Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/127

Teach you a smooth, an easier way to gain
Heaven's joys, yet sweet and useful sin retain.
With every frailty, every lust comply,
To advance your spiritual realm and monarchy;
Pull up weak virtue's fence, give scope and space
And purlieus to out-lying consciences;
Show that the needle's eye may stretch, and how
The largest camel-vices may go through.
⁠'Teach how the priest pluralities may buy,
Yet fear no odious sin of simony,
While thoughts, and ducats well directed be:
Let whores adorn his exemplary life,
But no lewd heinous wife a scandal give.
Sooth up the gaudy atheist, who maintains
No law but sense, and owns no god but chance;
Bid thieves rob on, the boisterous ruffian tell
He may for hire, revenge, or honour kill;
Bid strumpets persevere, absolve them too,
And take their dues in kind for what you do;
Exhort the painful and industrious bawd
To diligence and labour in her trade,
Nor think her innocent vocation ill,
Whose incomes does the sacred treasure fill;
Let griping usurers extortion use,
No rapine, falsehood, perjury refuse,
Stick at no crime, which covetous popes would scarce
Act to enrich themselves and bastard-heirs:
A small bequest to the church can all atone,
Wipes off all scores, and heaven and all's their own.
Be these your doctrines, these the truths you preach,
But no forbidden Bible come in reach
Your cheats and artifices to impeach,
Lest thence lay-fools pernicious knowledge get,
Throw off obedience, and your laws forget:
Make them believe't a spell, more dreadful far
Than Bacon, Haly, or Albumazar.
Happy the time, when the unpretending crowd
No more than I its language understood!