CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
321
He never offers to surprise, Altho' his falsest enemies;[1] But is content to be their drudge, 1505And on their errands glad to trudge: For where are all your forfeitures Intrusted in safe hands, but ours? Who are but jailors of the holes And dungeons where you clap up souls;[2] 1510Like under-keepers, turn the keys, T' your mittimus anathemas, And never boggle to restore The members you deliver o'er Upon demand, with fairer justice, 1515Than all you Covenanting Trustees;[3] Unless, to punish them the worse, You put them in the secular powers, And pass their souls, as some demise The same estate in mortgage twice:[4] 1520When to a legal utlegation You turn your excommunication,[5]And, for a groat unpaid that's due, Distrain on soul and body too.[6]Thought he, 'tis no mean part of civil 1525State-prudence to cajole the devil, And not to handle him too rough, When h' has us in his cloven hoof.
- ↑ The enthusiasm of the Independents was something new in its kind, not much allied to superstition.
- ↑ Keep those in hell whom you are pleased to send thither by excommunication, mittimus, or anathema: as jailors and turnkeys confine their prisoners.
- ↑ More honestly than the Presbyterians surrendered the estates which they held in trust for one another; these trustees were generally Covenanters. See Part i. c. i. v. 76, and Part iii. c. ii. v. 55.
- ↑ This alludes to the case of a Mr Sherfield, who mortgaged his estate to half a dozen different people, having by a previous deed demised it for pious uses, so that all lost their money. See Stratford's Letters, 1739, vol. i. p. 206.
- ↑ You call down the vengeance of the civil magistrate upon them, and in this second instance pass over, that is, take no notice of, their souls: the ecclesiastical courts can excommunicate, and then they apply to the civil court for an outlawry. Utlegation means outlawry.
- ↑ Seize the party by a writ de excommunicato capiendo.
