Anti-Achitophel

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Anti-Achitophel

(1682)

THREE VERSE REPLIES TO

Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden

Absalom Senior by Elkanah Settle

Poetical Reflections by Anonymous

Azaria and Hushai by Samuel Pordage

FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

HAROLD WHITMORE JONES

Gainesville, Florida

SCHOLARS’ FACSIMILES & REPRINTS

1961

SCHOLARS’ FACSIMILES & REPRINTS
118 N. W. 26th Street
Gainesville, Florida
Harry R. Warfel, General Editor

REPRODUCED FROM COPIES IN

BRITISH MUSEUM

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARY

L. C. Catalog Card Number: 60-6430

MANUFACTURED IN THE U.S.A.
LETTERPRESS BY J. N. ANZEL, INC.
PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY BY EDWARDS BROTHERS
BINDING BY UNIVERSAL-DIXIE BINDERY

INTRODUCTION

English verse allegory, humorous or serious, political or moral, has deep roots; a reprint such as the present is clearly no place for a discussion of the subject at large:1 it need only be recalled here that to the age that produced The Pilgrim's Progress the art form was not new. Throughout his life Dryden had his enemies, Prior and Montague in their satire of The Hind and the Panther, for example. The general circumstances under which Dryden wrote Absalom and Achitophel, familiar enough and easily accessible, are therefore recalled only briefly below. Information is likewise readily available on his use of Biblical allegory.2

We are here concerned with three representative replies to Absalom and Achitophel: their form, their authors, and details of their publication. Settle's poem was reprinted with one slight alteration a year after its first appearance; the Reflections has since been reprinted in part, Pordage's poem not at all. Absalom Senior has been chosen because, of the many verse pieces directed against Dryden's poem, it is of the greatest intrinsic merit and shows the reverse side of the medal, as it were, to that piece; the second is given, not for any literary merit it may possess--indeed, from its first appearance it has been dismissed as of small worth--but rather as a poem representative of much of the versifying that followed hard on the Popish Plot and as one that has inspired great speculation as to its author; the third, in addition to throwing light on the others, is a typical specimen of the lesser work produced in the Absalom dispute.

The author and precise publication date of the Reflections remain unidentified. Ascription of the poem to Buckingham rests ultimately on the authority of Wood's Athenae Oxonienses and on Wood alone, and we do not know on what evidence he thought it to be Buckingham's; we do know, however, that Wood was often mistaken over such matters. Sir Walter Scott in his collected edition of Dryden (1808; IX, 272-5) also accepted Buckingham as the author, but cited no authority; he printed extracts, yet the shortcomings of his edition, whatever its convenience, are well known. The poem has not appeared in any subsequent edition of Dryden's poems, the latest being the iv four volume set (Oxford, 1958); the volume of the California Dryden relevant to Absalom is still awaited.A Internal evidence is even more scanty. Only one passage of the Reflections (sig. D2) may bear on the matter. Perhaps the "Three-fold Might" (p. 7, line 11) refers, not to the poet's "tripartite design" (p. 7, line 10) or to the Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden against France (1677/8, as in Absalom and Achitophel, line 175) but either to a treatise which had occasioned some stir in the scientific world some twenty years previously: "the Delphic problem" proposed by Hobbes to the Royal Society on the duplication of the cube, which might have come to the ears of Buckingham as well as to those of the court,3 or perhaps to the triple confederacy of Essex, Halifax, and Sunderland.4 But to the Restoration reader the phrase "Three-fold Might" would rather have suggested the Triple Alliance, to which Dryden reverts in The Medal (lines 65-68) when he claims that Shaftesbury, "thus fram'd for ill, ... loos'd our Triple Hold" on Europe.5

Evidence against Buckingham's authorship, on the other hand, is comparatively strong. The piece does not appear in his collected Works (1704-5). It surely would have been included even though he had at first wished to claim any credit from its publication and later have wished to disown it. Little connection, furthermore, will be found between the Reflections and the rest of his published verse or with the plays, including The Rehearsal, if the latter be his alone, which is doubtful.

Poetical Reflections has been ascribed to Edward Howard. W. Thomas Lowndes in his Bibliographer's Manual (1864; II, 126) assigned to this minor writer, on the authority of an auction note, the little collection Poems and Essays, with a Paraphrase on Cicero's Laelius, or, Of Friendship ... By a Gentleman (1674), and G. Thorn-Drury, on the equally debatable evidence of an anonymous manuscript ascription on the title page of his own copy, ascribed the Poetical Reflections to Howard.6 An examination of the Poems and Essays, however, reveals no point of resemblance with our poem. How, then, does Howard fit into the picture? He was in the rival camp to Dryden and was a friend of Martin Clifford7 and of Thomas Sprat, then Buckingham's chaplain: these three have been thought to be jointly responsible for The Rehearsal. Sprat had published a poem of congratulation to Howard on Howard's The British Princes (1669), the latter a long pseudo-epic v of the Blackmore style in dreary couplets which, again, provides no parallel with the Reflections. And what of Howard's plays? Many of these were written in the 1660's during his poetic apprenticeship; none seems akin to our poem. Whereas, as shown in the Table of Allusions below, two independent readers often agreed over the identities of many characters in Settle's poem, Restoration readers at large were reticent over the authorship of the Reflections. Hugh Macdonald, in his useful John Dryden: a Bibliography (1939), was wise to follow their example, and it seems rash, therefore, to propose any new candidate in the face of such negative evidence. The poem exists in two states, apparently differing only in the title page.

Evidence of Settle's authorship of Absalom Senior, on the other hand, is neither wanting nor disputed. We have had to wait until our own century for the pioneer work on this writer, since he cannot have been considered a sufficiently major poet by Samuel Johnson's sponsors, and Langbaine's account is sketchy. In a periodical paper8 Macdonald summarized supplementary evidence on the dates of composition of Settle's poem; he was working on it in January 1681/2, and it was published on the following April 6. Lockyer, Dean of Peterborough, asserted to Joseph Spence, who includes the rumor in Anecdotes, that Settle was assisted by Clifford and Sprat and by "several best hands of those times";9 but Spence is notoriously unreliable. In the lack of other evidence, then, it seems best to take the poem as wholly Settle's. It needs only to add a few words on its textual states. The First Edition, here reproduced, seems to exist in a single impression, and likewise the Second Edition of the Settle (1682, in quarto) seems to have been struck off in a single textual state. Of its individual variants from the First Edition only the following seem of any significance and, since there is no reason to suppose that it was printed from any copy other than the First, they may be merely the result of carelessness.

For "No Link ... night" (p. 35, lines 19-24), the Second Edition substitutes, for an undetermined reason, the following:

No less the Lordly Zelecks Glory sound
For courage and for Constancy renoun'd:
Though once in naught but borrow'd plumes adorn'd,
So much all servile Flattery he scorn'd;
That though he held his Being and Support,
By that weak Thread the Favour of a Court,
In Sanhedrims unbrib'd, he firmly bold
Durst Truth and Israels Right unmov'd uphold;
In spight of Fortune, still to Honour wed,
By Justice steer'd, though by Dependence fed.

Very little can be said of Pordage's poem, beyond its date of publication (January 17, 1681/2)10 and the fact that no parallel has been found with his earlier work. As no detailed study on him, published or unpublished, has been traced, we can only have recourse to the standard works on the period; data thus easily accessible are not therefore reproduced here. A so-called second edition (MacDonald 205b) is identical with the first.

In conclusion a few comments may be made on the general situation into which the poems fit. It will be remembered that Absalom and Achitophel appeared after the Exclusion Bill, the purpose of which was to debar James Duke of York from the Protestant succession, had been rejected by the House of Lords, mainly through the efforts of Halifax. Dryden's poem was advertised on November 17, 1681, and we may safely assume that it was published only a short time before Settle and our other authors were hired by the Whigs to answer it. Full details have not survived; one suspects Shaftesbury's Green Ribbon Club. That such replies were considered necessary testifies both to the popularity of Absalom and Achitophel with the layman in politics and to the Whigs' fear of its harming their cause. Settle's was of course a mercenary pen, and it is amusing to note that after ridiculing Halifax here he was quite prepared to publish, fourteen years later, Sacellum Apollinare: a Funeral Poem to the Memory of that Great Statesman, George Late Marquiss of Halifax, and on this count his place among Pope's Dunces seems merited. In tracing his quarrel with Dryden up to the publication of Absalom Senior, critics have tended to overlook the fact that by 1680 there was already hostility between the two;11 less has been said about the effect on Dryden of the poets themselves. The spleen of his contributions to the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel is essentially a manufactured one and for the public entertainment; personally he was comparatively unmoved--the Og portrait, vii for example, is less representative than his words in "The Epistle to the Whigs" prefixed to The Medal. Here, as in Mac Flecknoe, he appears to have been able to write vituperation to order. "I have only one favor to desire of you at parting," he says, and it is "that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and Achitophel; for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply." Is it for the best that this forecast proved the right one?

For permission to reproduce their copies of texts comprising the present reprint thanks are expressed to the University of Florida Library (Absalom Senior) and to the Trustees of the British Museum (the other two poems). The University of Leeds and the City of Manchester Public Library are also thanked for leave to use contemporary marginalia in each's copy of Settle's poem. The provenance of the latter two copies of this piece is unknown; the first, now in the Brotherton Collection, bears the name William Crisp on its last blank leaf and, in abbreviated form, identifies some characters; the second, of unidentified ownership, is fuller.

TABLE OF ALLUSIONS

NAMES

The persons and places referred to in the allegories are identified in the following lists of names. M indicates the ascription in the Manchester copy; B, that in the Leeds University copy. Within the list for each poem, names similarly used in Absalom and Achitophel are omitted; those used with a different meaning are marked with an asterisk.

REFERENCES

Biblical parallels and parallels with Absalom and Achitophel are omitted. The Dedications of the poems can be compared with Dryden's in Absalom and Achitophel.

ABSALOM SENIOR

3: Barak. The only borrowing in the poem from a popular seventeenth century jest book, Wits Recreations (1640), "Epigrams," no. 46, "On Sir Fr. Drake": "The sun itself cannot forget/His fellow traveller."

13: a Breaden God. Either a reference to transubstantiation (see also II Kings 2-3 and II Chron. 34) or an allusion to the Meal Tub Plot (1679).

16: a Cake of Shew-bread. In addition to the Biblical allusion, perhaps a reference to the poisoning of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII by the communion wafer.

17: in Possession. As this legal term is opposed to "reversion" emendation is unnecessary.

19: to bear. There was a belief that Jeffreys was connected with the Duchess of Portsmouth (B). The "Golden Prize" was perhaps protestantism, to be suppressed under a secret provision of the Treaty of Dover (1670).

POETICAL REFLECTIONS

AZARIA AND HUSHAI

Footnotes

2. e.g., Absalom's Conspiracy, a tract tracing how the Bible story came to be used for allegorical purposes. See The Harleian Miscellany (1811), VIII, 478-479; and R. F. Jones, "The Originality of 'Absalom and Achitophel,'" Modern Language Notes, XLVI (April, 1931) 211-218.

4. H. C. Foxcroft, A Character of the Trimmer (Cambridge, England, 1946), p. 70. This book is an abridged version of the same author's Life and Works of Halifax (1897).

7. In his Notes upon Mr. Dryden's Poems in Four Letters (1687) Clifford, in 16 pages, accuses Dryden of plagiarism, especially in Almanzor.

8. "The Attacks on John Dryden," Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XXI, 41-74.

Transcriber’s Footnote:
"the volume of the California Dryden relevant to Absalom is still awaited"
This Introduction was written in 1959. Volume II of the California Edition (The Works of John Dryden) was published in 1972.

To the TORIES.

entlemen, for so you all write your selves; and indeed you are your own Heralds, and Blazon all your Coats with Honour and Loyalty for your Supporters; nay, and you are so unconscionable too in that point, that you will allow neither of them in any other Scutcheons but your own. But who has ’em, or has ’em not, is not my present business; onely as you profess your selves Gentlemen, to conjure you to give an Adversary fair play; and that if any person whatsoever shall pretend to be aggrieved by this POEM, or any part of it, that he would bear it patiently; since the Licentiousness of the first Absolom and Achitophel has been the sole occasion of the Liberty of This, I having only taken the Measure of My Weapon, from the Length of his; which by the Rules of Honour ought not to offend you; especially, since the boldness of that Ingenious Piece, was wholly taken from the Encouragement you gave the Author; and ’tis from that Boldness only that this POEM takes its Birth: for had not his daring Pen brought that Piece into the World, I had been so far from troubling my self in any Subject on this kind, that I may justly say in one sence, the Writer of that Absolom, is the Author of this. This favour, as in Justice due, obtain’d from you, I shall not trouble you with a long Preface, like a tedious Compliment at the Door, but desire you to look in for your Entertainment. Onely I cannot forbear telling you, that one thing I am a little concern’d for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the Whiggs, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a David, than an Achitophel; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu’d Oracles that sounded one thing, and meant another. Besides, after this unmannerly Boldness, of not onely branding the publick Justice of the Nation, but affronting even the Throne it self, to 14 push the humour a little farther, you run into ten times a greater Vice, (and in the same strain too) than what you so severely inveigh against: and whilst a POPISH PLOT through want of sufficient Circumstances, and credible Witnesses, miscarries with you, a PROTESTANT PLOT without either Witness or Circumstance at all, goes currant. Nay you are so far now from your former niceties and scruples, and disparing about raising of Armies, and not one Commission found, that you can swallow the raising of a whole Protestant ARMY, without either Commission, or Commission-Officer; Nay, the very When, Where, and How, are no part of your Consideration. ’Tis true, the great Cry amongst you, is, The Nations Eyes are open’d; but I am afraid, in most of you, ’tis onely to look where you like best: and to help your lewd Eye-sight, you have got a damnable trick of turning the Perspective upon occasion, and magnifying or diminishing at pleasure. But alas, all talking to you is but impertinent, and fending and proving signifie just nothing; for after all Arguments, both Parties are so irreconcileable, that as the Author of Absolom wisely observed, they’ll be Fools or Knaves to each other to the end of the Chapter. And therefore I am so reasonable in this point, that should be very glad to divide ’em between ’em, and give the Fool to the Tory, and the Knave to the Whigg. For the Tories that will believe no POPISH PLOT, may as justly come under that denomination, as They, that David tells us, said in their Hearts there was no God. And then let the Whiggs that do believe a Popish Plot be the Knaves, for daring to endeavour to hinder the Effects of a Popish Plot, when the Tories are resolved to the contrary. But to draw near a conclusion, I have one favour more to beg of you, that you’ll give me the freedom of clapping but about a score of years extraordinary on the back of my Absolom. Neither is it altogether so unpardonable a Poetical License, since we find as great slips from the Author of your own Absolom, where we see him bring in a Zimri into the Court of David, who in the Scripture-story dyed by the Hand of Phineas in the days of Moses. Nay, in the other extream, we find him in another place talking of the Martyrdome of Stephen, so many Ages after. And if so famous an Author can forget his own Rules of Unity, Time, and Place, I hope you’ll give a Minor Poet some grains of Allowance, and he shall ever acknowledge himself

Transcriber’s Note:
The original text includes an Errata list, printed in a single block of small type and only partially legible. In at least one case, the requested change appears to be what the text already says. For these reasons, changes listed have not been made, but are noted with popups.

Absalom Senior:

OR,

ACHITOPHEL

TRANSPROS’D.

In Gloomy Times, when Priestcraft bore the sway,
And made Heav’ns Gate a Lock to their own Key:
When ignorant Devotes did blindly bow,
And groaping to be sav’d they knew not now:
Whilst this Egyptian darkness did orewhelm,
The Priest sate Pilot even at Empires Helm.
Then Royal Necks were yok’d, and Monarchs still
Hold but their Crowns at his Almighty Will.
And to defend this high Prerogative,
Falsely from Heaven he did that powr derive:
By a Commission forg’d i’th’ hand of God,
Turn’d Aarons blooming wand, to Moses snaky Rod.
Whilst Princes little Scepters overpowr’d,
Made but that prey his wider Gorge devour’d.
Now to find Wealth might his vast pomp supply,
(For costly Roofs befit a Lord so high)
No Arts were spar’d his Luster to support,
But all Mines searcht t’enrich his shining Court.
Then Heav’n was bought, Religion but a Trade;
And Temples Murder’s Sanctuary made.
By Phineas Spear no bleeding Cozbies groan’d,
If Cozbies Gold for Cozbies Crimes aton’d.
With these wise Arts, (for Humane Policy
As well as Heav’nly Truth, mounts Priests so high)
’Twixt gentle Penance, lazy Penitence,
A Faith that gratifies both Soul and Sense;
With easie steps to everlasting Bliss,
He paves the rugged way to Paradice.
16 [2] Thus almost all the Proselyte-World he drives,
Whilst th’universal Drones buz to his Hives.
Implicite Faith Religion thus convey’d
Through little pipes to his great Channel laid,
Till Piety through such dark Conduits led,
Was poyson’d by the Spring on which it fed.
Here blind Obedience to a blinder Guide,
Nurst that Blind Zeal that rais’d the Priestly pride;
Whilst to make Kings the Sovereign Prelate own,
Their Reason he enslav’d, and then their Throne.
The Mitre thus above the Diadem soar’d,
Gods humble servant He, but Mans proud Lord.
It was in such Church-light blind-zeal was bred,
By Faiths infatuating Meteor led;
Blind Zeal, that can even Contradictions joyn;
A Saint in Faith, in Life a Libertine;
Makes Greatness though in Luxury worn down,
Bigotted even to th’ Hazard of a Crown;
Ty’d to the Girdle of a Priest so fast,
And yet Religious only to the wast.
But Constancy atoning Constancy,
Where that once raigns, Devotion may lye by.
T’espouse the Churches Cause lyes in Heav’ns road,
More than obeying of the Churches God.
And he dares fight, for Faith is more renown’d
A Zealot Militant, than Martyr crown’d.
Here the Arch-Priest to that Ambition blown,
Pull’d down Gods Altars, to erect his own:
For not content to publish Heav’ns command,
The Sacred Law penn’d by th’Almighty Hand,
And Moses-like ’twixt God and Israel go,
Thought Sinai’s Mount a Pinacle too low.

And ceasing to adore, to be ador’d.
So fell Faiths guide: so loftily he towr’d,
Till like th’Ambitious Lucifer accurst,
Swell’d to a God, into a Fiend he burst.

But as great Lucifer by falling gain’d
Dominion, and ever in Damnation reign’d;

And thus enthron’d, with an infernal spight,
The genuine Malice of the Realms of night,
The Paradise he lost blasphemes, abhors,
And against Heav’n proclaims Eternal Wars;
No Arts untry’d, no hostile steps untrod,
Both against Truths Adorers, and Truths God.

So Faiths faln Guide, now Baals great Champion raign’d;
Wide was his Sway, and Mighty his Command:
Whilst with implacable revenge he burn’d,
And all his Rage against Gods Israel turn’d.
Here his invenom’d Souls black gall he flings,
Spots all his Snakes, and points his Scorpions stings:
Omits no Force, or Treacherous Designe,
Blest Israel to assault, or undermine.
But the first Sword did his keen Malice draw,
Was aim’d against the God-like Deborah.
Deborah, the matchless pride of Judah’s Crown,
Whose Female hand Baal’s impious Groves cut down,
His banisht Wizards from her Israel thrust,
And pounded all their Idols into dust.
Her Life with indefatigable pain,
By Daggers long, and poysons fought in vain:
At length they angry Jabins Rage enflam’d,
Hazors proud King, for Iron Chariots fam’d;
A Warriour powerful, whose most dreadful Hoast
Proclaim’d Invincible, (were humane Boast
Infallible) by haughty Sisera led,
’Gainst Deborah their bloody Banners spread.
Here Deborah her Barak calls to War;
Barak, the Suns fam’d fellow-traveller,
Who wandring o’re the Earths surrounded Frame,
Had travelled far as his great Mistress Fame.
Here Barak did with Deborah’s vengeance fly,
And to that swift prodigious Victory,
So much by Humane Praises undefin’d,
That Fame wants Breath, and Wonder lags behind.
To Heav’ns high Arch her sounding Glories rung,
Whilst thus great Deborah and Barak sung.

