The head and founder of their order,225
That stirring hats held worse than murder;[1]
These thinking they're oblig'd to troth
In swearing, will not take an oath;
Like mules, who if they've not the will
To keep their own pace, stand stock still;[2] 230
But they are weak, and little know
What free-born consciences may do.
'Tis the temptation of the devil
That makes all human actions evil:
For saints may do the same thing by235
The spirit, in sincerity,
Which other men are tempted to,
And at the devil's instance do;
And yet the actions be contrary,
Just as the saints and wicked vary.240
For as on land there is no beast
But in some fish at sea's exprest;[3]
So in the wicked there's no vice,
Of which the saints have not a spice;
And yet that thing that's pious in245
The one, in th' other is a sin.[4]
- ↑ Nash thinks that the poet humorously supposes Priscian, who received so many blows on the head, to be exceedingly averse to taking off his hat; and therefore calls him the founder of Quakerism.
- ↑ A merry fellow, says Bishop Parker, finding all force and proclamations vain for the dispersion of a conventicle, hit upon the stratagem of proclaiming, in the king's name, that none should depart without his leave; whereupon every one went away that it might not be said they obeyed any man.
- ↑ Thus Dubartas:
So many fishes of so many features.
That in the waters we may see all creatures,
Even all that on the earth are to be found,
As if the world were in deep waters drown'd.
This was one of the whimsical speculations with which the curious entertained themselves before the existence of scientific natural history. See Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors (Bohn's edit. p. 344). - ↑ The Antinomian principle was that believers or persons regenerate
mar, it is said to break his head to use false grammar, that is, you in the singular number. George Fox, the founder of the order of Quakers, may be regarded as their Priscian. He wrote what may be called an accidence, entitled, "A Battle Door for Teachers and Professors to learn Plural and Singular," 1660, folio.
