Either for life, or death, or sale,[1] 995
The gallows, or perpetual jail;
For one wink of your pow'rful eye
Must sentence him to live or die.
His fiddle is your proper purchase,[2]
Won in the service of the Churches;1000
And by your doom must be allow'd
To be, or be no more, a Crowd:
For tho' success did not confer
Just title on the conqueror;[3]
Tho' dispensations were not strong1005
Conclusions, whether right or wrong;
Altho' out-goings did not[4] confirm,
And owning were but a mere term;[5]
Yet as the wicked have no right
To th' creature,[6] tho' usurp'd by might,1010
The property is in the saint,
From whom th' injuriously detain't;
Of him they hold their luxuries,
Their dogs, their horses, whores, and dice.
Their riots, revels, masks, delights,1015
Pimps, buffoons, fiddlers, parasites;
All which the saints have title to,
And ought t' enjoy, if th' had their due.
What we take from them is no more
Than what was ours by right before;1020
For we are their true landlords still,
And they our tenants but at will.
At this the Knight began to rouse,
And by degrees grow valorous:
He star'd about, and seeing none1025
Of all his foes remain but one,
He snatch'd his weapon that lay near him,
And from the ground began to rear him,
- ↑ The phrases bantered here, were popular amongst the Puritans.
- ↑ That is, acquisition by conquest; the original meaning of the word.
- ↑ Success was pleaded by the Presbyterians as a proof of the justice of their cause.
- ↑ So in the three first editions. But 1710 omits 'not.'
- ↑ Dispensations, out-goings, carryings-on, nothingness, ownings, &c., were cant words of the time. For others see Canto I. ver. 109.
- ↑ It was maintained by the Puritans of those days that all Dominion is