18 [4] Hear, oh ye Princes, oh ye Kings give Ear,
And Israels great Avengers honour hear.
When God of Hosts, thou Israels Spear and Shield,
Wentst out of Seir, and marched’st from Edoms field,
Earth trembled, the Heaven’s drop’d, the Clouds all pour’d;
The Mountains melted from before the Lord;
Even thy own Sinai melted into streams,
At Israels dazling Gods refulgent Beams.
In Shamgar and in Jael’s former days,
The wandring Traveller walked through by-ways.
They chose new Gods. No Spear nor Sword was found,
To have Idolatry depos’d, Truth Crown’d,
Till I alone, against Jehovahs Foes;
I Deborah, I Israels Mother rose.
Wake Deborah, wake, raise thy exalted Head;
Rise Barak, and Captivity Captive lead.
For to blest Deborah, belov’d of Heav’n,
Over the Mighty is Dominion given.
Great Barak leads, and Israels Courage warms;
Ephraim and Benjamin march down in Arms:
Zebulon and Nepthali my Thunder bore,
Dan from her Ship, and Asher on the Shore.
Behold Megiddoes waves, and from afar,
See the fierce Jabins threatning storm of War.
But Heav’n ’gainst Sisera fought, and the kind Stars
Kindl’d their embattel’d Fires for Deborah’s Wars,
Shot down their Vengeance that miraculous day,
When Kishons Torrants swept their Hosts away.
But curse ye Meroz, curse ’em from on high.
Did the denouncing voice of Angels cry;
Accurst be they that went not out t’oppose
The Mighty Deborah’s, God’s, and Israel’s Foes.
Victorious Judah! Oh my Soul, th’hast trod,
Trod down their strengths. So fall the Foes of God.
But they who in his Sacred Laws delight,
Be as the Sun when he sets out in might.

Thus sung, they conquer’d Deborah; thus fell
Hers, and Heav’ns Foes. But no Defeat tames Hell.
By Conquest overthrown, but not dismay’d,
’Gainst Israel still their private Engines play’d.
19 [5] C And their dire Machinations to fulfil,
Their stings torn out, they kept their poyson still.
And now too weak in open force to joyn,
In close Cabals they hatcht a damn’d Design,
To light that Mine as should the world amaze,
And set the ruin’d Israel in a blaze.

When Judahs Monarch with his Princes round,
Amidst his glorious Sanedrim sate Crown’d,
Beneath his Throne a Cavern low, and dark
As their black Souls, for the great Work they mark.
In this lone Cell their Midnight-Hands bestow’d
A Stygian Compound, a combustive load
Of Mixture wondrous, Execution dire,
Ready the Touch of their Infernal Fire.
Have you not seen in yon æthereal Road,
How at the Rage of th’angry driving God,
Beneath the pressure of his furious wheels
The Heav’ns all rattle, and the Globe all reels?
So does this Thunder’s Ape its lightning play,
Keen as Heav’ns Fires, and scarce less swift than they.

This Mixture was th’Invention of a Priest;
The Sulphurous Ingredients all the best
Of Hells own growth: for to dire Compounds still
Hell finds the Minerals, and the Priest the Skill.

From this curst Mine they had that blow decreed,
A Moments dismal blast, as should exceed
All the Storms, Battles, Murders, Massacres,
And all the strokes of Daggers, Swords, or Spears,
Since first Cain’s hand at Abels Head was lift:
A Blow more swift than Pestilence, more swift
Than ever a destroying Angel rod,
To pour the Vial of an angry God.

The Train was laid, the very Signal giv’n;
But here th’all-seeing, Israels Guardian, Heav’n
Could hold no longer; and to stop their way,
With a kind Beam from th’Empyræan Day,
20 [6] Disclos’d their hammering Thunder at the Forge;
And made their Cyclops Cave their Bolts disgorge.

Discover’d thus, thus lost, betray’d, undone,
Yet still untir’d, the Restless Cause goes on;
And to retrieve a yet auspicious day,
A glowing spark even in their Ashes lay,
Which thus burst out in flames. In Geshur Land,
The utmost Bound of Israels Command,
Where Judah’s planted Faith but slowly grew,
A Brutal Race that Israels God n’er knew:
A Nation by the Conquerors Mercy grac’d,
Their Gods preserv’d, and Temples undefac’d;
Yet not content with all the Sweets of Peace,
Free their Estates, and free their Consciences;
’Gainst Israel those confederate Swords they drew,
Which with that vast Assassination flew
Two hundred thousand Butcher’d Victims shar’d
One common doom: No Sex nor Age was spar’d:
Not kneeling Beauties Tears, not Virgins Cries,
Nor Infants Smiles: No prey so small but dies.
Alas, the hard-mouth’d Blood-hound, Zeal, bites through;
Religion hunts, and hungry Jaws pursue.
To what strange Rage is Superstition driven,
That Man can outdo Hell to fight for Heav’n!
So Rebel Geshur fought: so drown’d in gore,
Even Mother Earth blusht at the Sons she bore;
And still asham’d of her old staining Brand,
Her Head shrinks down and Quagmires half their Land.
Yet not this blow Baals Empire could enlarge
For Israel still was Heav’ns peculiar charge:
Unshaken still in all this Scene of Blood,
Truths Temple firm on Golden Columns stood.
Whilst Sauls Revenging Arm proud Geshur scourg’d,
From their rank soyl their Hydra’s poyson purg’d.

Yet does not here their vanquish’d spleen give o’re,
But as untir’d, and restless as before,
Still through whole waiting Ages they outdo
At once the Chimists pains and patience too.
Who though he sees his bursting Limbecks crack,
And at one blast, one fatal Minutes wrack,
21 [7] The forward Hopes of sweating years expire;
With sad, yet painful hand new lights his Fire:
Pale, lean, and wan, does Health, Wealth, all consume;
Yet for the great Elixir still to come,
Toyls and hopes on. No less their Plottings cease;
So hope, so toyl, the foes of Israels peace.

When lo, a long expected day appears,
Sought for above a hundred rowling years;
A day i’th’ register of Doom set down,
Presents ’em with an Heir of Israels Crown.
Here their vast hopes of the rich Israels spoils,
Requites the pains of their long Ages Toyls.
Baals Banners now i’th’ face of day shall march,
With Heav’ns bright Roof for his Triumphal Arch.
His lurking Missioners shall now no more
From Forreign Schools in borrow’d shapes come o’re;
Convert by Moon-light, and their Mystick Rites
Preach to poor Female half-Soul’d Proselytes.
An all-commanding Dragon now shall soar,
Where the poor Serpents onely crawl’d before.

He shall new plant their Groves with each blest Tree,
A graft of an Imperial Nursery.
In the kind Air of this new Eden blest,
Percht on each bough, and Palaces their nest;
No more by frighting Laws forc’d t’obscure flight,
And gloomy walks, like obscene Birds of Night;
Their warbling Notes like Philomel shall sing,
And like the Bird of Paradise their wing.
Thus Israels Heir their ravisht Souls all fired;
For all things to their ardent hopes conspired.

His very youth a Bigot Mother bred,
And tainted even the Milk on which he fed.
Him onely of her Sons design’d for Baals
Great Champion ’gainst Jerusalems proud Walls;
Him dipt in Stygian Lake, by timely craft,
Invulnerable made against Truths pointed shaft.
22 [8] But to confirm his early poyson’d Faith,
’Twas in the cursed Forreign Tents of Gath,
’Twas there that he was lost. There Absolon
By Davids fatal Banishment undone,
Saw their false Gods till in their Fires he burn’d,
Truths Manna, for Egyptian Fleshpots, scorn’d.
Not David so; for he Faiths Champion Lord,
Their Altars loath’d, and prophane Rites abhorr’d:
Whilst his firm Soul on wings of Cherubs rod,
And tun’d his Lyre to nought but Abrahams God.
Thus the gay Israel her long Tears quite dry’d,
Her restor’d David met in all her Pride,
Three Brothers saw by Miracle brought back,
Like Noahs Sons sav’d from the worlds great wrack;
An unbelieving Ham graced on each hand,
’Twixt God-like Shem, and pious Japhet stand.

’Tis true, when David, all his storms blown o’re,
Wafted by Prodigies to Jordans shore,
(So swift a Revolution, yet so calm)
Had cur’d an Ages wounds with one days Balm;
Here the returning Absolon his vows
With Israel joyns, and at their Altars bows.
Perhaps surpriz’d at such strange blessings showr’d,
Such wonders shewn both t’Israels Faith, and Lord,
His Restoration-Miracle he thought
Could by no less than Israels God be wrought.
Whilst the enlightened Absolon thus kneels,
Thus dancing to the sound of Aarons Bells,
What dazling Rays did Israels Heir adorn,
So bright his Sun in his unclouded Morn!
’Twas then his leading hand in Battle drew
That Sword that Davids fam’d ten thousand slew:
Davids the Cause, but Absolons the Arm.
Then he could win all Hearts, all Tongues could charm:
Whilst with his praise the ecchoing plains all rung,
A thousand Timbrels play’d, a thousand Virgins sung;
And in the zeal of every jocund Soul,
Absolons Health with Davids crown’d one Bowl.

Had he fixt here, yes, Fate, had he fixt here,
To Man so Sacred, and to Heav’n so dear,
23 [9] D What could he want that Hands, Hearts, Lives could pay,
Or Tributary Worlds beneath his feet could lay?
What Knees, what Necks to mount him to his Throne;
What Gems, what Stars to sparkle in his Crown?
So pleas’d, so charm’d, had Israels Genius smil’d;
But oh the Pow’rs, by treacherous snakes beguil’d,
Into a more than Adams Curse he run,
Tasting that Fruit has Israels World undone.
Nay, wretched even below his falling state,
Wants Adams Eyes to see his Adams Fate.
In vain was Davids Harp and Israels Quire;
For his Conversion all in vain conspire:
For though their influence a while retires,
His own false Planets were th’Ascendant Fires.
Heav’n had no lasting Miracle design’d;
It did a while his fatal Torrent bind.
As Joshua’s Wand did Jordan’s streams divide,
And rang’d the watry Mountains on each side.

At this last stroke thus totally o’rethrown,
Apostasie now seal’d him all her own.
Here ope’d that gaping Breach, that fatal door,
Which now let in a thousand Ruines more.
All the bright Virtues, and each dazling Grace,
Which his rich Veins drew from a God-like Race;
The Mercy, and the Clemency Divine,
Those Sacred Beams which in mild David shine;
Those Royal Sparks, his Native Seeds of Light,
Were all put out, and left a Starless Night.
A long farewel to all that’s Great and Brave:
Not Cataracts more headstrong; as the Grave
Inexorable; Sullen and Untun’d
As Pride depos’d; scarce Lucifer dethron’d
More Unforgiving; his enchanted Soul
Had drank so deep of the bewitching Bowl,
Till he whose hand, with Judahs Standart, bore
Her Martial Thunder to the Tyrian shore,
Arm’d in her Wars, and in her Laurels crown’d;
Now all forgotten at one stagg’ring wound,
24 [10] Falling from Israels Faith; from Israels Cause,
Peace, Honour, Int’rest, all at once withdraws:
Nor is he deaf t’a Kingdoms Groans alone,
But could behold ev’n Davids shaking Throne;
David, whose Bounty rais’d his glittering Pride,
The Basis of his Glories Pyramide.
But Duty, Gratitude, all ruin’d fall:
Zeal blazes, and Oblivion swallows all.
So Sodom did both burnt and drown’d expire;
A poyson’d Lake succeeds a Pile of Fire.

On this Foundation Baals last Hope was built,
The sure Retreat for all their Sallying Guilt:
A Royal Harbour, where the rowling Pride
Of Israels Foes might safe at Anchor ride;
Defie all Dangers, and even Tempests scorn,
Though Judahs God should Thunder in the Storm.

Here Israels Laws, the dull Levitick Rolls,
At once a clog to Empire, and to Souls,
Are the first Martyrs to the Fire they doom,
To make great Baals Triumphant Legends room.
But ere their hands this glorious work can Crown,
Their long-known Foe the Sanedrin must down;
Sanedrins the Free-born Israels Sacred Right,
That God-like Ballance of Imperial Might;
Where Subjects are from Tyrant-Lords set free,
From that wild Thing unbounded man would be;
Where Pow’r and Clemency are poys’d so even,
A Constitution that resembles Heav’n.
So in th’united great THREE-ONE we find
A Saving with a Dooming Godhead joyn’d.
(But why, oh why! if such restraining pow’r
Can bind Omnipotence, should Kings wish more?)
A Constitution, so Divinely mixt,
Not Natures bounded Elements more fixt.

But to rebuild their Altars, and enstal
Their Moulten Gods, the Sanedrin must fall;
25 [11] That Constellation of the Jewish Pow’r,
All blotted from its Orb must shine no more;
Or stampt in Pharoahs darling Mould, must quit
Their Native Beams, for a new-model’d Light;
Like Egypts Sanedrins, their influence gone,
Flash but like empty Meteors round the Throne:
That that new Lord may Judahs Scepter weild,
To whom th’old Brickill Taskmasters must yield;
Who, to erect new Temples for his Gods,
Shall th’enslav’d Israel drive with Iron Rods;
If they want Bricks for his new Walls t’aspire,
To their sad cost, he’ll find ’em Straw and Fire.

All this t’effect, and their new Fabrick build,
Both close Cabals and Forreign Leagues are held:
To Babylon and Egypt they send o’re,
And both their Conduct and their Gold implore.
By such Abettors the sly Game was plaid;
One of their Chiefs a Jewish Renegade,
High-born in Israel, one Michals Priest,
But now in Babylons proud Scarlet drest.
’Tis to his Hands the Plotting Mandats come
Subscrib’d by the Apostate Absolom.
Nay, and to keep themselves all danger-proof,
That none might track the Belial by his Hoof,
Their Correspondence veil’d from prying Eyes,
In Hieroglyphick Figures they disguise.
Husht as the Night, in which their Plots combin’d,
And silent as the Graves they had design’d,
Their Ripening Mischiefs to perfection sprung.
But oh! the much-loath’d David lives too long.
Their Vultures cannot mount but from his Tomb;
And with too hungry ravenous Gorges come,
To be by airy Expectation fed.
No Prey, no Spoil, before they see Him Dead.
Yes, Dead; the Royal Sands too slowly pass,
And therefore they’re resolved to break the Glass:
And to ensure Times tardy dubious Call,
Decree their Daggers should his Sythe forestall.
For th’execrable Deed a Hireling Crew
Their Hell and They pick out; whom to make true,
26 [12] An Oath of Force so exquisite they frame,
Sworn in the Blood of Israels Paschal Lamb.
If false, the Vengeance of that Sword that slew
Egypts First-born, their perjur’d Heads pursue.
Strong was the Oath, the Imprecation dire;
And for a Viand, lest their Guilt should tire,
With promis’d Paradice they cheer their way;
And bold’s the Souldier who has Heav’n his pay.

But the ne’r-sleeping Providence that stands
With jealous Eyes o’re Truths up-lifted Hands;
That still in its Lord Israel takes delight,
Their Cloud by Day, and Guardian Fire by Night;
A Ray from out its Fiery Pillar cast,
That overlook’d their driving Jehu’s hast.

The frighted Israelites take the Alarm,
Resolve the Traitors Sorceries t’uncharm:
Till cursing, raving, mad, and drunk with Rage,
In Amnons Blood their frantick Hands engage.

Here let the Ghost of strangl’d Amnon come,
A Specter that will strike Amazement dumb;
Amnon the Proto-Martyr of the Plot,
The Murder’d Amnon, their Eternal Blot;
Whose too bold zeal stood like a Pharos Light,
Israel to warn, and track their Deeds of Night.
Till the sly Foe his unseen Game to play,
Put out the Beacon to secure his way.
Baals Cabinet-Intrigues he open spread,
The Ravisht Tamar for whose sake he bled.
T’unveil their Temple and expose their Gods,
Deserv’d their vengeances severest Rods:
Wrath he deserv’d, and had the Vial full,
To lay those Devils had possest his Soul.
His silenc’d Fiends from his wrung Neck they twist;
Whilst his kind Murd’rer’s but his Exorcist.
Here draw, bold Painter, (if thy Pencil dare
Unshaking write, what Israel quak’d to hear,)
27 [13] E A Royal Altar pregnant with a Load
Of Humane Bones beneath a Breaden God.
Altars so rich not Molocks Temples show;
’Twas Heaven above, and Golgotha below.
Yet are not all the Mystick Rites yet done:
Their pious Fury does not stop so soon.
But to pursue the loud-tongu’d Wounds they gave,
Resolves to stab his Fame beyond the Grave,
And in Eternal Infamy to brand
With Amnons Murder, Amnons righteous Hand.
Here with a Bloodless wound, by Hellish Art,
With his own Sword they goar his Lifeless Heart.
Thus in a Ditch the butcher’d Amnon lay,
A Deed of Night enough to have kept back the Day.
Had not the Sun in Sacred vengeance rose,
Asham’d to see, but prouder to disclose,
Warm’d with new Fires, with all his posting speed,
Brought Heav’ns bright Lamp to shew th’Infernal Deed.

What art thou, Church! when Faith to propagate,
And crush all Bars that stop thy growing state,
Thou break’st through Natures, Gods, and Humane Laws,
Whilst Murder’s Merit in a Churches Cause.
How much thy Ladder Jacobs does excel:
Whose Top’s in Heaven like His, but Foot in Hell;
Thy Causes bloody Champions to befriend,
For Fiends to Mount, as Angels to Descend.

This was the stroke did th’alarm’d World surprize,
And even to infidelity lent Eyes:
Whilst sweating Absolon in Israel pent,
For fresher Air was to bleak Hebron sent.
Cold Hebron warm’d by his approaching sight,
Flusht with his Gold, and glow’d with new delight.
Till Sacred all-converting Interest
To Loyalty, their almost unknown Guest,
Oped a broad Gate, from whence forth-issuing come,
Decrees, Tests, Oaths, for well-sooth’d Absolom.
Spight of that Guilt that made even Angels fall,
An unbarr’d Heir shall Reign: In spight of all
Apostacy from Heav’n, or Natures tyes,
Though for his Throne a Cain-built Palace rise.
28 [14] No wonder Hebron such Devotion bears
T’Imperial Dignity, and Royal Heirs;
For they, whom Chronicle so high renowns
For selling Kings, should know the price of Crowns.

Here, Glorious Hushai, let me mourn thy Fate,
Thou once great Pillar of the Hebron State:
Yet now to Dungeons sent, and doom’d t’a Grave.
But Chains are no new Sufferings to the Brave.
Witness thy pains in six years Bonds endur’d,
For Israels Faith, and Davids Cause immur’d.
Death too thou oft for Judahs Crown hast stood,
So bravely fac’d in several Fields of Blood.
But from Fames Pinnacle now headlong cast,
Life, Honour, all are ruin’d at a Blast.
For Absolons great LAW thou durst explain;
Where but to pry, bold Lord, was to prophane:
A Law that did his Mystick God-head couch,
Like th’Ark of God, and no less Death to touch.
Forgot are now thy Honourable Scars,
Thy Loyal Toyls, and Wounds in Judahs Wars.
Had thy pil’d Trophies Babel-high, reacht Heav’n,
Yet by one stroke from Absolons Thunder given,

True, thou hadst Law; that even thy Foes allow;
But to thy Advocates, as damn’d as Thou,
’Twas Death to plead it. Artless Absolon
The Bloody Banner to display so soon:
Such killing Beams from thy young Day-break shot;
What will the Noon be, if the Morn’s so hot?
Yes, dreadful Heir, the Coward Hebron awe.
So the young Lion tries his tender Paw.
At a poor Herd of feeble Heifers flies,
Ere the rough Bear, tusk’d Boar, or spotted Leopard dies.
Thus flusht, great Sir, thy strength in Israel try:
When their Cow’d Sanedrims shall prostrate lye,
And to thy feet their slavish Necks shall yield;
Then raign the Princely Savage of the Field.

29 [15] Yes, Israels Sanedrin, ’twas they alone
That set too high a Value on a Throne;
Thought they had a God was Worthy to be serv’d;
A Faith maintain’d, and Liberty preserv’d.
And therefore judg’d, for Safety and Renown
Of Israels People, Altars, Laws and Crown,
Th’Anointing Drops on Royal Temples shed
Too precious Showrs for an Apostates Head.
Then was that great Deliberate Councel giv’n,
An Act of Justice both to Man and Heav’n,
Israels conspiring Foes to overthrow,
That Absolon should th’Hopes of Crowns forego.
Debarr’d Succession! oh that dismal sound!
A sound, at which Baal stagger’d, and Hell groan’d;
A sound that with such dreadful Thunder falls,
’Twas heard even to Semiramis trembling Walls.

