Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/131

But if ill fortune should your plot betray,
And leave you to the rage of foes a prey;
Let none his crime by weak confession own,
Nor shame the church, while he'd himself atone.
Let varnished guile, and feigned hypocrisies,
Pretended holiness, and useful lies,
Your well dissembled villanies disguise.
A thousand wily turns, and doubles try,
To foil the scent, and to divert the cry;
Cog, sham, out-face, deny, equivocate,
Into a thousand shapes yourselves translate.
Remember what the crafty Spartan taught,
Children with rattles, men with oaths are caught;
Forswear upon the rack, and if you fall,
Let this great comfort make amends for all,—
Those whom they damn for rogues, next age shall see
Made advocates i' th' church's Litany.
Whoever with bold tongue, or pen shall dare
Against your arts and practices declare;
What fool shall e'er presumptuously oppose,
Your holy cheats and godly frauds disclose;
Pronounce him heretic, firebrand of hell,
Turk, Jew, fiend, miscreant, pagan, infidel;
A thousand blacker names, worse calumnies,
All wit can think, and pregnant spite devise;
Strike home, gash deep, no lies, nor slanders spare;
A wound, though cured, yet leaves behind a scar.
’Those whom your wit and reason can't decry,
Make scandalous with loads of infamy;
Make Luther monster, by a fiend begot,
Brought forth with wings and tail, and cloven foot;
Make whoredom, incest, worst of vice, and shame,
Pollute and foul his manners, life and name;
Tell how strange storms ushered his fatal end,
And hell's black troops did for his soul contend.
'Much more I had to say; but now grow faint,
And strength and spirits for the subject want.