Less those, which Sicily's tyrant heretofore
From plundered gods, and Jove's own shoulders tore.
Hither, as to some fair, the rabble come,
To barter for the merchandize of Rome;
Where priests, like mountebanks, on stage appear,
To expose the frippery of their hallowed ware;
This is the laboratory of their trade,
The shop where all their staple drugs are made;
Prescriptions and receipts to bring in gain,
All from the church dispensatories ta'en.
The pope's elixir, holy water's here.
Which they with chemic art distilled prepare;
Choice above Goddard's drops,[1] and all the trash
Of modern quacks; this is that sovereign wash
For fetching spots and morphew[2] from the face,
And scouring dirty clothes, and consciences.
One drop of this, if used, had power to fray
The legion from the hogs of Gadara;
This would have silenced quite the Wiltshire Drum,
And made the prating fiend of Mascon dumb.
That vessel consecrated oil contains,
Kept sacred, as the famed ampoule[3] of France,
Which some profaner heretics would use
For liquoring wheels of jacks, of boots, and shoes;
This makes the chrism,[4] which, mixed by cunning priests,
Anoints young catholics for the church's lists;
And when they're crossed, confessed, and die, by this
Their launching souls slide off to endless bliss;
As Lapland saints, when they on broomsticks fly,
By help of magic unctions mount the sky.
Yon altar-pix[5] of gold is the abode
And safe repository of their god.
A cross is fixed upon 't the fiends to scare,
And flies which would the deity besmear;
- ↑ Dr. Jonathan Goddard, who had been physician to Cromwell, and Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire in 1653.
- ↑ A rash or scurf on the skin. The word is obsolete.
- ↑ The phial in which holy oil is kept.
- ↑ The unguent used in the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.
- ↑ The vessel in whioh the consecrated Host is kept.