But hold! is this the Plots last Murd’ring Blow,
The dire divorce of Soul and Body? No.
The mangled Snake, yet warm, to Life they’ll bring,
And each disjoynted Limb together cling.
Then thus Baals wise consulting Prophets cheer’d
Their pensive Sons, and call’d the scatter’d Herd.

Are we quite ruin’d! No, mistaken Doom,
Still the great Day, yes that great Day shall come,
(Oh, rouse our fainting Sons, and droop no more.)
A Day, whose Luster, our long Clouds blown o’re,
Not all the Rage of Israel shall annoy,
No, nor denouncing Sanedrims destroy.
See yon North-Pole, and mark Boötes Carr:
Oh! we have those Influencing Aspects there,
Those Friendly pow’rs that drive in that bright Wain,
Shall redeem All, and our lost Ground regain.
Whilst to our Glory their kind Aid stands fast,
But one Plot more, our Greatest and our Last.

Now for a Product of that subtle kind,
As far above their former Births refin’d,
As Firmamental Fires t’a Tapers ray,
Or Prodigies to Natures common Clay.
30 [16] Empires in Blood, or Cities in a Flame,
Are work for vulgar Hands, scarce worth a Name.
A Cake of Shew-bread from an Altar ta’ne,
Mixt but with some Levitical King-bane,
Has sent a Martyr’d Monarch to his Grave.
Nay, a poor Mendicant Church-Rake-hell slave
Has stab’d Crown’d Heads; slight Work to hands well-skill’d,
Slight as the Pebble that Goliah kill’d.
But to make Plots no Plots, to clear all Taints,
Traitors transform to Innocents, Fiends to Saints,
Reason to Nonsence, Truth to Perjury;
Nay, make their own attesting Records lye,
And even the gaping Wounds of Murder whole:
If this last Masterpiece requires a Soul.
Guilt to unmake, and Plots annihilate,
Is much a greater work than to create.
Nay both at once to be, and not to be,
Is such a Task would pose a Deity.
Let Baal do this, and be a God indeed:
Yes, this Immortal Honour ’tis decreed,
His Sanguine Robe though dipt in reeking Gore,
With purity and Innocence all o’re,
Shall dry, and spotless from the purple hue,
The Miracle of Gideons Fleece outdo.
Yes, they’re resolv’d, in all their foes despight,
To wash their more than Ethiop Treason White.

But now for Heads to manage the Design,
Fit Engineers to labour in this Mine.
For their own hands ’twere fatal to employ:
Should Baal appear, it would Baals Cause destroy.
Alas, should onely their own Trumpets sound
Their Innocence, the jealous Ears around
All Infidels would the loath’d Charmer fly,
And through the Angels voice the Fiend descry.
No, this last game wants a new plotting Set,
And Israel only now can Israel cheat.
In this Machine their profest Foes must move,
Whilst Baal absconding sits in Clouds above,
From whence unseen he guides their bidden way:
For he may prompt, although he must not play.
31 [17] F This to effect a sort of Tools they find,
Devotion-Rovers, an Amphibious Kind,
Of no Religion, yet like Walls of Steel
Strong for the Altars where their Princes kneel.
Imperial not Celestial is their Test,
The Uppermost, indisputably Best.
They always in the golden Chariot rod,
Honour their Heav’n, and Interest their God.

Of these then subtil Caleb none more Great,
Caleb who shines where his lost Father set;

But made his Politicks the baneful Root
From whence the springing Woes of Israel shoot,
When his Great Masters fatal Gordian tyed,
He lai’d the barren Michal by his side;
That the ador’d Absolons immortal Line
Might on Judeas Throne for ever shine.

Next Jonas stands bull-fac’d, but chicken-soul’d,
Who once the silver Sanedrin Controul’d,
Their Gold-tip’d Tongue; Gold his great Councels Bawd:
Till by succeeding Sanedrins outlaw’d,
He was prefer’d to guard the sacred Store:
There Lordly rowling in whole Mines of Oar;
To Diceing Lords, a Cully-Favourite,
He prostitutes whole Cargoes in a Night.
Here to the Top of his Ambition come,
Fills all his Sayls for hopeful Absolom.
For his Religion’s as the Season calls,
Gods in Possession, in Reversion Baals.
He bears himself a Dove to Mortal Race,
And though not Man, he can look Heav’n i’th’ Face.
Never was Compound of more different Stuff,
A Heart in Lambskin, and a Conscience Buff.

Let not that Hideous Bulk of Honour scape,
Nadab that sets the gazing Crowd agape:
That old Kirk-founder, whose course Croak could sing
The Saints, the Cause, no Bishop, and no King:
32 [18] When Greatness clear’d his Throat, and scowr’d his Maw,
Roard out Succession, and the Penal Law.
Not so of old: another sound went forth,
When in the Region from Judea North,
By the Triumphant Saul he was employ’d,
A huge fang Tusk to goar poor Davids side.
Like a Proboscis in the Tyrants Jaw,
To rend and root through Government and Law.

Nor does the Courts long Sun so powerful shine,
T’exhale his Vapours, or his Dross refine;
Nor is the Metal mended by the stamp.
With his rank oyl he feeds the Royal Lamp.
To Sanedrins an everlasting Foe,
Resolv’d his Mighty Hunters overthrow.
And true to Tyranny, as th’only Jem,
That truly sparkles in a Diadem;
To Absalons side does his old Covenant bring,
With State raz’d out, and interlin’d with KING.
But Nadabs Zeal has too severe a Doom;
Whilst serving an ungrateful Absalom,
His strength all spent his Greatness to create,
He’s now laid by a cast-out Drone of State.
He rowz’d that Game by which he is undone,
By fleeter Coursers now so far outrun,
That fiercer Mightier Nimrod in the Chace,
Till quite thrown out, and lost he quits the Race.

Of Low-born Tools we bawling Shimei saw,
Jerusalems late loud-tongu’d MOUTH of Law.
By Blessings from Almighty Bounty given,
Shimei no common Favorite of Heaven.
Whom, lest Posterity should loose the Breed,
In five short Moons indulgent Heav’n rais’d Seed;
Made happy in an Early teeming Bride,
And laid a lovely Heiress by her side.

33 [19] ’Twas in Jerusalem was Shimei nurst,
Jerusalem by Baals Prophets ever curst,
The greatest Block that stops ’em in their way,
For which she once in Dust and Ashes lay.
Here to the Bar this whiffling Lurcher came,
And barkt to rowze the nobler Hunters Game.
But Shimei’s Lungs might well be stretcht so far;
For steering by a Court-Ascendant Star,
For daily Oracles he does address,
To the Egyptian Beauteous Sorceress.
For Pharoah when he wisely did essay
To bear the long-sought Golden Prize away,
That fair Enchantress sent, whose Magick Skill
Should keep great Israels sleeping Dragon still.

Of all the Heroes since the world began,
To Shimei Joshuah was the bravest Man.
To Him his Tutelar Saint he prays, and oh,
That great Jerusalem were like Jericoh!
Then bellowing lowd for Joshuahs Spirit calls,
Because his Rams-horn blew down City-Walls.

In the same Roll have we grave Corah seen,
Corah, the late chief Scarlet Abbethdin.
Corah, who luckily i’th’ Bench was got,
To loo the Bloodhounds off to save the Plot.
Corah, who once against Baals Impious Cause,
Stood strong for Israels Faith and Davids Laws.
He poys’d his Scales, and shook his ponderous Sword,
Lowd as his Fathers Basan-Bulls he roar’d;
Till by a Dose of Forreign Ophir drencht,
The Feavour of his Burning Zeal was Quencht.
Ophir, that rescu’d the Court-Drugsters Fate,
Sent in the Nick to gild his Pills of State.
Whilst the kind Skill of our Law-Emperick,
Sublim’d his Mercury to save his Neck.
In Law, they say, he had but a slender Mite,
And Sense he had less: for as Historians write,
The Arabian Legate laid a Snare so gay,
As Spirited his little Wits away.
34 [20] Of the Records of Law he fancied none
Like the Commandment Tables graved in Stone.
And wish’d the Talmude such, that Soveraign sway
When once displeased might th’angry Moses play.
Onely his Law was Brittle i’th’ wrong place:
For had our Corah been in Moses Case,
The Fury of his Zeal had been employ’d
To build that Calf which th’others Rage destroy’d.
Thus Corah, Baals true Fayry Changeling made,
He Bleated onely as the Pharisees pray’d,
All to advance that future Tyrant pow’r,
Should Widows Houses gorge, and Orphans Tears devour.

Nor are these all their Instruments; to prop
Their Mighty Cause, and Israels Murmurs stop;
They find a sort of Academick Tools;
Who by the Politick Doctrine of their Schools,
Betwixt Reward, Pride, Avarice, Hope and Fear,
Prizing their Heav’n too cheap, the World too dear,
Stand bold and strong for Absolons Defence:
Interest the Thing, but Conscience the Pretence.
These to ensure him for their Sions King,
A Right Divine quite down from Adam bring,
That old Levitick Engine of Renown,
That makes no Taint of Souls a bar t’a Crown.
’Tis true, Religions constant Champion vow’d,
Each open-mouth’d, with Pulpit-Thunder lowd,
Against false Gods, and Idol Temples bawls;
Yet lays the very Stones that raise their Walls.
They preach up Hell to those that Baal adore,
Yet make’t Damnation to oppose his pow’r.
So far this Paradox of Conscience run,
Till Israels Faith pulls Israels Altars down.
Grant Heav’n they don’t to Baal so far make way,
Those fatal Wands before their Sheepfolds lay.
Such Motley Principles amongst them thrown,
Shall nurse that Py-ball’d Flock that’s half his own.
Nor may they say, when Molocks Hands draw nigher,
We built the Pile, whilst Baal but gives it fire.

If Monarchy in Adam first begun,
When the Worlds Monarch dug, and his Queen spun,
35 [21] G His Fig-leaves his first Coronation-Robe,
His Spade his Scepter, and her Wheel his Globe;
And Royal Birthright, as their Schools assert,
Not Kings themselves with Conscience can divert;
How came the World possest by Adams Sons,
Such various Principalities, Powres, Thrones?
When each went out and chose what Lands he pleas’d,
Whilst a new Family new Kingdoms rais’d?

O cruel Right Divine, more full of Fate,
Then th’ Angels flaming Sword at Edens Gate,
Such early Treason through Mankind convey’d,
And at the door of Infant-Nature layd.
For Right Divine in Esau’s just defence,
Why don’t they quarrel with Omnipotence,
The first-born Esau’s Right to Jacob giv’n,
And Gods gift too, Injustice charge on Heav’n.
Nay, let Heav’n answer this one Fact alone,
Mounting a Bastard Jephtha on a Throne.
If Kings and Sanedrims those Laws could make,
Which from offending Heirs their Heads can take;
And a First-born can forfeit Life and Throne,
And all by Law: why not a Crown alone?
Strange-bounded Law-makers! whose pow’r can throw
The deadlier Bolt, can’t give the weaker Blow.
A Treasonous Act; nay, but a Treasonous Breath
Against offended Majesty is Death.
But, oh! the wondrous Church-distinction given
Between the Majesty of Kings and Heav’n!
The venial sinner here, he that intreagues
With Egypt, Babylon; Cabals, Plots, Leagues
With Israels Foes her Altars to destroy,
A Hair untouch’d, shall Health, Peace, Crowns enjoy.

Truths Temple thus the Exhalations bred
From her own Bowels, to obscure her Head.
36 [22] And Absolom already had subdu’d
Whole Crowds of the unthinking Multitude.
But through these Wiles too weak to catch the Wise,
Thin as their Ephod-Lawn, a Cobweb Net for Flyes,
The searching Sanedrim saw; and to dispel
Th’ingendring Mists that threatned Israel,
They still resolv’d their Plotting Foes defeat,
By barring Absolon th’Imperial Seat.

But here’s his greatest Tug; could he but make
Th’encluding Sanedrims Resolves once shake;
Nay, make the smallest Breach, or clashing Jar,
In their great Councel, push but home so far,
And the great Point’s secur’d.——And, lo! among
The Princely Heads of that Illustrious Throng,
He saw rich Veins with Noble Blood new fill’d;
Others who Honour from Dependance held.
Some with exhausted Fortunes, to support
Their Greatness, propt with Crutches from a Court.
These for their Countries Right their Votes still pass,
Mov’d like the Water in a Weather-glass,
Higher or lower, as the powerful Charm
O’th’ Soveraign Hand is either cool or warm.
Here must th’Attacque be made: for well we know,
Reason and Titles from one Fountain flow:
Whilst Favour Men no less than Fortunes builds,
And Honour ever Moulds as well as Guilds.
Honour that still does even new Souls inspire;
Honour more powerful than the Heav’n-stoln Fire.
These must be wrought to Absolons Defence.
For though to baffle the whole Sanedrims Sence,
T’attempt Impossibles would be in vain,
Yet ’tis enough but to Divide and Raign.

Here though small Force such easie Converts draws,
Yet ’tis thought fit in glory to their Cause,
Some learned Champion of prodigious Sense,
With Mighty and long studyed Eloquence,
Should with a kind of Inspiration rise,
And the unguarded Sanedrim surprize,

37 [23] For this Design no Head nor Tongue so well,
As that of the profound Achitophel.
How, great Achitophel! his Hand, his Tongue!
Babylons Mortal Foe; he who so long
With haughty Sullenness, and scornful Lowr,
Had loath’d false Gods, and Arbitrary pow’r.
’Gainst Baal no Combatant more fierce than he;
For Israels asserted Liberty,
No Man more bold; with generous Rage enflam’d,
Against the old ensnaring Test declaim’d.
Beside, he bore a most peculiar Hate
To sleeping Pilots, all Earth-clods of State.
None more abhorr’d the Sycophant Buffoon,
And Parasite, th’excrescence of a Throne;
Creatures who their creating Sun disgrace,
A Brood more abject than Niles Slime-born Race.
Such was the Brave Achitophel; a Mind,
(If but the Heart and Face were of a kind)
So far from being by one base Thought deprav’d,
That sure half ten such Souls had Sodom sav’d.
Here Baals Cabal Achitophel survey’d,
And dasht with wonder, half despairing said,
Is this the Hand that Absolon must Crown,
The Founder of his Temples, Palace, Throne?
This, This the mighty Convert we must make?
Gods, h’has a Soul not all our Arts can shake.

At this a nicer graver Head stept out,
And with this Language chid their groundless Doubt:
For shame, no more; what is’t that frights you thus?
Is it his Hatred of our God, and us,
Makes him so formidable in your Eye?
Or is’t his Wit, Sense, Honour, Bravery?
Give him a thousand Virtues more, and plant
Them round him like a Wall of Adamant,
Strong as the Gates of Heaven; we’ll reach his Heart:
Cheer, cheer, my Friends, I’ve found one Mortal part.
For he has Pride, a vast insatiate Pride,
Kind Stark, he’s vulnerable on that side.
Pride that made Angels fall, and pride that hurl’d
Entayl’d Destruction through a ruin’d World.
38 [24] Adam from Pride to Disobedience ran:
To be like Gods, made a lost wretched Man.
There, there, my Sons, let our pour’d strength all fly:
For some bold Tempter now to rap him high,
From Pinnacles to Mountain Top, and show
The gaudy Glories of the World below.

At which the Consult came to this Design,
To work him by a kind of Touch Divine.
To raise some holy Spright to do the Feat.
Nothing like Dreams and Visions to the Great.
Did not a little Witch of Endor bring
A Visionary Seer t’a cheated King?
And shall their greater Magick want Success,
Their more Illustrious Sorceries do less!

This final Resolution made, at last
Some Mystick words, and invocations past,
They call’d the Spirit of a late Court-Scribe;
Once a true Servant of the Plotting Tribe:
When both with Forreign and Domestick Cost,
He plaid the feasted Sanedrims kind Host.
H’had scribbled much, and like a Patriot bold,
Bid high for Israels Peace with Egypts Gold.
But since a Martyr. (Why! as Writers think,
His Masters Hand had over-gall’d his Ink.)
And by protesting Absoloms wise care,
Popt into Brimstone ere he was aware.
Him from the Grave they rais’d, in ample kind,
His sever’d Head to his seer Quarters joyn’d;
Then cas’d his Chin in a false Beard so well,
As made him pass for Father Samuel.
Him thus equipt in a Religious Cloak,
They thus his new-made Reverence bespoke.

Go, awful Spright, hast to Achitophel,
Rouze his great Soul, use every Art, Charm, Spell:
For Absolom thy utmost Rhetorick try,
Preach him Succession, roar’d Succession cry,
Succession drest in all her glorious pride,
Succession Worshipt, Sainted, Deify’d.
39 [25] H Conjure him by Divine and Humane Pow’rs,
Convince, Convert, Confound, make him but ours,
That Absolon may mount on Judahs Throne,
Whilst all the World before us is our own.

The forward Spright but few Instructions lackt,
Strait by the Moons pale light away he packt,
And in a trice, his Curtains open’d wide,
He sate him by Achitophels Bed-side.
And in this style his artful Accents ran.

Hear Israels Hope, thou more than happy Man,
Beloved on high, witness this Honour done
By Father Samuel, and believe me, Son,
’Tis by no common Mandate of a God,
A Soul beatifyed, the blest Abode
Thus low deserting, quits Immortal Thrones,
And from his Grave resumes his sleeping Bones.
But Heavn’s the Guide, and wondrous is the way,
Divine the Embassie: hear, and obey.
How long, Achitophel, and how profound
A Mist of Hell has thy lost Reason drown’d?
Can the Apostacy from Israels Faith,
In Israels Heir, deserve a murmuring Breath?
Or to preserve Religion, Liberty,
Peace, Nations, Souls, is that a Cause so high,
As the Right Heir from Empire to debar?
Forbid it Heav’n, and guard him every Star.
Alas, what if an Heir of Royal Race,
Gods Glory and his Temples will deface,
And make a prey of your Estates, Lives, Laws;
Nay, give your Sons to Molocks burning paws;
Shall you exclude him? hold that Impious Hand.
As Abraham gave his Son at Gods Command,
Think still he does by Divine Right succeed:
God bids Him Reign, and you should bid Them Bleed.
’Tis true, as Heav’ns Elected Flock, you may
For his Conversion, and your Safety pray
But Pray’rs are all. To Disinherit him,
The very Thought, nay, Word it self’s a Crime.
For that’s the MEANS of Safety: but forbear,
For Means are Impious in the Sons of Pray’r.
40 [26] To Miracles alone your Safety owe;
And Abrahams Angel wait to stop the Blow.
Yes, what if his polluted Throne be strowd
With Sacriledge, Idolatry, and Blood;
And ’tis you mount him there; you’re innocent still:
For he’s a King, and Kings can do no ill.
Oh Royal Birthright, ’tis a Sacred Name:
Rowze then Achitophel, rowze up for shame:
Let not this Lethargy thy Soul benum;
But wake, and save the Godlike Absolom.
And to reward thee for a Deed so great
Glut thy Desires, thy full-crown’d wishes meet,
Be with accumulated Honours blest,
And grasp a STAR t’adorn thy shining Crest.

Achitophel before his Eyes could ope,
Dreamt of an Ephod, Mitre, and a Cope.
Those visionary Robes t’his Eyes appear’d:
For Priestly all was the great Sense he heard.
But Priest or Prophet, Right Divine, or all
Together; ’twas not at their feebler call,
’Twas at the Star he wak’d; the Star but nam’d,
Flasht in his Eyes, and his rowz’d Soul enflam’d.
A Star, whose Influence had more powerful Light,
Then that Miraculous Wanderer of the Night,
Decreed to guide the Eastern Sages way:
Their’s to adore a God, his to betray.

Here the new Convert more than half inspir’d,
Strait to his Closet and his Books retir’d.
There for all needful Arts in this extreme,
For knotty Sophistry t’a limber Theme,
Long brooding ere the Mass to Shape was brought,
And after many a tugging heaving Thought,
Together a well-orderd Speech he draws,
With ponderous Sounds for his much-labour’d Cause.
Then the astonisht Sanedrim he storm’d,
And with such doughty strength the Tug perform’d:
Fate did the Work with so much Conquest bless,
Wondrous the Champion, Glorious the Success.
So powerful Eloquence, so strong was Wit;
And with such Force the easie Wind-falls hit.

