CANTO I.]
HUDIBRAS.
321
He never offers to surprise,
Altho' his falsest enemies;[1]
But is content to be their drudge, 1505
And on their errands glad to trudge:
For where are all your forfeitures
Intrusted in safe hands, but ours?
Who are but jailors of the holes
And dungeons where you clap up souls;[2] 1510
Like under-keepers, turn the keys,
T' your mittimus anathemas,
And never boggle to restore
The members you deliver o'er
Upon demand, with fairer justice, 1515
Than all you Covenanting Trustees;[3]
Unless, to punish them the worse,
You put them in the secular powers,
And pass their souls, as some demise
The same estate in mortgage twice:[4] 1520
When to a legal utlegation
You turn your excommunication,[5]
And, for a groat unpaid that's due,
Distrain on soul and body too.[6]
Thought he, 'tis no mean part of civil 1525
State-prudence to cajole the devil,
And not to handle him too rough,
When h' has us in his cloven hoof.
Altho' his falsest enemies;[1]
But is content to be their drudge, 1505
And on their errands glad to trudge:
For where are all your forfeitures
Intrusted in safe hands, but ours?
Who are but jailors of the holes
And dungeons where you clap up souls;[2] 1510
Like under-keepers, turn the keys,
T' your mittimus anathemas,
And never boggle to restore
The members you deliver o'er
Upon demand, with fairer justice, 1515
Than all you Covenanting Trustees;[3]
Unless, to punish them the worse,
You put them in the secular powers,
And pass their souls, as some demise
The same estate in mortgage twice:[4] 1520
When to a legal utlegation
You turn your excommunication,[5]
And, for a groat unpaid that's due,
Distrain on soul and body too.[6]
Thought he, 'tis no mean part of civil 1525
State-prudence to cajole the devil,
And not to handle him too rough,
When h' has us in his cloven hoof.
- ↑ The enthusiasm of the Independents was something new in its kind, not much allied to superstition.
- ↑ Keep those in hell whom you are pleased to send thither by excommunication, mittimus, or anathema: as jailors and turnkeys confine their prisoners.
- ↑ More honestly than the Presbyterians surrendered the estates which they held in trust for one another; these trustees were generally Covenanters. See Part i. c. i. v. 76, and Part iii. c. ii. v. 55.
- ↑ This alludes to the case of a Mr Sherfield, who mortgaged his estate to half a dozen different people, having by a previous deed demised it for pious uses, so that all lost their money. See Stratford's Letters, 1739, vol. i. p. 206.
- ↑ You call down the vengeance of the civil magistrate upon them, and in this second instance pass over, that is, take no notice of, their souls: the ecclesiastical courts can excommunicate, and then they apply to the civil court for an outlawry. Utlegation means outlawry.
- ↑ Seize the party by a writ de excommunicato capiendo.
