PREFACE.
should remain among all my writings which according to my severest judgment should be found guilty of the crime objected, I would myself burn and extinguish them all together. Nothing is so detestably lewd and rechless as the derision of things sacred, and would be in me more unpardonable than any man else, who have endeavoured to root out the ordinary weeds of Poetry, and to plant it almost wholly with Divinity. I am so far from allowing any loose or irreverent expressions in matters of that Religion which I believe, that I am very tender in this point even for the grossest errors of Conscientious persons, They are the properest object (me thinks) both of our pitty and Charity too; They are the innocent and white Sectaries, in comparison of another kind who engraft Pride upon Ignorance, Tyranny upon Liberty, and upon all their Heresies, Treason and Rebellion. These are Principles so destructive to the Peace and Society of Mankind that they deserve to be persued by our serious Hatred, and the putting a Mask of Sanctity upon such Devils is do Ridiculous, that it ought to be exposed to contempt and laughter. They are indeed Prophane, who counterfeit the softness of the voyce of Holiness to disguize the roughness of the hands of Impiety, and not they who with reverence to the thing which the others dissemble, deride nothing but their Dissimulation. If some piece of an admirable Artist should be ill Copyed even to ridiculousness by an ignorant hand, and another Painter should undertake to draw that Copy, and make it yet more ridiculous, to shew apparently the difference of the two works, and deformity of the latter, will not every man see plainly that the abuse is intended to the foolish Imitation, and not to the Excellent Original? I might say much more to confute and confound this very false and malitious accusation, but this is enough I hope to cleer the matter, and is I am afraid too much for a Preface to a work of so little consideration. As for all other objections which have been or may be made against the Invention or Elocution, or any thing else which comes under the Critical Jurisdiction, let it stand or fall as it can answer for it self, for I do not lay the great stress of my Reputation