41 [27] But the entirest Hearts his Cause could steal,
Were the Levitick Chiefs of Israel.
None with more Rage the Impious Thought run down
Of barring Absolon, Pow’r, Wishes, Crown.
With so much vehemence, such fiery Zeal!
Oh, poor unhappy Church of Israel!
Thou feelst the Fate of the Arch-angels Wars,
The Dragons Tayl sweeps down thy Falling Stars.
Nay, the black Vote ’gainst Absolon appear’d
So monstrous, that they damn’d it ere ’twas heard.
For Prelates ne’r in Sanedrims debate,
They argue in the Church, but not i’th’ State;
And when their Thoughts aslant towards Heav’n they turn,
They weigh each Grain of Incense that they burn,
But t’Heavens Vice-gerents, Soul, Sense, Reason, all,
Or right or wrong, like Hecatombs must fall.
And when State-business calls their Thoughts below,
Then like their own Church-Organ-Pipes they go.
Not Davids Lyre could more his Touch obey:
For as their Princes breathe and strike, they play.

All Acts of Supreme Power they still admire:
’Tis Sacred, though to set the World on Fire,
Though Church-Infallibility they explode,
As making Humane knowledge equal God;
Infallible in a new name goes down,
Not in the Mitre lodged, but in the Crown.
’Tis true, blest Deborahs Laws they could forget:
(But want of Memory commends their Wit.)
Where ’twas enacted Treason, not to own
Hers and her Sanedrins right to place the Crown.
But her weak Heads oth’ Church, mistaken fools,
Wanted the Light of their sublimer Schools:

Besides, they’ve sense of Honour; and who knows
How far the Gratitude of Priest-craft goes?
42 [28] And what if now like old Elisha fed,
To praise the Sooty Bird that brought ’em Bread,
In pure acknowledgment, though in despight
Of their own sense, they paint the Raven White.

Achitophel charm’d with kind Fortunes Smiles,
Flusht with Success, now glows for bolder Toyls.
Great Wits perverted greatest Mischiefs hold,
As poysonous Vapors spring from Mines of Gold.
And proud to see himself with Triumph blest,
Thus to great Absolom himself addrest.

Illustrious Terrour of the World, all hayle:
For ever like your Conquering Self prevaile.
In spight of Malice in full Luster shine;
Be your each Action, Word, and Look Divine,
Nay, though our Altars you’ve so long forborne;
To your derided Foes Defeat, and Scorne,
For your Renown we have those Trumpets found,
Shall ev’n this Deed your highest Glory sound.
That spight of the ill-judging Worlds mistake,
Your Soul still owns those Temples you forsake:
Onely by all-commanding Honour driven,
This self-denial you have made with Heav’n:
Quitting our Altars, cause the Insolence
Of prophane Sanedrims has driven you thence.
A Prince his Faith to such low Slaves reveal!
’Twas Treason though to God to bid You kneel.

Let ’em rayl on; and to strike Envy dumb;
May the Slaves live till that great Day shall come,
When their husht Rage shall your keen Vengeance fly,
And silenc’d with your Royal Thunder dye.
Nay, to outsoar your weak Fore-fathers Wings,
And to be all that Nature first meant Kings;
Damn’d be the Law that Majesty confines,
But doubly damn’d accursed Sanedrins,
Invented onely to eclipse a Crown.
Oh throw that dull Mosaick Land-mark down.
43 [29] I The making Sanedrims a part of Pow’r,
Nurst but those Vipers which its Sire devour.
Lodg’d in the Pallace tow’rds the Throne they press,
For Pow’rs Enjoyment does its Lust increase.
Allegiance onely is in Chains held fast;
Make Men ne’re thirst, is ne’re to let ’em tast.
Then, Royal Sir, be Sanedrims no more,
Lop off that rank Luxurious Branch of pow’r:
Those hungry Scions from the Cedar root,
That its Imperial Head towards Heav’n may shoot.
When Lordly Sanedrims with Kings give Law,
And thus in yokes like Mules together draw;
From Judahs Arms the Royal Lyon raze,
And Issachars dull Ass supply the place.
If Kings o’re common Mankind have this odds,
Are Gods Vicegerents; let ’em act like Gods.
As Man is Heav’ns own clay, which it may mould
For Honour or Dishonour, uncontrould,
And Monarchy is mov’d by Heav’nly Springs;
Why is not Humane Fate i’th’ Breath of Kings?
Then, Sir, from Heav’n your great Example take,
And be th’unbounded Lord a King should make:
Resume what bold Invading Slaves engrost,
And onely Pow’rs Effeminacy lost.

To this kind Absolom but little spoke;
Onely return’d a Nod, and gracious Look.
For though recorded Fame with pride has told,
Of his great Actings, Wonders manifold;
And his great Thinkings most Diviners guess;
Yet his great Speakings no Records express.

All things thus safe; and now for one last blow,
To give his Foes a total Overthrow;
A Blow not in Hells Legends match’d before,
The remov’d Plot’s laid at the Enemies door.
The old Plot forg’d against the Saints of Baal,
Cheat, Perjury, and Subornation all,
Whilst with a more damn’d Treason of their own,
Like working Moles they’re digging round the Throne;
Baal, Baal, the cry, and Absolom the Name,
But Davids glory, Life and Crown the Aim.
44 [30] Nay, if but a Petition peep abroad,
Though for the Glory both of Church and God,
And to preserve even their yet unborn Heirs;
There’s Blood and Treason in their very Prayers.
This unexampled Impudence upheld;
The Governments best Friends, the Crowns best Sheild,
The Great and Brave with equal Treason brands.
Faith, Honour, and Allegiance strongest Bands
All broken like the Cords of Sampson fall,
Whilst th’universal Leprosie taints all.
These poysonous shafts with greater spleen they draw,
Than the Outragious Wife of Potypha.
So the chast Joseph unseduc’d to her
Adult’ries, was pronounc’d a Ravisher.

This hellish Ethnick Plot the Court alarms;
The Traytors seventy thousand strong in Arms,
Near Endor Town lay ready at a Call,
And garrison’d in Airy Castles all.
These Warriours on a sort of Coursers rid,
Ne’r log’d in Stables, or by Man bestrid.
What though the steele with which the Rebels fought,
No Forge e’re felt, or Anvile ever wrought?
Yet this Magnetick Plot, for black Designs,
Can raise cold Iron from the very Mines.
To this were twenty Under-plots, contriv’d
By Malice, and by Ignorance believ’d,
Till Shamms met Shamms, and Plots with Plots so crost,
That the True Plot amongst the False was lost.

Of all the much-wrong’d Worthies of the Land
Whom this Contagious Infamy profan’d,
In the first Rank the youthful Ithream stood,
His Princely Veins fill’d with great Davids Blood.
With so much Manly Beauty in his Face,
Scarce his High Birth could lend a Nobler Grace.
And for a Mind fit for this shrine of Gold
Heaven cast his Soul in the same Beauteous Mould;
With all the sweets of Prideless Greatness blest,
As Affable as Abrahams Angel-Guest.
But when in Wars his glittering Steel he drew,
No Chief more Bold with fiercer Lightning flew:
45 [31] Witness his tryal of an Arm Divine,
Passing the Ordeal of a Burning Mine:
Such forward Courage did his Bosome fill,
Starting from nothing, but from doing ill.

To their false perspectives his Fate he owes,
The spots i’th’ Glass, not in the Star it shows.
Yet when by the Imperial Sentence doom’d,
The Royal Hand the Princely Youth unplum’d,
He his hard Fate without a Murmur took,
And stood with that Calm, Duteous, Humble look.
Of all his shining Honours unarray’d,
Like Isaac’s Head on Abrahams Altar lay’d.
Yes, Absolom, thou hast him in the Toyl,
Rifled, and lost; now Triumph in the Spoyl.
His Zeal too high for Israels Temples soar’d,
His God-like Youth by prostrate Hearts ador’d,
Till thy Revenge from Spight and Fear began,
And too near Heaven took Care to make him Man.
Though Israels King, God, Laws, share all his Soul,
Adorn’d with all that Heroes can enrol,
Yet Vow’d Successions cruel Sacrifice,
Great Judah’s Son like Jeptha’s Daughter dies.
Yes, like a Monument of Wrath he stands;
Such Ruine Absolons Revenge demands;
His Curiosity his Doom assign’d:
For ’twas a Crime of as destructive Kind,
To pry how Babylons Burning Zeal aspires,
As to look back on Sodoms blazing Fires.
But spoyl’d, and rob’d, his drossier Glories gone,
His Virtue and his Truth are still his own.
No rifling Hands can that bright Treasure take,
Nor all his Foes that Royal Charter shake.

The dreadful’st Foe their Engines must subdue,
The strongest Rock through which their Arts must hew,
Was great Barzillai: could they reach his Head,
Their Fears all husht, they had strook Danger dead.
46 [32] That second Moses-Guide resolv’d to free
Our Israel from her threatning Slavery,
Idolatry and Chains; both from the Rods
Of Pharoh-Masters, and Egyptian Gods:
And from that Wilderness of Errour freed,
Where Dogstars scorch, and killing Serpents breed:
That Israels Liberty and Truth may grow,
The Canaan whence our Milk and Honey flow.
Such our Barzillai; but Barzillai too,
With Moses Fate does Moses Zeal pursue:
Leads to that Bliss which his own Silver Hairs
Shall never reach, Rich onely to his Heirs.
Kind Patriot, who to plant us Banks of Flow’rs,
With purling Streams, cool Shades, and Summer Bow’rs,
His Ages needful Rest away does fling,
Exhausts his Autumn to adorn our Spring:
Whilst his last hours in Toyls and Storms are hurl’d,
And onely to enrich th’inheriting World.
Thus prodigally throws his Lifes short span,
To play his Countries generous Pelican.
But oh, that all-be-devill’d Paper, fram’d
No doubt, in Hell; that Mass of Treason damn’d;
By Esau’s Hands, and Jacobs Voice disclos’d;
And timely to th’ Abhorring World expos’d.
Nay, what’s more wondrous, this wast-paper Tool,
A nameless, unsubscrib’d, and useless scrowl,
Was, by a Politician great in Fame,
(His Chains foreseen a Month before they came)
Preserv’d on purpose, by his prudent care,
To brand his Soul, and ev’n his Life ensnare.
But then the Geshuritish Troop, well-Oath’d,
And for the sprucer Face, well-fed, and Cloath’d.
These to the Bar Obedient Swearers go,
With all the Wind their manag’d Lungs can blow.
So have I seen from Bellows brazen Snout,
The Breath drawn in, and by th’same Hand squeez’d out.
But helping Oaths may innocently fly,
When in a Faith where dying Vows can lye.
Were Treason and Democracie his Ends,
Why was’t not prov’d by his Revolting Friends?
Why did not th’ Oaths of his once-great Colleagues,
Achitophel and the rest prove his Intreagues?
47 [33] K Why at the Bar appear’d such sordid scum,
And all those Nobler Tongues of Honour dumb?
Could he his Plots t’his great Allies conceal,
He durst to leaky Starving Wretches tell;
Such Ignorant Princes, and such knowing Slaves;
His Babel building Tools from such poor Knaves.
Were he that Monster his new Foes would make
Th’unreasoning World beleive, his Soul so black,
That they in Conscience did his Side forego,
Knowing him guilty they could prove him so.
Then ’twas not Conscience made ’em change their side.
Or if they knew, yet did his Treasons hide;
In not exposing his detested Crime,
They’re greater Monsters than they dare think Him.
Are these the Proselites renown’d so high,
Converts to Duty, Honour, Loyalty?
Poorly they change, who in their change stand mute:
Converts to Truth ought Falsehood to confute.
To conquering Truth, they but small glory give,
Who turn to God, yet let the Dagon live.

But who can Amiels charming Wit withstand,
The great State-pillar of the Muses Land.
For lawless and ungovern’d, had the Age
The Nine wild Sisters seen run mad with Rage,
Debaucht to Savages, till his keen Pen
Brought their long banisht Reason back again,
Driven by his Satyres into Natures Fence,
And lasht the idle Rovers into Sense.
Nay, his sly Muse, in Style Prophetick, wrot
The whole Intrigue of Israels Ethnick Plot;
Form’d strange Battalions, in stupendious-wise,
Whole Camps in Masquerade, and Armies in disguise.
Amiel, whose generous Gallantry, whilst Fame
Shall have a Tongue, shall never want a Name.
Who, whilst his Pomp his lavish Gold consumes,
Moulted his Wings to lend a Throne his Plumes,
Whilst an Ungrateful Court he did attend,
Too poor to pay, what it had pride to spend.

But, Amiel has, alas, the fate to hear,
An angry Poet play his Chronicler;
48 [34] A Poet rais’d above Oblivions Shade,
By his Recorded Verse Immortal made.
But, Sir, his livelier Figure to engrave,
With Branches added to the Bays you gave:
No Muse could more Heroick Feats rehearse,
Had with an equal all-applauding Verse,
Great Davids Scepter, and Sauls Javelin prais’d:
A Pyramide to his Saint, Interest, rais’d.

Priest, whom with so much Gall he does describe,
’Cause once unworthy thought of Levies Tribe.

A Cell there stands by Pious Founders rais’d,
Both for its Wealth and Learned Rabbins prais’d:
To this did an Ambitious Bard aspire,
To be no less than Lord of that blest Quire:
Till Wisdom deem’d so Sacred a Command,
A Prize too great for his unhallow’d Hand.
Besides, lewd Fame had told his plighted Vow,
To Laura’s cooing Love percht on a dropping Bough
Laura in faithful Constancy confin’d
To Ethiops Envoy, and to all Mankind.
Laura though Rotten, yet of Mold Divine;
He had all her Cl—ps, and She had all his Coine.
Her Wit so far his Purse and Sense could drain,
Till every P—x was sweetn’d to a Strain.
And if at last his Nature can reform,
A weary grown of Loves tumultuous storm,
’Tis Ages Fault, not His; of pow’r bereft,
He left not Whoring, but of that was left.

But wandring Muse bear up thy flagging Wing:
To thy more glorious Theme return, and sing
Brave Jothams Worth, Impartial, Great, and Just,
Of unbrib’d Faith, and of unshaken Trust:
Once Geshurs Lord, their Throne so nobly fill’d,
As if to th’borrow’d Scepter that he held,
49 [35] Th’inspiring David yet more generous grew,
And lent him his Imperial Genius too.
Nor has he worn the Royal Image more
In Israels Viceroy, than Embassador:
Witness his Gallantry that resolute hour,
When to uphold the Sacred Pride of Pow’r,
His stubborn Flags from the Sydonian shore,
The angry storms of Thundring Castles bore.
But these are Virtues Fame must less admire,
Because deriv’d from that Heroick Sire,
Who on a Block a dauntless Martyr dy’d,
With all the Sweetness of a Smiling Bride;
Charm’d with the Thought of Honours Starry Pole,
With Joy laid down a Head to mount a Soul.

Of all the Champions rich in Honours Scarrs,
Whose Loyalty through Davids ancient Wars,
(In spight of the triumphant Tyrants pride,)
Was to his lowest Ebb of Fortune ty’d;
No Link more strong in all that Chain of Gold,
Then Amasai, the Constant, and the Bold.
That Warlike General whose avenging Sword,
Through all the Battles of his Royal Lord,
Pour’d all the Fires that Loyal Zeal could light,
No brighter Star in the lost Davids night.

No less with Laurels Ashurs Brows adorn,
That mangled Brave who with Tyres Thunder torn,
Brought a dismember’d Load of Honour home,
And lives to make both th’Earth and Seas his Tomb.

With Reverence the Religious Helon treat,
Refin’d from all the looseness of the Great.

A Son so high in Sanedrims renown’d,
In Israels Intrest strong, in Sense profound.

In the same list young Adriels praise record,
Adriel the Academick Neighbour Lord;
Adriel ennobled by a Grandfather,
And Unkle, both those Glorious Sons of War:
Both Generals, and both Exiles with their Lord;
Till with the Royal Wanderer restored,
They lived to see his Coronation Pride;
Then surfeiting on too much Transport dy’d.
O’re Adriels Head these Heroes Spirits shine,
His Soul with so much Loyal Blood fenc’d in;
Such Native Virtues his great Mind adorn,
Whilst under their congenial Influence born.

In this Record let Camries Name appear,
The Great Barzillai’s Fellow Sufferer;
From unknown Hands, of unknown Crimes accus’d,
Till th’hunted Shadow lost, his Chains unloos’d.

Now to the Sweet-tongu’d Amrams praise be just,
Once the State-Advocate, that Wealthy Trust,
Till Flattery the price of dear-bought Gold,
His Innocence for Pallaces unfold,
To Naked Truths more shining Beauties true,
Th’Embroiderd Mantle from his Neck he threw.

Next Hothriel write, Baals watchful Foe, and late
Jerusalems protecting Magistrate;
Who, when false Jurors were to Frenzy Charm’d,
And against Innocence even Tribunals arm’d,
Saw deprav’d Justice ope her Ravenous Jaw,
And timely broke her Canine Teeth of Law.

Amongst th’Asserters of his Countries Cause,
Give the bold Micah his deserv’d Applause,
The Grateful Sanedrims repeated Choice,
Of Two Great Councels the Successive Voice.
Of that old hardy Tribe of Israel borne,
Fear their Disdain, and Flattery their Scorne,
Too proud to truckle, and too Tough to bend.

Of the same Tribe was Hanan, Ithreams Friend,
From that fam’d Sire, the Long Robes Glory, sprung,
In Sanedrims his Countries Pillar long;

Till subtley made by Spightful Honour Great,
Prefer’d to Israels Chief Tribunal Seat,
Made in a higher Orb his Beams dispense,
To hush his Formidable Eloquence.

But Israels numerous Worthies are too long
And Great a Theam for one continued Song.
Yet These by bold flagitious Tongues run down,
Made all Conspirers against Davids Crown.

Nay, and there was a Time, had Hell prevail’d,
Nor Perjury and Subornation fail’d,
When a long List of Names, for Treason doom’d,
Had Israels Patriots in one Grave entomb’d:
A List, with such fair Loyal Colours laid,
Even to no less than Royal Hands convey’d.
And the great Mover in this pious Fraud,
A Dungeon Slave redeem’d by’a Midnight Bawd:
Then made by Art a Swearer of Renown,
Nurst and embrac’d by th’Heir of Judahs Crown:
Encourag’d too by Pension for Reward,
With his forg’d Scrowls for Guiltless Blood prepared.

Yet This, and all Things else now quite blown o’re,
And Absolom, his Israels Fear no more:
Luster and Pride shall hem his radiant Brow;
All Knees shall fall, and prostrate Nations bow.
By Heav’ns, he is, he will, he must, he shall
Be Israels Heroe, Friend, Saint, Idol, all.
What though provok’d with all the crying sins
Of Murmuring Slaves, excluding Sanedrins:
By profane Crowds in dirt his Prophets spurn’d,
And ev’n his Gods in mock Processions burn’d:
Himself from Israel into Hebron sent,
And doom’d to little less than Banishment.

Though of a Faith that propagates in Blood;
Of Passions unforgiving, less withstood

Then let out dull Mistaken Terrour cease,
When even our Comets speak all Health and Peace.

FINIS.

ERRATA.

The Reader is desired to Correct these following Mistakes. Page 1. line 12. for Hold, read Held. p. 4. l. 22. r. Ships; ibid. l. 26. for Kindl’d r. Bank’d; ibid. l. 32. r. the Mighty; ibid. l. 37 for they r. thus; p. 7. l. 18. for poor, r. weak; p. 9. l. 3. & 4. for his r. a; l. 6. for the, r. ye; ibid. l. 20. r. Walls; the Billows pour; p. 12. l. 11. r. lov’d Israel; p. 19. l. 27. for loo r. race p. 22. l. 10. r. Excluding.

TO THE

READER.

If ever anything, call’d a Poem, deserv’d a severe Reflection, that of Absalom and Achitophel may justly contract it. For tho’ Lines can never be purg’d from the dross and filth they would throw on others (there being no retraction that can expiate the conveying of persons to an unjust and publick reproach); yet the cleansing of their fames from a design’d pollution, may well become a more ingenious Pen than the Author of these few reflections will presume to challenge.

