'Hey jingo, sirs! What's this?' 'Tis bread you see;
’Presto begone!' 'Tis now a deity.
Two grains of dough, with cross, and stamp of priest,
And five small words pronounced, make up their Christ.
To this they all fell down, this all adore.
And straight devour, what they adored before.—
'Tis this that does the astonished rout amuse,
And reverence to shaven crown infuse,
To see a silly, sinful, mortal wight
His Maker make, create the infinite.
None boggles at the impossibility;
Alas, 'tis wondrous heavenly mystery!—
And here I might (if I but durst) reveal
What pranks are played in the confessional:
How haunted virgins have been dispossessed,
And devils were cast out, to let in priest:
What fathers act with novices alone,
And what to punks in shrieving seats is done,
Who thither flock to ghostly confessor,
To clear old debts, and tick with Heaven for more.
Oft have I seen these hallowed altars stained
With rapes, those pews which infamies profaned;
Not great Cellier,[1] nor any greater bawd,
Of note, and long experience in the trade,
Has more, and fouler scenes of lust surveyed.
But I these dangerous truths forbear to tell,
For fear I should the Inquisition feel.
Should I tell all their countless knaveries,
Their cheats, and shams, and forgeries, and lies,
Their cringings, crossings, censings, sprinklings, chrisms,
Their conjurings, and spells, and exorcisms,
Their motley habits, maniples, and stoles,
Albs, ammits, rochets, chimers, hoods, and cowls;[2]
- ↑ This notorious person narrowly escaped the gibbet in 1680, when she was tried for high treason. She was condemned in a fine of 1000l. and sentenced three times to the pillory for a libel.
- ↑ The alb is the vestment of white linen reaching to the feet-ammit (more correctly ammis, and sometimes spelt variously as amyse, ammys,
