The Presbyterians had a set of officers called Triers, commissioned by the two houses, who examined candidates for orders, and presentees to benefices, and sifted the qualifications of ruling elders in every congregation. See Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. As the Presbyterians demanded of the Church of England, What command or example have you for kneeling at the communion, for wearing a surplice, for lord bishops, for a penned liturgy, &c. &c., so the Independents retorted upon them; Where are your lay elders, your presbyters, your classes, your synods, to be found in Scripture? where your steeple-houses, and your national church, or your tithes, or your metre psalms, or your two sacraments? show us a command or example for them. See Dr Hammond's View of the Directory. The learned Dr Pocock was called before the Triers for ignorance and insufficiency of learning, and after an attendance of several months was acquitted, and then not on his own merits, but on the remonstrance of a deputation of the most learned men of Oxford, including Dr Owen, who was of their own party. This is confirmed by Dr Owen, in a letter to Secretary Thurloe. "One thing," says he, "I must needs trouble you with: there are in Berkshire some men of mean quality and condition, rash, heady, enemies of tythes, who are the commissioners for ejecting ministers: they alone sit and act, and are at this time casting out, on very slight and trivial pretences, very worthy men; one in special they intend next week to eject, whose name is Pocock, a man of as unblameable a conversation as any that I know living, and of repute for learning throughout the world, being the
their book, called Eccclesiastical Discipline, that kings ought to be subject to ecclesiastical censures, as well as other persons. This doctrine was revived by the Presbyterians, and actually put in practice by the Scots, in their treatment of Charles II. The Presbyterians, in the civil war, maintained "that princes must submit their sceptres, and throw down their crowns before the church, yea, lick the dust off the feet of the church;" and Buchanan, in his famous "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," asserted, that "ministers may excommunicate princes, and that they, being by excommunication cast into hell, are not worthy to enjoy any life upon earth."