To epitomize which scandalous Phamphlet (unworthy the denomination of Poesy) no eye can inspect it without a prodigious amazement; the abuses being so gross and deliberate, that it seems rather a Capital or National Libel, than personal exposures, in order to an infamous detraction. For how does he character the King, but as a broad figure of scandalous inclinations, or contriv’d unto such irregularities, as renders him rather the property of Parasites and Vice, than suitable to the accomplishment of so excellent a Prince? Nay, he forces on King David such a Royal resemblance, that he darkens 56 his sanctity in spite of illuminations from Holy Writ.

Next (to take as near our King as he could) he calumniates the Duke of Monmouth with that height of impudence, that his Sense is far blacker than his Ink, exposing him to all the censures that a Murderer, a Traytor, or what a Subject of most ambitious evil can possibly comprehend: and it is some wonder, that his Lines also had not hang’d him on a Tree, to make the intended Absalom more compleat.

As to my Lord Shaftsbury (in his collusive Achitophel), what does he other than exceed Malice it self? or that the more prudent deserts of that Peer were to be so impeach’d before hand by his impious Poem, as that he might be granted more emphatically condign of the Hangman’s Ax; And which his Muse does in effect take upon her to hasten.

And if the season be well observ’d, when this Adulterate Poem was spread, it will be found purposely divulg’d near the time when this Lord, with his other Noble Partner, were to be brought to their Tryals. And I suppose this Poet thought himself enough assur’d of their condemnation; at least, that his Genius had not otherwise ventur’d to have trampled on persons of such eminent Abilities, and Interest in the Nation. A consideration, I confess, incited my Pen (its preceding respect being paid to the Duke of Monmouth) to vindicate their Reputations where I thought it due.

57 And some are not a little mistaken in their judgments of persons, if any Kingdom has at this time Two men of their Dignity, of more extraordinary Understandings: Which may (if well consider’d) be some inducement to their future preservation and esteem. As I have endeavour’d chiefly to clear their abuse, so I have pass’d divers considerable persons, under as malign inclinations of this Author’s; conceiving, that what I have said for the Principals, may remove such smaller prejudices as are on the value of others on the same concern.

His most select and pecuniary Favourites, I have but barely touch’d, in respect his praise includes a concomitant reprehension, if well apprehended. Besides, I was unwilling to discourage any, that for the future may desire to be admir’d by him according to their liberality. A method, that perhaps may in time set up some Merchants of Parnassus, where the Indies of Fame seem lately discover’d, and may be purchas’d per Centum, according to modern example.

As to the Character of Amiel, I confess my Lines are something pointed, the one reason being, that it alludes much to a manner of expression of this Writer’s, as may be seen by the marginal Notes; and a second will be soon allowed. The figure of Amiel has been so squeez’d into Paint, that his soul is seen in spite of the Varnish.

And none will deny, but it is as easie to send Truth backward, as it is to spur Falsities egregiously forward, and might have caus’d any Asse, as knowing as Balaam’s, to have rebuk’d such a Poet as will needs 58 prophecy against the sense of Heaven and Men. But I have enough of this Amiell, as well as of his Muse, unless that by his means it occasions a further account. And for what is mine here, It will at worst contract censure, in respect it is a brief reflection on a very large Libel. And tho’ I believe it did not cost (tho’ that be not offer’d for an excuse) the tenth part of the time of the other. As to my Preface, I was willing that he should find, that this smaller work has some Nose.—Tho’ I am no more bound to have my Face known by it, than he is willing to obscure his by a Nameless Preamble.

Poetical Reflections

ON A LATE

POEM

CALLED,

Absalom and Achitophel.

When late Protectorship was Canon-Proof,
And Cap-a-pe had seiz’d on Whitehall-Roof,
And next, on Israelites durst look so big,
That Tory-like, it lov’d not much the Whigg:
A Poet there starts up, of wondrous Fame;
Whether Scribe or Pharisee, his Race doth name,
Or more t’intrigue the Metaphor of Man,
A Committee-Man. Got on a Muse by Father-Publican:
For ’tis not harder much, if we tax Nature,
That Lines should give a Poet such a Feature;
Sir Denzill Hollis seeks annum mirabilis. Than that his Verse a Hero should us show,
Produc’d by such a Feat, as famous too.
His Mingle such, what Man presumes to think,
But he can Figures daub with Pen and Ink.
A Grace our mighty Nimrod late beheld,
60 (2) When he within the Royal Palace dwell’d,
And saw ’twas of import if Lines could bring
See his Poem on Cromwel. His Greatness from Usurper, to be King:
Or varnish so his Praise, that little odds
Should seem ’twixt him, and such called Earthly Gods.
And tho no Wit can Royal Blood infuse,
No more than melt a Mother to a Muse:
Yet much a certain Poet undertook,
That Men and Manners deals in without-Book.
And might not more to Gospel-Truth belong,
Than he (if Christened) does by name of John.
This Poet, who that time much squanderd thought,
Of which some might bring Coyn, whilst some none brought,
As Men that hold their Brains of powerful sense,
Will least on Poet’s Tales bestow their pence,
Tho he such Dispensations to endear,
Had notch’d his Sconce just level with his Ear.
An Emblem in these days of much import,
When Crop-ear’d Wits had such a Modish Court.
Tho some from after-deeds much fear the Fate,
That such a Muse may for its Lugs create.
As Stars may without Pillories dispence,
To slit some Ears for Forgeries of sense,
Which Princes, Nobles, and the Fame of Men,
Sought to bespatter by a worthless Pen.
But leaving this to Circumstances fit,
With what thence spreads this Renegado-wit.

61 (3) To heigten which we’ll to his Muse advance,
Which late discover’d its Judaick Trance:
Where Absalon’s in English Colours di’d,
That in a Duke, a Traitor might be spi’d.
Or Heaven on him did Graces so bestow,
As only could confer their Pageant Show;
Giving his Glories no more fast Renown,
Than with more Honour to be taken down:
Like Victimes by some Sacrificers drest,
Must fall adorn’d, which then they pity least.
But fear not Monmouth, if a Libel’s quill,
Would dregs of Venom on thy Vertue spill;
Since no desert so smoothly is convey’d,
As next it’s Fame, no canker’d Patch is laid;
Thou didst no Honour seek, but what’s thy due,
And such Heaven bids thee not relinquish too.
Whilst it’s Impressions so oblig’d thy Task,
As leave from Earth thy Soul declin’d to ask.
If this thy Error were, what Influ’nce can
Excuse the Duty of more wilfull Man;
With such whose Figures shew that squinting Paint,
Whence peeps a Mungril Babylonish Saint.
Thy Soul’s Religion’s Prop, and Native Grace,
Rome, (fears its onsets) looking on the place;
What Altitude can more exalt thy Praise,
Tho best Devotion should thy Trophies raise,
And ’tis perhaps from thy Diviner Bliss,
That some may fear their Souls are seen amiss.
As what so high does Emulation mount,
As Greatness when surpass’d on Heaven’s Account;
62 (4) And if th’ Ambition would in this excel,
’Twas but to be more great in doing well;
And must rebate the worst that Fates intend,
Whilst Heaven and England is at once thy Friend.
This just Encomium, tho too brief it be
To represent thy least Epitome;
And but unto thy larger Figure joyn’d,
As small proportions are from great design’d;
Tho where a line one worth of thine can speak,
It does alone, a Poem’s Greatness make;
Leaving this Hero to his spotless Fame,
(As who besides this Wretch will it blaspheme)
Or in a Libels Allegorick Way,
Men falsely figur’d, to the world convey,
Libels the enormous Forgery of sense,
Stamp’d on the brow of human Impudence;
The blackest wound of Merit, and the Dart,
That secret Envy points against Desert.
The lust of Hatred pander’d to the Eye
T’allure the World’s debauching by a Lie.
Th’rancrous Favourite’s masquerading Guilt,
Imbitt’ring venom where he’d have it spilt.
The Courts depression in a fulsom Praise;
A Test it’s Ignoramus worst conveys,
A lump of Falshood’s Malice does disperse,
Or Toad when crawling on the Feet of Verse.
Fame’s impious Hireling and mean Reward,
The Knave that in his Lines turns up his Card,
Who, tho no Rabby, thought in Hebrew wit,
He forc’d Allusions can closly fit.
63 (5) D To Jews or English, much unknown before,
He made a Talmud on his Muses score;
Though hop’d few Criticks will its Genius carp,
So purely Metaphors King David’s Harp,
And by a soft Encomium, near at hand,
Shews Bathsheba Embrac’d throughout the Land.
But this Judaick Paraphrastick Sport
We’ll leave unto the ridling Smile of Court.
Good Heav’n! What timeful Pains can Rhymers take,
When they’d for Crowds of Men much Pen-plot make?
Which long-Beak’d Tales and filch’d Allusions brings,
As much like Truth, as ’tis the Woodcock sings.
What else could move this Poet to purloin
So many Jews, to please the English Swine?
Or was it that his Brains might next dispense
To adapt himself a Royal Evidence?
Or that he’d find for Dugdale’s Wash some Spell,
In stead of once more dipp’d in Winifred’s Well;
And ope his Budget, like Pandora’s Box,
Whence Overt-acts more Protestants should Pox,
Which might the Joyner’s Ghost provoke to rise,
And fright such Tales with other Popish Lies?
But Starr’s or Ignoramus’s may not give
Those Swearers longer swinge by Oaths to live.
A Providence much English Good protects,
And sends Testees to Trade for new Effects;
Which none of the Long-Robe, ’tis hop’d, can aid,
So well by Oaths the Devil’s already paid;
64 (6) And most suppose, if e’re both Plots can die,
Or eat up one anothers Perjury,
’Twou’d Pluto strangely pose to find a Third,
Sould he in his a Popish Legion Lard.
A Policy some Poems much embrace,
As is discern’d in Shaftsbury’s Great Case;
Where Verse so vile an Obloquy betray,
As for a Statist-Jew they’d him convey.
Tho hard it is to understand what Spell
Can conjure up in him Achitophel,
Or tax this Peer with an Abused Sense
Of his so deep and apt Intelligence:
A Promptitude by which the Nation’s shown
To be in Thought concurrent with his own.
Shaftsbury! A Soul that Nature did impart
To raise her Wonder in a Brain and Heart;
Or that in him produc’d, the World might know,
She others did with drooping Thought bestow.
As in Mans most perspicuous Soul, we find
The nearest Draught of her Internal Mind,
Tho it appears her highest Act of State,
When Human Conducts she does most compleat,
And place them so, for Mankinds good, that they
Are fit to Guide, where others miss their Way;
It being in Worldly Politiques less Great
To be a Law-maker, than Preserve a State.
In Publick Dangers Laws are unsecure,
As strongest Anchors can’t all Winds endure;
Though ’tis in Exigents the wisest Ease
To know who best can ply when Storms encrease;
Whilst other Prospects, by mistaking Fate,
Through wrong Preventions, more its Bad dilate.
65 (7) Whence some their Counter-Politicks extend,
To ruine such can Evils best amend.
A Thwarting Genius, which our Nation more
Than all its head-strong Evils does deplore;
And shews what violent Movements such inform,
That where a Calm should be, they force a Storm;
As if their Safety chiefly they must prize
In being rid of Men esteem’d more Wise.
To this Great, Little Man, we’ll T’other joyn,
Held Sufferers by one Tripartite Design.
As from a Cubick Power, or Three-fold Might,
Roots much expand, as Authors prove aright;
But of such Managements we’ll little say,
Or shamm’d Intrigues, for Fame left to convey;
Which may by peeping through a Gown-mans Sleeve,
Tell such grave Tales, Men cannot well believe:
With what for Plots and Trials has been done,
As Whores depos’d, before away they run;
All which was well discern’d by numerous Sense,
Before the Doctors py’d Intelligence,
Who, with some Motley Lawyers, took much care
To gain the Caput of this Knowing Peer;
When after so much Noise, and nothing prov’d,
Heaven thank’d, to Freedom he’s at last remov’d,
Leaving a Low-Bridge Cerberus to try
In what Clerks Pate his monstrous Fee does lie;
Or by the help of Tory-Roger tell
How Sacred Gain-Prerogativ’d should spell.
But these are Thoughts may fit some Pensive Skulls,
Or Men concern’d to bait their several Bulls;
66 (8) Whilst on this Peer we must some Lines bestow,
Tho more he merits than best Verse can show:
Great in his Name, but greater in his Parts,
Judgment sublim’d, with all its strong Deserts;
A Sense above Occasions quick surprize,
That he no Study needs to make him Wise,
Or labour’d Thoughts, that trains of Sinews knit,
His Judgment always twin’d unto his Wit;
That from his clear Discussions Men may know
He does to wonder other Brains out-do.
Whilst they for Notions search they can’t compact,
His Genius fitly stands prepar’d to act.
Admir’d of Man, that in thy Sense alone
So ready dost exalt high Reason’s Throne;
That Men abate Resentments to expect
Thou mayst rise Greater, having past Neglect.
A Sacred Method Kings receive from Heaven,
That still does Cherish, when it has Forgiven;
Which from our Princes Soul so largely flows,
That Mercy’s Channel with his Greatness goes.
No Arbitrary Whispers him can guide
To swell his Rule beyond its genuine Tide:
Whilst other Kings their rugged Scepters see
Eclips’d in his more soft Felicity;
Whose Goodness can all Stress of State remove,
So fitly own’d the Subjects Fear and Love.

Did not this Poet’s Lines upon me call
For some Reflexions on a Lower Fall;
67 (9) E Where he by Rhyming, a Judaick Sham,
Obtrudes for Israelites some Seeds of Cham.
And this Inspexion needs no further go
Than where his Pen does most Indulgent show:
And ’tis no wonder if his Types of Sense
Should stroke such Figures as give down their Pence;
A Crime for which some Poets Lines so stretch,
As on themselves they Metaphor Jack Ketch.
Tho small the Varnish is to Humane Name,
Where Cogging Measures rob the truth of Fame.
And more to do his skew’d Encomiums right,
Some Persons speak by him their motly Sight:
Or much like Hudibras, on Wits pretence,
Some Lines for Rhyme, and some to gingle Sense.
Who else would Adriel, Jotham, Hushai, fit,
With loathed Amiell, for a Court of Wit?
For, as Men Squares of Circles hardly find,
Some think these Measures are as odly joyn’d.
What else could Adriell’s sharpness more abuse,
Than headlong dubb’d, to own himself a Muse,
Unless to spread Poetick Honours so
As should a Muse give each St. George’s Show?
A Mode of Glory might Parnassus fit,
Tho our Sage Prince knows few he’d Knight for Wit.
And thus this Freak is left upon the File,
Or as ’tis written in this Poet’s Stile.
Next, as in Course, to Jotham we’ll descend,
Thoughtful it seems which Side he’ll next befriend,
As thinking Brains can caper to and fro,
Before they jump into the Box they’d go.
68 (10) And ’tis a moody Age, as many guess,
When some with busie Fears still forward press;
As ’tis Ambitions oft-deluding Cheat
To tempt Mens aims, secureless of defeat.
Hushai the Compass of th’Exchequer guides,
Propense enough unto the North besides:
As what can steady Stations more allure,
Than such, a Princely Bed does first secure?
Whose Part none are so ignorant to ask,
And does no less employ his Ends and Task.
But quitting these, we must for Prospect pass
To gaping Amiell, as reflects our Glass.
* See his, p. 27. The Him indeed of his own *Western Dome,
So near his praiseful Poet Sense may come:
* See his, p. 28. For *Amiell, Amiell, who cannot endite
Of his Thin Value won’t disdain to write?
The very Him with Gown and Mace did rule
The Sanedrim, when guided by a Fool.
The Him that did both Sense and Reason shift,
That he to gainful Place himself might lift.
The very Him that did adjust the Seed
Of such as did their Votes for Money breed.
The Mighty Him that frothy Notions vents,
In hope to turn them into Presidents.
The Him of Hims, although in Judgment small,
That fain would be the biggest at Whitehall.
The He that does for Justice Coin postpone,
As on Account may be hereafter shown.
If this plain English be, ’tis far from Trick,
Though some Lines gall, where others fawning lick;
Which fits thy Poet, Amiell, for thy Smiles,
If once more paid to blaze thy hated Toils.
69 (11) Of Things and Persons might be added more,
Without Intelligence from Forreign Shore,
Or what Designs Ambassadors contrive,
Or how the Faithless French their Compass guide:
But Lines the busie World too much supply,
Besides th’Effects of evil Poetry,
Which much to Tory-Writers some ascribe,
Though hop’d no Furies of the Whiggish Tribe
Will on their Backs such Lines or Shapes convey,
To burn with Pope, on Great November’s Day.

FINIS.

TO THE

READER.

I Shall not go about, either to excuse, or justifie the Publishing of this Poem; for that would be much more an harder Task than the Writing of it: But however, I shall say, in the words of the Author of the incomparable Absalom and Achitophel, That I am sure the Design is honest. If Wit and Fool be the Consequence of Whig and Tory, no doubt, but Knave and Ass may be Epithets plentifully bestowed upon me by the one party, whilst the other may grant me more favourable ones, than perhaps I do deserve. But as very few are Judges of Wit, so I think, much fewer of honesty; since Interest and Faction on either side, prejudices and blinds the Judgment; and the violence of Passion makes neither discernible in an Adversary. I know not whether my Poem has a Genius to force its way against prejudice: Opinion sways much in the World, and he that has once gained it writes securely. I speak not this any ways to lessen the merits of an Author, whose Wit has deservedly gained the Bays; but in this I have the advantage, since, as I desire not Glory or vain applause, I can securely wrap my self in my own Cloud, and remain unknown, whilest he is exposed through his great Lustre. I shall never envy what I desire not, nor am I altogether so doting, as to believe the Issues of my own Brain to exceed all others, and to be so very fond of them, (as most Authors, especially Poets, are) as to think them without fault, or be so blinded as not to see their blemishes, and that they are excelled by others; yet since Poems are like Children, it may be allowed me to be naturally inclined to have some good Opinion of my own, and not to believe this Poem altogether despicable or ridiculous. The Ancients say, that every thing hath two handles, I have laid hold of that opposite to the Author of Absalom: As to Truth, who has the better hold, let the World judge; and it is no new thing, for the same Persons, to be ill or well 74 represented, by several parties. I hope then, I may be excused as well as another, since I have told my Dreams with the same Liberty, for the fancies of Poets are no more than waking Dreams, and never imposed as dogmatical precepts, which are more agreeable to truth or falshood, or according to the Poets Language, which proceed from the Horny or Ivory Port, will be sentenced according to the Humour and Interest of several Parties who in spite of our Teeth will be our judges. Where I have been satyrical, ’tis without Malice or Revenge; and though I brag not of my Talent therein, I could have said much worse, of some Enemies to our Jewish Heroe. He that will lash others, ought not to be angry if the like be returned to himself: Lex talionis is a general and natural Law. I call not this an Answer to Absalom, I have nothing to do with him, he was a Rebel to his Father; my Azaria a good Son, influenced by a worthy and Loyal Counsellor, and Achitophel and Hushai were men of contrary Opinions, and different Principles: And if Poets (as it is often brought for their excuse, when they vary from known History) ought to represent Persons as they ought to be, I have not transcurred the Precepts of Poetry, and Absalom is not so good a Poem, because his Character is not so agreeable to the virtue of an Heroe, as this of Azaria is: But certainly when Poetry and Truth are joyned together, and that the persons are truly what they are represented, and liv’d their Character, the glory is double, both to the Heroe and the Poet: And I could wish, that the same Hand, that drew the Rebellious Son, with so much Ingenuity and Skill, would out do mine, in shewing the virtues of an obedient Son and loyal Counsellor, since he may have as much Truth for a Foundation to build upon, the Artful Structure of the Heroes Glory, with his own Fame and Immortality.

AZARIA

AND

HUSHAI,

A POEM.

