Here is the soldier's spear, and passion-nails
Whose quantity would serve for building Paul's;
Chips, some from Holy Cross, from Tyburn some,
Honoured by many a Jesuit's martyrdom;
All held of special and miraculous power,
Not Tabor more approved for ague's cure.
Here shoes, which once perhaps at Newgate hung,
Angling their charity that passed along,[1]
Now for St. Peter's go, and the office bear
For priests, they did for lesser villains there.
These are the Fathers' implements and tools,
Their gaudy trangums[2] for inveigling fools;
These serve for baits the simple to ensnare,
Like children spirited with toys at fair.
Nor are they half the artifices yet,
By which the vulgar they delude and cheat;
Which should I undertake, much easier I,
Much sooner, might compute what sins there be
Wiped off, and pardoned at a jubilee;
What bribes enrich the datary[3] each year,
Or vices treated on by Escobar;
How many punks in Rome profess the trade,
Or greater numbers by confession made.
One undertakes by scale of miles to tell
The bounds, dimensions, and extent of hell;
How far and wide the infernal monarch reigns,
How many German leagues his realm contains;
Who are his ministers, pretends to know,
And all their several offices below;
How many chaldrons he each year expends
In coals for roasting Huguenots and fiends;
- ↑ Alluding to the old custom by which prisoners solicited charity from the passers-by. A shoe, into which alms were dropped, was suspended by a string to the level of the street.
- ↑ Sometimes trinkum-trankums—trinkets, toys. There was an old engine, called a trink, which was used for catching fish.
- ↑ The officer in the Chancery of Rome, who affixes the datum Romœ to the Pope's bulls.