In Impious Times, when Priest-craft was at height,
And all the Deadly Sins esteemed light;
When that Religion only was a Stale,
And some bow’d down to God, and some to Baal;
When Perjury was scarce esteem’d a Sin,
And Vice, like flowing Tides, came rowling in;
When Luxury, Debauch, and Concubine,
The sad Effects of Women and of Wine,
Rag’d in Judea and Jerusalem,
Good Amazia of great David’s Stem,
God-like and great in Peace did rule that Land,
And all the Jews stoop’d to his just Command.
Long now in Sion had he Peace enjoy’d,
After that Civil Broils the Land destroy’d:
Plenty and Peace attended on his Reign,
And Solomon’s Golden days return’d again;
When the Old Canaanites, who there did lurk,
Began to find both God and King new Work:
For Amazia, tho’ he God did love,
Had not cast out Baal’s Priests, and cut down every Grove.
Too oft Religion’s made pretence for Sin,
About it in all Ages Strife has been;
76 [2] But Int’rest, which at bottom doth remain,
Which still converts all Godliness to Gain,
What e’er Pretence is made, is the true Cause,
That moves the Priest, and like the Load-stone draws.
The Canaanites of Old that Land possess’d,
And long therein Idolatry profess’d;
Till Sins of Priests, and of the Common Rout,
Caus’d God and his good Kings to cast them out.
Their Idols were pull’d down, their Groves destroy’d,
Strict Laws against them, and their Worship made.
The Heathen Priests were banish’d from the Land
Of Baal, no Temple suffer’d was to stand;
And all Succeeding Kings made it their Care,
They should no more rear up their Altars there.
If some mild Kings did wink at their Abode,
They to the Jews still prov’d a Pricking-goad:
Growing more bold, they penal Laws defy’d,
And like tormenting Thorns, stuck in their Side.
The busy Priests had lost their gainful Trade,
Revenge and Malice do then Hearts invade;
And since by Force they can’t themselves restore,
Nor gain the Sway they in Judea bore,
With Hell they Joyn their secret Plots to bring
Destruction to Judea and its King.

The Chemerarims, the learnedst Priests, of all
The numerous Swarms which did belong to Baal,
Bred up in subtil Arts, to Jews well known,
And fear’d for Bloody Morals of their own;
Who in the Cause of Baal no one would spare,
But for his sake on all Mankind make War,
Counting it lawful Sacred Kings to smite,
Who favor’d not their God, or was no Baalite,
These were the Idol’s known, and great Support,
Who in Disguise creep into every Court,
Where they soon Faction raise, and by their Arts,
Insinuate into the Princes Hearts:
Wriggle themselves into Intreagues of State,
Sweet Peace destroy, and Bloody Wars create.
77 [3] B2 Unwearied still, they deep Designs pursue;
What can’t a Chemarim, and Belzeebub do?
For cunning Plot, Trepan, for Oaths and Sham,
The Devil must give place to Chemarim.
These subtil Priests, in Habit black and grave;
Each man a Saint in shew, in Heart a Knave,
Did in Judea swarm, grew great withall,
And like th’ Egyptian Frogs to Court they crawl:
Where, like them too, they never are at rest;
But Bed and Board of Kings, with Filth infest.
To every Shape they could themselves transform,
Angels could seem, but still their Aim was Harm.
They all the Sects among the Jews could ape,
And went about disguiss’d in every Shape.
One imitates the Zealous Pharisee,
The Essens this, the dammee Sadduce he;
And such their ready, and their subtil Wit,
For every Trade, and every Science fit:
They Credit got, and stole into the Heart,
And from their God, did many Souls pervert,
Who seeming Jews, or what they were before,
In Secret did the Idol Baal adore;
Whole false Religion was but loose, and few
Could bear the Righteous Strictness of the true.

Thus these Disciples of the hellish Brood,
Disguis’d, among the Jews, themselves intrude,
And with the purer Wheat, their Tares they sow,
Saw their bad Crop near to an Harvest grow,
And hop’d that they again should rule the State:
For e’er the days of good Jehosaphat,
Through all the Land Baal’s Worship was allow’d,
And King and People to gross Idols bow’d.
The Priests, like Bloody Tyrants did command;
They and their Gods, did wholly rule the Land;
And every one who would not bow to Baal,
Fled thence, or else by Fire, or Sword did fall:
But that good King a Reformation made,
Their Idols, and their Groves he quite destroy’d;
In every place their Altars overthrew,
78 [4] And Chemarims he banished or slew.
Since when (except in Athaliah’s Reign,
Who for a space, set Idols up again,
Tormenting those to Death who would not turn,
And did the Jewish Rabbins slay or burn)
These crafty Priests, by Plots did never cease,
To spoil the Beauty of Judea’s Peace.
Whilst Joash reign’d, by sly and subtil Arts,
They first estrang’d from him his Peoples Hearts.
Saw Faction’s Sparks, and unseen blew the Fire,
Till Rebells ’gainst that good King did conspire:
Then Cursed Zabed of proud Ammon’s Line,
And Moabitish Jehozabad joyn,
And to their Side some Pharisees they drew,
(Joash did to their Sect no Favor shew)
And th’ Essens, who then daily numerous grew,
Rebell, and their good King, like Murtherers, slew.
Then Amazia over Jordan fled,
Till God had struck the Tyrant Zabed dead;
When all his Subjects, who his Fate did moan,
With joyful Hearts, restor’d him to his Throne;
Who then his Father’s Murtherers destroy’d,
And a long, happy, peaceful Reign enjoy’d.
Belov’d of all, for merciful was He,
Like God, in the Superlative Degree.
The Jewish Sects he did not seek to quell,
Yet Laws he made they might no more rebell:
Wisely about them made of Laws a Fence,
Yet kind, would not oppress their Conscience.
The Pharisee, a very numerous Sect,
Above the rest were in their Worship strict:
In their own Synagogues he let them pray,
And worship God after their stricter way.
In Peace all liv’d, and former strife forgot,
The Chemarims and Hell had hatch’d a Plot:
A Plot form’d in the deep Abyss below,
Law and Religion both to overthrow.
The King was by their Bloody Swords to fall,
That all Judea might submit to Baal.
79 [5] Great were their Hopes, and deep was their Design.
The Train already laid to spring their Mine;
Not dreaming Heav’n could their Plots betray,
They only waited an auspicious day.
Nor fail’d their Plot for want of Common Sence,
As some endeavor’d to persuade the Prince:
For with much Art, great Industry and Care,
They all things for their black Design prepare.
Not hatch’d by Common Brains, or men of Earth,
Nor was’t the Issue of a suddain Birth;
But long designing, and well laid it seems,
By Baal’s Arch-priests, and subtil Chemarins.
The Canaanites dispersed through the Land,
O’er whom Baal’s Priests had absolute Command,
Were bound with Oaths, the Priests Religious Charms,
To Secresie, and furnished with Arms.
Heads they had got, as well as Hands to fight,
Some zealous Princes of the Canaanites,
Who ready were to guide the Common Rout,
So soon as their Conspiracy broke out.

Thus on a firm Foundation they had wrought
Their great Design, well built to Humane thought:
Tho’ nothing that weak Mortals e’er design’d,
But Folly seems to the Eternal Mind,
Who blasting man’s vain Projects, lets him know,
He sits above, sees and rules all below.
This wicked Plot, the Nations Bain and Curse,
So bad no man can represent it worse:
Want only Amazia to destroy,
But that they might the Rites of Baal enjoy:
For the good Amazia being gone,
They had design’d a Baalite for the Throne.
Of all their Hopes and Plots, here lay the Store:
For what Encouragement could they have more,
When they beheld the King’s own Brother fall,
From his Religion, and to worship Baal?
80 [6] The Priest well knew what Pow’r, and what Controul
He had usurp’d o’re ev’ry Baalite’s Soul,
That such a Prince must their God’s Cause pursue,
And do whatever they would have him do;
Else from his Throne he should be curs’d and damn’d:
For Baal’s High-Priest, a Right t’ all Crowns had claim’d.
An Article ’tis of a Baalite’s Faith,
That o’re Crown’d Heads a Sovereignty he hath.

Thus on a sure Foundation, as they thought,
They had their Structure to Perfection wrought

A Levite, who had Baalite turn’d, and bin
One of the Order of the Chemarim,
Who in the Plot had deeply been concern’d,
And all their horrid Practices had learn’d;
Smote in his Conscience with a true Remorse,
From King and Land diverts the threat’ning Curse.
Libni, I think they call’d the Levite’s Name,
Which in Judea still will be of Fame;
Since following Heaven’s Impulse and high Command,
He prov’d a Glorious Saviour of the Land.
By him the deep Conspiracy’s o’rethrown,
The Treason, and the Traytors all made known:
For which from Baalites he had Curses store;
But by the Jews loaded with Blessings more.
The Hellish Plotters were then seiz’d upon,
And into Goals and Iron Fetters thrown;
From whence to Lawful Tryals they were born,
Condemn’d for Traytors, and hang’d up with Scorn:
Yet Chemarims with matchless Impudence,
With dying Breath avow’d their Innocence:
So careful of their Order they still were,
Lest Treason in them Scandal should appear,
That Treason they with Perjury pursue,
Having their Arch-priest’s Licence so to do.
They fear’d not to go perjur’d to the Grave,
Believing their Arch-priest their Souls could save:
81 [7] For all God’s Power they do on him bestow,
And call him their Almighty God below.
To whom they say three powerful Keys are given,
Of Hell, of Purgatory, and of Heav’n.
No wonder then if Baalites this believe,
They should, with their false Oaths try to deceive,
And gull the People with their Dying Breath,
Denying all their Treason at their Death.
This made Impression on some easie Minds,
Whom or good Nature, or false Pity blinds;
Mov’d their Compassion, and stirr’d up their Grief,
And of their dying Oaths caus’d a Belief.
This did effect what the curs’d Traytors sought,
The Plots Belief into Discredit brought,
Of it at first, some Doubts they only rais’d,
And with their Impudence the World amaz’d:
Tho’ Azyad’s Murder did the Jews convince,
Who was a man most Loyal to his Prince,
And by the Bloody Chemarims did fall,
Because he seiz’d the Trayt’rous Priests of Baal:
Tho’ Gedaliah’s Letters made all plain,
Who was their Scribe, and of a ready Brain:
A Levite’s Son, but turn’d a Baalite,
Who for the King’s own Brother then did write,
And Correspondence kept i’th’ Egyptian Court,
To whom the Traytors for Advice resort;
Who like a zealous, trayt’rous Baalite dy’d,
And at the Fatal Tree the Plot deny’d.
Tho’ Amazia did at first believe,
And to the Hellish Plot did Credit give;
Tho’ the Great Council of the Sanhedrim,
Among the Jews always of great Esteem,
Declar’d to all the World this Plot to be,
An Hellish, and a curs’d Conspiracy,
To kill the King, Religion to o’rethrow,
And cause the Jews their Righteous Laws forgoe;
To make the People to dumb Idols fall,
And in the place of God, to set up Baal:
Tho’ all the People saw it, and believ’d;
Tho’ Courts of Justice, hard to be deceiv’d,
82 [8] Had added to the rest their Evidence,
Yet with a strange unheard of Impudence,

They at the last, their sought for point had got,
And artfully in doubt had brought their Plot.
A thousand cunning Shams and Tricks they us’d,
Whereby the simple Vulgar were abus’d;
And some o’th’ Edomitish Evidence,
Who Mammon worship’d, were brought off with pence.

In Secret, and inglorious did remain,
And the Plot thought the Project of his Brain.

The Baalites thus encourag’d by Success,
Increase their Hopes, and their black Projects bless:
Like the bold Titans, Plot on Plot they lay,
And Heav’n it self with impious Arms essay.
A new Invention wrought in Hell below,
The Jews, and their Religion to o’erthrow;
They bring to light, with this their Hopes they raise,
And for dire Plots, think they deserve the Bays.
This Engine stronger than th’ old Roman Ram
For Battery, by a new name call’d Sham,
With well learn’d, and successful Arts they use
To overthrow the Syn’gogues of the Jews,
Their Worship and Religion to confound.
And lay their Glorious Temple on the Ground.
With this new Engine, they a Breach had made,
By which they hop’d the Loyal Jews t’ invade.
With Troops of Treasons, and Rebellious Plots,
Led on by Villains, perjur’d Rogues and Sots;
And with such Arms, in Hells black Work-house form’d,
The peaceful Jews they violently storm’d;
Who ’gainst the Ba’lites Plots had no defence,
But God, their Laws, and their own Innocence.

83 [9] C Among the Princes of the Jewish Race,
For Wisdom, Hushai had the Chiefest Place,
Prudent in Speech, and in his Actions close,
Admir’d by all, and feared by his Foes;
Well skill’d, and knowing in the Jewish Laws,
Able to plead, and to defend a Cause,
Of piercing Judgment, and of pregnant Wit,
Did once Chief Judge of all Judea sit;

Then he descended from the hight of Place,
Without a Blemish, and without Disgrace;
Yet inly griev’d; for he could well divine
The Issue of the Baalites curs’d Design,
To see Religion, and God’s Righteous Cause,
The Ancient Government, the Nation’s Laws,
Unpropping, and all ready strait to fall,
And the whole Race of Jews made Slaves to Baal:
With Zeal inspired, boldly up he ’rose,
To wrestle with the King’s, and Nation’s Foes;
And tho’ he was with Wealth and Honor blest,
He scorn’d to give his Age its needful Rest:
He learn’d, that man was not born for himself,
To get great Titles, Names, or sordid Pelf,
To wear a lazy Life, himself to please,
With Idleness, and with luxurious Ease:
When he beheld his Country in distress,
And none the Danger able to redress,
He did resolve, tho’ not affecting Fame,
Or to obtain a Patriot’s Glorious Name,
His Rest, his Life, his Fortune to expose,
Rather than see his Countrey’s dangerous Foes
Run on uncheck’d, till they had brought the Land,
To their, and to a Baalite King’s Command.
He could not therefore so himself forget,
To see the Barques of Government o’erset;
But with his Skill he help’d the Boat to trim,
And boldly did oppose Eliakim.
84 [10] Eliakim was Brother to the King,
From the same Loins, and Royal Seed did spring;

Sweet Azaria, like the beauteous Morn,
Whence all Sweets flow, did once that Court adorn,
A budding Rose, whose Beauty’s newly blown,
Or like a Cedar on Mount Lebanon:
He in his Father’s Grace, and Favor grew,
And towards him the People’s Eyes he drew.
He was by most belov’d, admir’d by all,
For’s Zeal to God, and’s Hatred unto Baal:
But ah! this mov’d the cursed Baalite’s Hate,
Disturb’d his Peace, and Troubles did create.
What can’t Design and Hellish Malice do?
With Lyes they close this Noble Prince pursue.
They think his Father too indulgent grown,
Whose Love had many Blessings on him thrown,
But what exceeded all the rest beside,
He chose the sweet Jerusha for his Bride:
A Blessing he esteemed far above
The Crown, and all things but his Father’s Love:
For that he still above his Life did prize,
Dear as his Fame, and dearer than his Eyes.
Below his Feet, for that he all things trod,
Adoreing nothing more except his God.
Young as he was, he had acquired Fame,
His Breast infired with a Warlike Flame,
In Foreign Wars, his Courage he had shown,
Had Lawrels won, and brought home fair Renown:
Happy, most happy, till with wondrous Art,
His Foes had wrought him from his Father’s Heart;
And so much Power on Amazia won,
He by Degrees, grew jealous of his Son.
And who for this can Amazia blame,
If that the King the Father overcame?
For Crowns by Kings esteemed are more near,
Than Children, or than Sons, belov’d more dear.
85 [11] C2 His Foes, Baal’s Friends, had laid their artful Snairs,
Hight’ned his Father’s Jealousies and Fears,
And made each innocent Action of the Prince,
To give his Jealous Father an Offence.
If with wise Hushai they the Prince did see,
They call’d their Meeting a Conspiracy,
And cry, that he was going to rebell:
Him Absalom they name, Hushai Achitophel.
With Slander thus the Prince they did pursue,
Aiming at’s Life, and the wise Hushai’s too.
When they much pleased, and triumphing saw,
The King his Royal Favors to withdraw,
Which like a Spring on him before did flow,
And from him, all on others to bestow:
Defenceless left, naked, almost forlorn,
Subject to every trifling Rhimers Scorn,
And beyond Jordan by their malice drove,
No Succor left him but the People’s Love;
(For he was still their Darling and Delight,
Because they saw he was no Baalite,)
Their Hopes now almost at their Height did seem,
To place the Crown upon Eliakim.

The Jews, God’s People and peculiar Care,
For their true Worship still most zealous were;
That Jewel seem’d most pretious in their Eyes,
And it above all Humane things they prize.
No Torments could make them their Faith deny,
They willingly for their Religion die:
Their Liberties were also dear to them,
Sprung from a free, and not a slavish Stem,
Th’ Egyptian Bondage for their Souls unfit,
They never in Judea would permit;
Their own known Laws, they willingly obey,
Hate Tyranny and Arbitrary Sway:
Nor did they many Priviledges want,
Kept from the Time they first the Land did plant;
For which to Death they lawfully would strive,
If injur’d by their King’s Prerogative:
86 [12] For some of them have try’d to break the Bound,
And did like Ethnick Kings, their People’s Freedom wound,
So Rehoboam caus’d them to rebell,
And lost at once ten Tribes of Israel.
No people were more ready to obey
Their Kings, who rul’d them by a gentle Sway,
Who never sought their Consciences to curb,
Their Freedom or Religion to disturb.
To such they always open-hearted were,
For them, they neither Coin, nor Blood would spare.
Such Kings might their Prerogatives improve,
And rule the Jews, ev’n as they pleas’d with Love;

Kings they had try’d of ev’ry sort and size.
Best govern’d by the Warlike and the wise.
Tho’ Kings they lov’d, and for them Reverence had,
They never would adore them as a God.
God’s Worship, and their Laws they did prefer,
They knew, them men might by bad Councils Err.
Tho’ Loyal, yet oppress’d, they did not fear
To make their heavy Grievances appear.
This was indeed the Humor of the Jew,
The People by Complaints their Griefs would shew;
And never would, in truth, contented seem,
Untill redress’d by their wise Sanhedrim.
Thus now the Jews, tho’ free from ill Design,
In their Religious Cause together joyn:
They cast their Eyes on Amazia’s Son,
Who, without Arts the People’s Love had won:
Full of tormenting Jealousies and Fears,
Eliakim a dangerous man appears:
The sober part of the whole Sanhedrim,
Desire to keep Judea’s Crown from him:
For they foresaw if he should wear the Crown,
Baal’s Worship he’d set up, and God’s cast down:
That all the Nations must be Slaves to Baal,
Suffer in Flames, fly, or ’fore Idolls fall.
87 [13]] Great were their Fears, but yet they did abhor
The very Thought of a dishonest War:
For they had seen the Kingdom’s many Scarrs,
Th’ unseemly Marks of former Civil Wars.
They Amazia lov’d and wish’d him well,
Resolve to suffer rather than rebell;
Yet openly declare free from all Stain,
How much they hate a Baalite should Reign;
And for this Cause, and for this Cause alone,
Eliakim they’d put by from the Throne.

Eliakim at Court had many Friends,
By whom in Secret he could work his Ends;
So that no Accusation could remove
Him, deeply rooted in his Brother’s Love.
But since the Jews to him shew’d open Hate,
Lest that his presence should embroil the State;
And that the Jews might have no cause to sin,
He’s sent to rule the Tribe of Benjamin.

Each side most zealous for the King appears,
Each full of Jealousies and disturbing Fears,
Each pleads for Amazia and the Laws,
God and Religion both do make their Cause:

Sweet Azaria with these Troubles mov’d,
On that side hated, and by this belov’d;
Fearing th’ inveterate Malice of his Foes,
Which he sought to avoid, not to oppose,

Lest he should grow i’th’ King’s Opinion worse,
He seeks for Council how to steer his Course,
That he might to the Court give no Offence,
But live wrapt up in his own fair Innocence,
88 [14] The wise and thoughtful Hushai he doth find,
And thus to him he breaks his troubled Mind,
Great Councellor, and Favorite of Heav’n,
To whom the Blessing of true Wisdom’s giv’n,
Which by no Mortal can possessed be,
Whose Thoughts are not inform’d by Loyalty.
I know Reproaches upon you are thrown;
But judge your Innocency by my own.
I am accused Sir, as well as you,
And the same Foe doth both our Lives pursue.
He fears your Wisdom, may his Hindrance prove,
And me, because I have the People’s Love:
His Creatures therefore throw on you and me,
The Scandal of a curs’d Conspiracy,
Against our King and Father to rebell:
Me Absalom, and you Achitophel
They name; bad Councellor, and worser Son,
Who Traytors, durst into Rebellion run.
My Father governs with so equal Sway,
That all both love him, and his Laws obey:
He seems Heav’n’s Care, who set him in the Throne,
Preserved by his wondrous Power alone.
Oh may on him no Blemish fall or stain,
But all live happy in his peaceful Reign:
May he be happy still as he is good,
Like God in Mercy, not inclin’d to Blood.

And tho’ my Foes have with their subtil Art
Banish’d me from my Royal Father’s Heart,
Which is the Source of all my Grief and Woe,
My just Obedience I will ne’er forgoe.
Nor has Disgrace, nor my hot Passions wrought,
Within my Breast one bad disloyal Thought.
I ne’er believ’d my Father would betray
His People, or sought Arbitrary Sway:
Or tho’ his People did his Wrath provoke,
He meant to curb them with an Iron Yoak.
89 [15] Yet do I think, nay more than think, the Cause
(But here his passion made some little pause,
Till sighing, at the last he thus went on)
Why my Great Father does disown his Son;
They say I am but of a spurious Brood,
My Mother being of Ignoble Blood:
For Jocoliah was but mean by Birth,
Tho’ with the King she mix’d her baser Earth.
I was begotten in my Father’s Flight,
E’er to the Crown he had obtain’d his Right:
And since I from his Favor did decline,
He has declar’d her but his Concubine.
This has the Hopes rais’d of Eliakim,
And Amaziah’s Crown design’d for him;
My Hopes are lost, and I do think it fit,
I should to God, Right, and the King submit;
But yet, wise Hushai know, I still do find,
My Birth has not so much debas’d my mind,
To make me stoop to low or mean desires;
I feel my Father’s Royal Blood inspires
My depress’d Soul, wipes off th’ ignoble Stain,
Renders me apt, or not unfit to reign.
Of David’s Royal Blood, my self I own,
And with it never can disgrace the Throne.
Tho’ my bold Spirits, mounting thus, do fly
Towards the Noble hight of Sovereignty,
And that I feel my Father’s Blood to rowl
Through every Vein and animate my Soul;
Yet so much Loyalty is sown within
My Breast, I would not Empire gain with Sin:
For when my ambitious Thoughts begin to roam,
Their Forces, I with that soon overcome.
Tho’ to God’s Laws, and to the King’s I yield,
To my known Foes I would not leave the Field.
I’d not be trampl’d on by sordid Feet,
Nor take Affronts from ev’ry one I meet:
I’d give no Cause they should my Courage doubt,
Nor to Rebellion push the vulgar Rout,
I to my Father would give no Offence,
Nor while he lives, lay to the Crown Pretence;
90 [16] But since Life’s sweet, by Wisdom I’d keep mine,
From Baalites Hate, and Eliakim’s Design:
This my wise Friend, is my chief Business now,
To take some Sage and good Advice from you.

Hushai in Silence heard the Prince, and weigh’d
Each word he spake, then to him thus reply’d;

We shall not search into Fates Secret Womb,
God alone knows the things that are to come;
But should you never sit on David’s Throne,
’Tis better to deserve than wear a Crown.
Of Royal Blood, and of great Birth you are,
Born under some benign auspicious Star,
Lov’d by the best, and prais’d by every Tongue,
The glorious Subject of each worthy Song:
The young man’s Wish, Joy of each Warlike Wight,
The People’s Darling, and the World’s Delight.

That I would cherish in you, that would raise
To an admired height, that I would chiefly praise.
Let Fools and subtil Politicians scorn
Fair Vertue, which doth best a Prince adorn:
Whilst you her bright and shining Robes put on,
You will appear more great than Solomon.
Let not Great Prince, the Fumes of Vulgar Praise,
Your bolder Spirits to Ambition raise.
We cannot see into the Mist of Fate,
Till time brings forth, you must expecting wait;
But Fortune, rather Providence, not Chance,
The constant, stout, and wise doth still advance.
Let your quick Eye be to her Motions ty’d;
But still let Noble Vertue be your Guide:
For when that God and Vertue points the way,
There can be then no danger to obey.
But here in Wisdom’s School we ought to learn,
How we ’twixt Good and Evil may discern,
91 [17] D For, noble Prince, you must true difference make,
Lest for the one the other you mistake.
You must not think you may your self advance,
By laying hold on every proffer’d chance.
Tho Fortune seems to smile, and egg you on,
Let Vertue be your Rule and Guide alone.
Thus David for his Guide his Vertue took;
Nor was by Fortune’s proffer’d Kindness shook.
His Vertue and his Loyalty did save
King Saul, when Fortune brought him to his Cave,
And if that I may to you Counsel give,
You should without a Crown for ever live,
Rather than get it by the Peoples Lust,
Or purchase it by ways that are unjust.
David your Ancestor, from whom you spring,
Would never by Rebellion be made King;
But long in Gath a Warring Exile stay’d,
Till for him God a lawful way had made.
In Hebron, full of Glory and Renown,
He gain’d, at last, and not usurpt the Crown.
By full Consent he did the same obtain,
And Heav’n’s anointing Oyl was not in vain.
I once did seem to Amazia dear,
Who me above m’ambitious hopes did rear;
I serv’d him then according to my skill,
And bow’d my Mind unto my Soveraign’s Will.
Too neer the Soveraign Image then I stood,
To think that every Line and Stroke was good.
Some Daubers I endeavour’d to remove,
And to amend their artless Errours strove.
My Skill in secret these with slander wound;
With every Line I drew still faults were found;

For this they think I must my Vertue change,
For Envy, Malice, and for sweet Revenge.
Me by themselves they judge, who would do so,
And cause the King suspect me for his Foe.
92 [18] But by th’advice I give, you best will find
Th’Integrity and Plainness of my Mind;
And that I harbour not that vile intent
Their Poets and their Malice do invent.
Far be’t from me, to be like Cursed Cham;
A good Son strives to hide his Father’s shame.
A King, the Father of his Country is;
His shame is every Act he doth amiss.
Good and just Kings God’s Image bear; but when
Their Frailties let us see they are but Men,
We cannot every Action so applaud,
As if it came from an unerring God.
Kings have their Passions, and deceiv’d may be,
When b’others Ears and Eyes they hear and see:
For Sycophants, of Courts the Bane and Curse,
Make all things better than they are, or worse.

Thus, noble Prince, they you and me accuse
With all the Venome Malice can infuse.
Baal’s Priests, Hell, and our Foes, new Arts have got,
The filthy Reliques of their former Plot;
Whereby they would our Lives in danger bring,
And make us cursed Traytors to the King.
What mayn’t these cunning men hope to atchieve,
When by their Arts few men their Plot believe?
When b’horrid ways, not known to Jews before,
Their Plot’s transform’d, and laid now at our door?
But fear not, Sir, we have a sure Defence,
The Peoples Love, God, Law, and Innocence.
Keep fast your Vertue, and you shall be blest,
And let alone to God and Time the rest.

The Noble Youth, with Vertues Robes arrai’d,
Consider’d well what the wise Hushai said.
Desire of Power, though of Celestial Birth,
Below, is ever intermixt with Earth:
And all who do to hight of Place aspire,
Have earthly Smoak mixt with their mounting Fire.
93 [19] D2 Praise may debauch, and strong Ambition blind,
Where heav’nly Vertue does not guard the Mind.
But Azaria so well understood,
He left the Evil, and embrac’d the Good:
Tho in his breast aspiring thoughts he found,
Yet Loyalty still kept them within bound.
And tho he might have Empire in his Eye,
When to it by his bloud allay’d so nigh,
Yet in his Soul such Virtue did remain,
He by Rebellion would not Empire gain.
Through every Vein his Loyal Bloud did run,
Yet Royal too, as Amazia’s Son.
About his noble Heart he felt it spring;
Which let him know his Father was a King.
If that to Azaria were a Blot,
His Father made it when he him begot:
But Heav’n such Virtue moulded with his Soul,
That his aspiring Lust it did controul.
Thus to wise Hushai he repli’d: I finde
Your Counsel is agreeing with my Minde.
And tho my Foes me an ill man do make,
My Loyalty I never will forsake:

Oh, would to Heav’n I ne’er had been begot!
Or never had been born a Royal Blot!

In Glory, Fame, Crowns, Empire, they delight,
And to all these they would assert my Right.
And my great Thoughts do whisper there is none
Can be more neer a Father, than his Son.
This prompts me to oppose Eliakim,
And never yield my Father’s Crown to him.
But then one groveling thought strait pulls me down,
And throws me at a distance from The Crown.
Oh, would to God———And here he stopt and sigh’d,
Whilst Hushai thus to the griev’d Prince repli’d.

94 Indeed, great Prince, it seemeth wondrous strange
To all the World, to see your Father’s change;
To find the happy Love he us’d to show’r,
Like fruitful Rain, on you, to fall no more:
To see a Son, the Father’s dear Delight,
His pleasing Joy, now banish’d from his sight.
Nature must in the Father deeply groan,
When from his Heart is rent so dear a Son.
Nor can I think, tho he from you should part,
A Brother e’er can lie so near his Heart.

Justice in Amazia bears such sway,
That even Nature must to it give way;
H’ad rather Nature force, and part with you,
Than seem to rob another of his due.
He holds it just, and as a thing divine,
To keep unbroken still the Royal Line.
Such an Example we can hardly find,
A King to’s Brother so exceeding kind;
When by it he doth such great hazard run,
Losing at once his People and his Son.

I should great folly shew, should I repine
At what I could not help, and was no fault of mine.
Tho by your Mothers side your Birth was mean,
And tho your Mother no declared Queen,
If Heaven and your Father please, you may
By lawful Right, Judea’s Scepter sway,
After that he is number’d with the Dead,
And his great Soul to Abraham’s Bosom fled.
Possession of a Crown clears every Stain;
No blot of Birth to you can then remain.
What Pow’r on Earth, by Right, dares question you?
Or what your Father and Sanhedrim do?
Nor is your Birth to Heaven any let;
God Jepthtah once did o’re Judea set.
95 [21] He was a Conquerour of a mighty Name,
And’s Mother no ways did eclipse his Fame,
Nor bar’d him from the Title of a King,
Nor those who after from his Loins did spring.
Nature may yet make your great Father kind;
And who can tell but he may change his mind,
When your Succession shall be understood
To be the Peoples Choice, and for the Nations Good?
But let us leave what is to come, to Fate;
Yours Father’s pleasure and God’s will await.
Long may it be ere the King’s life doth end;
On it our Peace and Happiness depend.
Like Wheat full ripe, with many years bow’d down,
Let him leave this for an immortal Crown.
And who can tell Heav’n’s will? it may be too,
Eliakim may die before the King or you.
Think of no Titles while your Father lives;
Take not what an unjust Occasion gives.
For to take Arms you can have no pretence,
Tho it should be e’en in your own defence.
It better were without the Crown to die,
Than quit your Vertue and blest Loyaltie.
You with the numerous Peoples Love are blest,
Not of the Vulgars onely, but the Best.
I would not have you their kind Love repel,
Nor give encouragement for to rebel:
For their Affection which they wildly shew,
Is rendred, by your Foes, a Crime in you.

Leave for a while the Citie and the Court,
Go and divert your self with Country-sport;
Perhaps your Foes may then abate their spight,
And you may be forgot, when out of sight.
By your Retirement, you will let them see
You’d take away all cause of Jealousie.
That you, like Absalom, will never prove,
To court the head-strong Peoples factious Love.
96 [22] Nor will I ever prove Achitophel,
To give you wicked Counsel to rebel.
Continue still your Loyalty, be just;
And for the Crown, God and your Vertue trust.
Endeavour not to take what may be giv’n;
Deserve it first, and then receive’t from Heav’n.

He said, And this Advice above the rest,
Suited with Azaria’s Vertue best.
He was not stain’d with Cruelty or Pride;
A thousand Graces he possest beside.
To Vertue he was naturally inclin’d,
And Goodness clothed his heroick Mind.
His Kingly Vertues made him fit to reign,
Yet scorn’d by evil Arts the Crown to gain.
And tho he Empire to desire did seem,
His Loyalty was still more dear to him:
Therefore he did not court the Peoples Love,
Nor us’d their Pow’r his Rival to remove.
From’s Father he fought not their Hearts to steal,
Nor head a Faction mov’d by blinding Zeal;
But like a vertuous and a pious Son,
Sought all occasions of Offence to shun.
In private like a common man sat down,
His Peace his Rule, his Loyalty his Crown.

Thus humble, vertuous, loyal, void of Pride,
Most of the Jews he gained to his side.
Not factious Sects, the Rabble, or the rude
Erring, unthinking, vulgar Multitude:
But the chief Tribes and Princes of the Land,
Who durst for Moses’s ancient Statutes stand.
The pious, just, religious, and the good,
Men of great Riches, and of greater Bloud,
Did, as one man, themselves together joyn
To stop the Baalites, and Hell’s curst design.
Not wicked, or seduc’d by impious Arts,
But Loyal all, and Patriots in their Hearts.
For they beheld the Baalites foul intent,
Religion to o’rethrow and Government.
97 [23] These at the Monarch’s Power did not grutch,
Since bound by Laws, he could not have too much.
What Laws prescribe, they thought he well might have,
How could he else his Realm in danger save?
But Baal’s or Egypt’s Yoke they would refuse,
Not fitting for the Necks of free-born Jews.
They all resolve the King not to oppose,
Yet to defend the Nation from its Foes.
And were it not for those great Worthy men,
The Jews distress’d and wretched soon had been.
Among the Rout perhaps there some might blend,
Whose int’rest made them Publick Good pretend;
Weary of Peace, new Troubles would create,
And for their private Gain, embroyl the State.
And some perhaps there were, who thought a King
To be of Charge, and but an useless thing.
Some idle Fops, who publickly debate
To shew their Parts, the deep Intrigues of State;
These and some others, for a Commonwealth,
Among the Herd, unseen, might hide by stealth:
But it would strange to common Justice seem,
For some few bad, the sound Flock to condemn.
Like Goats among the Sheep, well known these bleat,
And are like Darnel ’mong the purest Wheat.
These not as Friends, but Enemies to the Throne,
Good Patriots and good Subjects did disown.
And Azaria, tho they us’d his name,
Disdain’d their Friendship with a loyal shame.

But he beheld appearing on his side,
Princes, whose Faith and Loyalty were try’d;
Such as no base or sordid ends could move,
Who did his Father and their Country love.
In the first rank of these did Nashon stand,
None nobler or more loyal in the Land.
Under the King he once did Edom sway,
And taught that Land the Jews good Laws t’obey.
True to his Word, and of unspotted Fame;
Great both in Parts, in Vertue, and in Name.
98 [24] His Faith ne’r touch’d, his Loyalty well known,
A Friend both to his Country and the Throne.
Base ends his great and noble Soul did scorn,
Of loyal, high, and noble Parents born.
His Father with renown and great Applause,
For Joash di’d, and suffer’d for his Cause.
Of great Aminadab who would not sing,
Whose glory shin’d next to the martyr’d King?
From him his Son true Loyalty understood,
Imprest on’s Soul, seal’d with his Father’s Bloud.

In the Jews Laws, and strict Religion bred,
And Baal’s curst Rites did much abhor and dread.
His Son Eliab, in the Sanhedrim,
With courage had oppos’d Eliakim:
A man whose many Vertues, and his Parts,
Had won upon the sober Peoples Hearts.

He went not to their Synagogues to pray,
But to the Holy Temple every day.
With piercing Judgment saw the Lands Disease,
And labour’d onely for the Kingdoms Peace:
Loyal and honest was esteem’d by all,
Excepting those who strove to set up Baal.
For an ill Action he ne’r stood reprov’d;
But’s King, his Country, and Religion lov’d.
No Taint ere fell upon Eliab’s name,
Nor Hell it self found cause to spot his Fame.
Pagiel with honour loaded, and with years,
Among this Loyal Princely Train appears.
None Pagiel tax’d, for no one ever knew
That he to Amazia was untrue.
A Fame unspotted he might truly boast;
Yet he had Foes, and his gain’d Favours lost.
Zuar, a sober and a vertuous Prince,
Who never gave least cause of an offence.

Enan, a Prince of very worthie Fame;
Great in deserved Title, Bloud, and Name.
Elizur too, who number’d with the best
In Vertue, scorn’d to lag behind the rest.
Abidon and Gamaliel had some sway;
Both loyal, and both zealous in their way.
And now once more I will invoke my Muse,
To sing brave Ashur’s praise who can refuse?
Sprung from an ancient and a noble Race,
With Courage stampt upon his manly face;
Young, active, loyal; had through Dangers run,
And with his Sword abroad had Honours won:
Well-spoken, bold, free, generous, and kind,
And of a noble and discerning mind.
Great ones he scorn’d to court, nor fools would please,
But thought it better for to trust the Seas.
He thought himself far safer in a Storm,
And should receive from raging Seas less harm,
Than from those dangerous men, who could create
A Storm at Land, with Envie and with Hate.

With grief they saw the cursed Baalites bent
To batter down the Jewish Government;
To pull their Rights and true Religion down,
By setting up a Baalite on the Throne.
These wisely did with the Sanhedrim joyn;
Which Council by the Jews was thought divine.
The next Successour would remove, ’tis true,
Onely because he was a Baalite Jew.

100 [26] But such who had possest his Royal Ear,
Had made the King his Loyal Subjects fear;
Did their good Prince with causeless terrour fright,
As if these meant to rob him of his Right.
Said, They with other Rebels did combine,
And had against his Crown some ill designe:
That the wise Hushai laid a wicked Train,
And Azaria sought in’s stead to reign:
That the old Plot to ruine Church and State,
Was born from Hushai’s and the Levite’s Pate:
That Pharisees were bold and numerous grown,
And sought to place their Elders in his Throne.
No wonder then if Amazia thought
These Loyal Worthies did not as they ought;
That they did Duty and Obedience want,
And no Concessions from the Throne would grant.

They who in Amazia’s favour grew,
Themselves obnoxious to the People knew.
Some were accused by the Sanhedrim,
Most Friends and Allies to Eliakim:
For his Succession eagerly they strove,
And him, the rising Sun, adore and love.
When Doeg, who with Egypt did combine,
And to enslave Judea did designe,
Accus’d of Treason by the Sanhedrim,
Kept in the Tower of Jerusalem;
The Object prov’d of fickle Fortunes sport,
And lost the Honours he possest at Court.
Elam in favour grew, out stript by none,
And seem’d a Prop to Amazia’s Throne.
He had in foreign parts been sent to School,
And did in Doeg’s place the Kings thin Treasure rule.
He to Eliakim was neer alli’d;
What greater parts could he possess beside?
For the wise Jews believ’d the King did run
Some hazard, if he prov’d his Father’s Son.
But now, alas! th’ Exchequer was grown poor,
The Coffers empty, which did once run o’re.
101 [27] E2 The bounteous King had been so very kind,
That little Treasure he had left behind.
Elam had gotten with the empty Purse,
For his dead Father’s sake the Peoples Curse:
For they believ’d that no great good could spring
From one false to his Country and his King.
Jotham the fickle Shuttle-cock of Wit,
Was bandied several ways to be made fit:
Unconstant, he always for Honour tri’d,
At last laid hold upon the rising side.
If Wit he had, ’twas thought, by not a few,
He a better thing did want, and Wisdom too.
Then Amiel would scarce give place to him,
Who once the chief was of the Sanhedrim.
He then appeared for the Crowns defence;
But spoke his own, and not the Nations sense.
And tho he praised was by Shimei’s Muse,
The Jews of many Crimes did him accuse.
Harim, a man like a bow’d Ninepence bent,
Had tried all the ways of Government:
Was once a Rebel, and knew how to cant;
Then turn’d a very Devil of a Saint:
Peevish, morose, and some say, prov’d a fool,
When o’re the Edomites he went to rule.
When to his bent the King he could not bring,
He fairly then went over to the King.
Old Amalack, a man of cunning head,
Once in the cursed School of Rebels bred;
From thence his Maximes and his Knowledge drew,
Of old known Arts how to enslave the Jew.
For pardon’d Treason, thus sought to atone,
Had wrong’d the Father, would misguide the Son.
Once in Religion a strict Pharisee,
To Baal’s then turn’d, or else of none was he.
He long before seem’d to approve their Rites,
Marrying his issue to the Baalites.
A constant hunter after sordid Pelf;
Was never just to any but himself:
A very Proteus in all shapes had been,
And constant onely, and grown old in sin.
102 [28] To speak the best of Amalack we can,
A cunning Devil in the shape of Man.
Muppim, a man of an huge working Pate,
Not how to heal, but to embroil the State;
Knew how to take the wrong, and leave the right;
Was once himself a Rebel Benjamite.
To that stiff Tribe he did a while give Law,
And with his iron Yokes kept them in aw.
The Tyrant Zabed less did them provoke,
And laid upon their necks a gentler Yoke.
Amongst that Tribe he left an hated Name,
And to Jerusalem from thence he came,

Refus’d, the Serpent did with Woman joyn,
And Counsels gave th’Egyptian Concubine.
Adam, first Monarch, fell between these two;
What can’t the Serpent and a Woman do?
These with some more of the like size and sort,
In Sion made up Amazia’s Court:
Whilst his best friends became these Rulers scorn,
Saw how they drove, and did in silence mourn.
Sion did then no Sacrifice afford;
Gibbar had taught the frugal King to board.
Void were its Cellars, Kitchins never hot,
And all the Feasts of Solomon forgot.
Others there were, whose Names I shan’t repeat;
Eliakim had friends both small and great:
And many, who then for his Favour strove,
With their hot heads, like furious Jehu, drove.
Some Wits, some Witless, Warriors, Rich and Poor,
Some who rich Clothes and empty Titles wore;
Some who knew how to rail, some to accuse,
And some who haunted Taverns and the Stews.
Some roaring Bullies, who ran th’row the Town
Crying, God damn ’um, they’d support the Crown:
Whose wicked Oaths, and whose blasphemous Rant,
Had quite put down the holy zealous Cant.
103 [29] Some were for War, and some on Mischief bent;
And some who could, for gain, new Plots invent.
Some Priests and Levites too among the rest,
Such as knew how to blow the Trumpet best:
Who with loud noise and cackling, cri’d like Geese,
For Rites, for Temple, and for dearer Fleece.

The Pharasees they curse, as Sons of Cham,
And all dissenting Jews to Hell they damn.
Shimei the Poet Laureate of that Age,
The falling Glory of the Jewish Stage,
Who scourg’d the Priest, and ridicul’d the Plot,
Like common men must not be quite forgot.
Sweet was the Muse that did his wit inspire,
Had he not let his hackney Muse to hire:
But variously his knowing Muse could sing,
Could Doeg praise, and could blaspheme the King:
The bad make good, good bad, and bad make worse,
Bless in Heroicks, and in Satyrs curse.
Shimei to Zabed’s praise could tune his Muse,
And Princely Azaria could abuse.
Zimri we know he had no cause to praise,
Because he dub’d him with the name of Bays.
Revenge on him did bitter Venome shed,
Because he tore the Lawrel from his head;
Because he durst with his proud Wit engage,
And brought his Follies on the publick Stage.
Tell me, Apollo, for I can’t divine,
Why Wives he curs’d, and prais’d the Concubine;
Unless it were that he had led his life
With a teeming Matron ere she was a Wife:
Or that it best with his dear Muse did sute,
Who was for hire a very Prostitute.
The rising Sun this Poets God did seem,
Which made him tune’s old Harp to praise Eliakim.
Bibbai, whose name won’t in Oblivion rot,
For his great pains to hide the Baalites Plot,
104 [30] Must be remembred here: A Scribe was he,
Who daily damn’d in Prose the Pharisee.
With the Sectarian Jews he kept great stir;
Did almost all, but his dear self, abhor.
What his Religion was, no one could tell;
And it was thought he knew himself not well:
Yet Conscience did pretend, and did abuse,
Under the notion of Sectarian Jews,
All that he thought, or all that did but seem
Foes to Baal’s Rites, Eliakim, and him.
He was a man of a pernicious Wit
For railing, biting, and for mischief fit:
He never slept, yet ever in a Dream;
Religion, Law, and State, was all his Theam.
On these he wrote in Earnest and in Jeast,
Till he grew mad, and turn’d into a Beast,
Zattue his Zanie was, Buffoon, and Fool,
Who turn’d Religion into Ridicule:
Jeer’d at the Plot, did Sanhedrims abuse,
Mock’d Magistrates, damn’d all Sects of the Jews.
Of little Manners, and of lesser Brains;
Yet to embroil the State, took wondrous pains.
In jeasting still his little Talent lay;
At Hushai scoft in’s witless grinning way.

Then in a Pageant shew a Plot was made,
And Law it self made War in Masquerade.
But fools they were, not warn’d by former ill,
By their own selves were circumvented still.
They thought by Bloud to give the Kingdom ease;
Physick’d the Jews when they had no Disease.
Contingent mischiefs these did not foresee,
Against their Conscience fought, and God’s Decree.
What shall we think, when such, pretending good,
Would build the Nations Peace on Innocent Blood?
These would expose the People to the Sword
Of each unbounded Arbitrary Lord.
105 [31] But their good Laws, by which they Right enjoy,
The King nor could, nor ever would destroy.
And tho he Judge be of what’s fit and just,
He own’d from Heaven, and from Man a Trust.
Tho Laws to Kingly Power be a Band,
They are not Slaves to those whom they command.
The Power that God at first to Adam gave,
Was different far from what all Kings now have:
He had no Law but Will; but all Kings now
Are bound by Laws, as all Examples show.
By Laws Kings first were made, and with intent
Men to defend, by Heav’n’s and Man’s consent.
God to the Crown the Regal Power did bring,
And by Consent at first, Men chose their King.
If Kings usurp’d a Power, by force did sway,
The People by no Law were bound t’obey.
This does not in the People place a Right
To dissolve Soveraign sway by force or might.
To Kings, by long succession, there is giv’n
A native Right unto the Throne, by Heav’n:
Who may not be run down by common Cry,
For Vice, Oppression, and for Tyranny.
But if that Kings the tyes of Laws do break,
The People, without fault, have leave to speak;
To shew their Grievances, and seek redress
By lawful means, when Kings and Lords oppress.
Tho they can’t give and take, whene’r they please,
And Kings allow’d to be God’s Images.
The Government you Tyranny must call,
Where Subjects have no Right, and Kings have all.
But if reciprocal a Right there be,
Derived down unto Posteritie,
That side’s in fault, who th’other doth invade,
By which soe’r at first the breach is made:
For Innovation is a dangerous thing,
Whether it comes from People or from King.
To change Foundations which long Ages stood,
Which have prov’d firm, unshaken, sound, and good,
To pull all down, and cast the Frame anew,
Is work for Rebels, and for Tyrants too.

106 [32] Now what relief could Amazia bring,
Fatal indeed to be too good a King?
Friends he had many, but them did not know,
Or else made to believe they were not so:
For all that did ill Ministers oppose,
Were represented to him as his Foes.
Yet there were many thousands in those days,
Who Amazia did both love and praise;
Who for him daily pray’d, and wish’d his good,
And for him would have spent both Coin and Bloud.
Yet these, tho the more numerous, and the best,
Were call’d but murmuring Traytors by the rest:
By such who strain’d till they had crackt the string
Of Government; lov’d Pow’r, and not the King
These daily hightned Amazia’s fears,
And thus they whisper’d to his Royal Ears:

Sir, it is time you now take up the Sword,
And let your Subjects know you are their Lord.
Goodness by Rebels won’t be understood,
And you are much too wonderful and good.
The Jews, a moody, murmuring, stubborn Race,
Grow worse by Favours, and rebel with Grace.
Pamper’d they are, grown rich and fat with ease,
Whom no good Monarch long could ever please.
Freedom and Liberty pretend to want;
That’s still the cry, where they’re on Mischief bent.
Freedom is their Disease; and had they less,
They would not be so ready to transgress.
Give them but Liberty, let them alone,
They shall not onely you, but God dethrone.
Remember, Sir, how your good Father fell;
It was his goodness made them first rebel.
And now the very self-same tract they tread,
To reach your Crown, and then take off your head.
A senseless Plot they stumbl’d on, or made,
To make you of th’old Canaanites afraid.
Still when they mean the Nation to enthral,
With heavie Clamour they cry out on Baal.
107 [33] But these hot Zealots who Baal’s Idols curse,
Bow to their own more ugly far and worse.
Baal would but rob some Jewels from your Crown,
But these would Monarchy itself pull down:
Both Church and State they’l not reform by Halves,
Pull down the Temple, and set up their Calves.
You, and your Priests, they would turn out to Graze,
Nor would they let you smell a Sacrifize,
Those pious Offerings which Priests lasie made,
To Rebels, should, instead of God be paid.
How to the Prey these factious Jews do run!
From you by art they have debauch’d your Son;
That little subtle Instrument of Hell,
Worse than to David was Achitophel,
The young Man tutors, sends him through the Land,
That he the peoples minds may understand;
That he, with winning Charms, might court the Jew,
And draw your fickle Subjects hearts from you.
Alas! already they of you Complain.
And are grown sick of your too peaceful Reign,
Their Lusts grown high, they are debauch’d with Grace,
And like unfrozen Snakes fly in your Face.
These men who now pretend to give you Law,
Stood of the Tyrant Zabed’s power in awe;
He made them crouch who scorn’d a Prince’s sway,
And forc’d them, like dull slaves, his power obey.
Of Israel, and of Juda’s Tribe you spring,
A Lion is the Ensign of a King,
Rouse up your self, in mildness sleep no more,
And make them tremble at your princely roar:
Appear like Jove with Thunder in your hand,
And let the Slaves your power understand;
Strike but the sinning Princes Down to Hell,
The rest will worship you, and ne’r rebel.

Thus these rash Men with their bad Counsels strove,
To turn to hate good Amazia’s Love.

108 [34] But these with Art did dangers represent,
And Plots they fram’d the People never meant.
Each Mole hill they a Mountain did create,
And sought to fright him with his Fathers Fate.
Hushai at last was to a Prison sent,
As a false Traitor to the Government.
Loud murmurs then possest the troubled Jews,
Who were surprised at the fatal News;
His Wisdom they believed their chief support,
Against the evil Instruments at Court;
Nor, by his Actions, did they ever find,
He bore a Trait’rous, or a factious Mind:
And now they thought themselves expos’d to all
The Arts, and Plots of the hid friends to Baal.
Troubled, and discontented, at the last,
Their Eyes upon the noble Prince they cast.
Who fearing lest their discontent and rage,
Should them, to some rebellious Crime ingage,
Both for his Fathers, and his Countries sake,
The murmuring People sought more calm to make.
With a sweet Air, and with a graceful look,
He did command their silence, e’er he spoke.
Then thus he said, and though his words were few,
They fell like Manna, or the Hony Dew;

My Country-men, Let not your discontent
Draw you to actions you will soon repent,
What e’er your fears and jealousies may be,
Let them not break the bonds of Loyalty.
I dare, and you may too, my Father trust,
For he’s so merciful, so good, so just,
That he of no mans Life will make a Prey,
Or take it in an Arbitrary way,
To Heav’n, and to the King submit your cause,
Who never will infringe your ancient Laws;
But if he should an evil Action do,
To run to Arms, ’tis no pretence for you.
The King is Judge of what is just and fit,
And if he judge amiss you must submit,
Tho griev’d you must your constant duty pay,
And your Redress seek in a lawful way.
109 [35] Hushai tho he of Treason be accus’d,
Such loyal precepts in my soul infus’d,
That I the hazard of my life will run,
Rather than prove my self a Rebel Son.
Our Foes, have sought to’ infect my Father’s mind,
To think, you to Rebellion are inclin’d:
To stir you to Rebellion is their aim,
And they are mad, to see you justly tame.
Upon your Heads, they fain would lay their sin,
’Tis War they seek, but would have you begin:
Pretence they want, who for the King do seem,
To bring in, and set up Eliakim.
I am afraid the Baalites cursed Plot,
By many laught at, and by most forgot,
Is carried on still, in their hidden Mine,
I fear, but dare not, the event, divine.
May Heav’n defend my Father’s Life, and late,
Full ripe with Age, in peace, may he’yield to Fate.
I know, my Friends, for Him’s your chiefest Care,
For him, as much as for your selves, you fear,
Upon his Life our happiness depends,
With it the peace of all Judea ends,
Be vigilant, your foes Designs prevent,
Let not loud murmures shew your discontent:
Your Loyal Duty to your Soveraign pay,
Your Griefs present him in a Lawful way:
Be not too anxious for our common Friend,
God, and his Innocence will him defend:
Sit down in quiet, murmure not, but pray,
Submit to Heaven, your King, and Laws obey.
Youth, Beauty, and the Grace wherewith he spoke,
The Eyes, Ears, Hearts, of all the people took,
Their murmures then to joyful shouts were turn’d,
And they rejoyc’d, who lately murmuring mourn’d:
With Loyalty he did their Breasts inflame,
And they with shouts blest Azaria’s name.
The joyful Cry th’row all the City flew,
God save the King, and Azaria too.
To him the Princes, his best Friends resort,
Resolv’d as Suppliants, to repair to Court;
110 [36] In humble wise, to shew the King their Grief,
And on their bended Knees to seek Relief.
They ’approach’d the Throne, to it their homage paid,
Then to the King, the Loyal Nashon said.
Great Sir, whom all good Subjects truly Love,
Tho all things that you do they can’t approve,
We, whom the Throne has with high Honours blest,
Present you here the prayers of the rest;
Our bended Knees, as low as Earth we bow,
And humbly prostrate supplicate you now:
The blessing of your Love to us restore,
And raise us to your Favour, Sir, once more.
Where is the Joy, the Peace, and Quiet flown,
All had, when first you did ascend the Throne;
Now murmuring discontents assault our Ears,
And loud Complaints of jealousies, and fears:
Bad instruments help to blow up this Fire,
And with ill minds, their own worse Arts admire,
Whilst, by their means, you think your Friends your Foes,
For your best friends, your Enemies suppose;
Suspect your Loyal Subjects, and believe
The Sanhedrim would you of Rights bereive.
Your people, who do love your gentle Sway,
And willingly their God, and you obey,
Who for Religion ever zealous were,
For that, for you, and for themselves do fear.
Clear as the Sun, by sad effects they find,
A Baalite to succeed you is design’d:
Sir, they would not dispute with you, his right,
But they can n’re indure a Baalite:
Tho whilst you live, they are secure and blest,
Yet are they with a thousand fears opprest,
Think your Life still in danger of the Plot,
Which now is laugh’d at, and almost forgot.
They see the Baalites Hellish Plot run down,
And on the Pharisees a false one thrown;
Your zealous faithful Jews all Rebels made,
Their ruine hatch’d, you, and themselves betray’d.
Oh! Sir, before things to extreams do run,
Remember, at the least, you have a Son,
111 [37] Let the Sanhedrim with your wisdom joyn,
To keep unbroken still the Royal line;
And to secure our fears, that after you,
None shall succeed but a believing Jew.
Sir, this is all your Loyal Subjects Crave,
On you, as on a God, they cry to save.
Kings are like Gods on Earth, when they redress,
Their peoples Griefs, and save them in distress.
With loads of careful thoughts, the King opprest,
And long revolving in his Royal Breast,
Th’ event of Things——at last he silence broke,
And, with an awful Majesty, he spoke.
I’ve long in Peace Judeas Scepter swaid,
None can Complain, I Justice have delay’d:
My Clemency, and Mercy has been shown,
Blood, and Revenge did ne’r pollute my Throne;
I and my People happy, kindly strove,
Which should exceed, my Mercy or their Love:
Who, till of late, more ready were to give
Supplies to me, than I was to receive.
Oh! happy days, and oh! unhappy change;
That makes my Sanhedrims, and my people strange,
And now, when I am in the Throne grown old,
With grief I see my Subjects Love prove cold.
They fear not my known Mercy to offend,
And with my awful Justice dare contend;
But yet their Crimes my mercy shan’t asswage,
I’m ready to forgive th’ offending Age,
And though they should my Kingly power slight,
I’le still keep for them my forgiving right.
I feel a tenderness within me spring,
I am my Peoples Father, and their King,
And tho I think, they may have done me wrong.
I can’t remember their offences long.
Nature is mov’d, and sues for a Reprieve,
They are my Children, and I must forgive.
My many jealous fears I shan’t repeat,
My Heart with a strong pulse of Love doth beat;
Nature I feel has made a sudden start,
And a fresh source springs from the Father’s heart.
112 [38] A stubborn Bow, drawn by the force of men,
The force remov’d, flies swifty back agen.
’Tis hard a Fathers nature to o’ercome,
How easily does she her force assume!
Sh’ has o’er my Soul an easie Conquest won,
And I remember now I have a Son,
Whose Youth had long been my paternal Care,
Rais’d to the height his noble frame could bear,
And Heav’n has seem’d to give his Soul a turn,
As if ordain’d by Fate for Empire born.
By our known Laws I have the Scepter sway’d,
By them I govern’d, them my Rule I made.
To them I sought to frame my soveraign Will,
By them my Subjects I will govern still:

From hence I’le banish every Priest of Baal,
And the wise Sanhedrim together call:
That Body with the Kingly Head shall join,
Their Counsel and their Wisdom mix with mine,
All former strife betwixt us be forgot,
And in Oblivion buried every Plot.
We’l try to live in Love and Peace again,
As when I first began my happy Reign.
Before our Trait’rous Foes with secret toil
Did fair Judea’s blessed Peace embroil.
May all my latter days excel my first,
And he who then disturbs our Peace be curst.

He said: Th’ Almighty heard, and from on high
Spoke his Consent, in Thunder through the Skie:
The Augurie was noted by the Croud,
Who joyful shouts return’d almost as loud:
Then Amazia was once more restor’d,
He lov’d his People, they obey’d their Lord.

FIRST EDITION			SECOND EDITION
p. 3,	line 4,	enthron'd, with	inthron'd with
3	8,	Arts ... steps	Art's ... step's
11	10,	Rods;	Rods?
13	26,	to Descend	do Descend
14	17,	couch,	couch
29	9,	Cedar	Cedars
31	21,	Temples	Temple

Anti-Achitophel

(1682)

THREE VERSE REPLIES TO

Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden

Absalom Senior by Elkanah Settle

Poetical Reflections by Anonymous

Azaria and Hushai by Samuel Pordage

FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

HAROLD WHITMORE JONES

Gainesville, Florida

SCHOLARS’ FACSIMILES & REPRINTS

1961

SCHOLARS’ FACSIMILES & REPRINTS 118 N. W. 26th Street Gainesville, Florida Harry R. Warfel, General Editor

REPRODUCED FROM COPIES IN

BRITISH MUSEUM

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARY

L. C. Catalog Card Number: 60-6430

MANUFACTURED IN THE U.S.A. LETTERPRESS BY J. N. ANZEL, INC. PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY BY EDWARDS BROTHERS BINDING BY UNIVERSAL-DIXIE BINDERY

NAMES

ABSALOM SENIOR

POETICAL REFLECTIONS

AZARIA AND HUSHAI

Footnotes

OR,

ACHITOPHEL

TRANSPROS’D.

A

POEM.

Si Populus vult decipi, &c.

LONDON:

Printed for S. E. and Sold by Langley Curtis, at the Sign of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, near Fleetbridge. 1682.

OR,

ACHITOPHEL

TRANSPROS’D.

FINIS.

ON A LATE

POEM

ENTITULED,

Absalom and Achitophel.

By a Person of Honour.

LONDON:

Printed for Richard Janeway. 1681.

READER.

ON A LATE

POEM

CALLED,

Absalom and Achitophel.

FINIS.

AND

HUSHAI,

A

POEM.

Quod cuique visum est sentiant.

LONDON,

Printed for Charles Lee, An. Dom. 1682.

READER.

AND

HUSHAI,

A POEM.

FINIS.

FACSIMILE REPRODUCTIONS
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

SCHOLARS’ FACSIMILES & REPRINTS
118 N. W. 26th Street
Gainesville, Florida
Harry R. Warfel, General Editor

MANUFACTURED IN THE U.S.A.
LETTERPRESS BY J. N. ANZEL, INC.
PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY BY EDWARDS BROTHERS
BINDING BY UNIVERSAL-DIXIE BINDERY

Printed for S. E. and Sold by Langley Curtis, at the Sign of
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, near Fleetbridge. 1682.

Printed for Charles Lee,
An. Dom. 1682.