Than Gregory and Boniface.t 1210 Such church must, surely, be a monster With many heads: for if we conster 1215 1220 please, Mr. Burgess. Upon which he ordered his servant to carry it to his own house, for he would cut it at home. * The gentlemen of Cheshire sent a remonstrance to the parliament, wherein they complained, that, instead of having twenty-six bishops, they were then governed by a numerous presbytery, amounting, with lay elders and others, to 40,000. This government, say they, is purely papal, for every minister exercises papal jurisdiction. Dr. Grey quotes from Sir John Birkenhead revived: But never look for health nor peace The former was consecrated in the year 1073, the latter elected in 1294. Two most insolent and assuming popes, who wanted to raise the tiara above all the crowned heads in Christendom. Gregory the Seventh, commonly called Hildebrand, was the first who arrogated to himself the authority to excommunicate and depose the emperor. Boniface the Third, was he who assumed the title of universal bishop. Boniface the Eighth, at the jubilee instituted by himself, appeared one day in the habit of a pope, and the next day in that of an emperor. He caused two swords to be carried before him, to show that he was invested with all power ecclesiastical and temporal. The church of Rome has often been compared to the whore of Babylon, mentioned in the seventeenth chapter of the Revelation. The beast, which the whore rode upon, is here said to signify the Presbyterian establishment; and the seven, or many heads of the beast, are interpreted, by the poet, to mean their several officers, deacons, priests, scribes, lay-elders, &c. That is, lay-elder, an associate to the priesthood, for interested, if not for iniquitous purposes; alluding to Genesis xlix. 5, 6. "Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty "are in their habitations: O, my soul, come not thou into their "secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united "for in their anger they slew a man." Mr. Robert Gordon, in his History of the illustrious family of Gordon, vol. ii. p. 197, compares the solemn league and covenant with the holy league in France: he says they were as like as one egg to another, the one was nursed by the Jesuits, the other by the Scots Presbyte Whose little finger is as heavy And manners; can pronounce a saint Through coarsest boulter, others gifts.§ Whose pastors are but th' handiwork Of his mechanic paws, instilling Divinity in them by feeling. Made by contact, as men get measles. From whence they start up chosen vessels, So cardinals, they say, do grope At th' other end the new made pope.|| Good Squire, 1225 1230 1235 1240 1245 1250 rians, Simeon and Levi. See Doughtie's Velitationes Polemicæ, p. 74. * Such is the bishop and prince of Liege, and such are several of the bishops in Germany. [1793.] A trifling book called a Key to Hudibras, under the name of Sir Roger L'Estrange, pretends to decipher all the characters in the poem, and tells us that one Andrew Crawford was here intended. This character is supposed by others to have been designed for William Dunning, a Scotch presbyter. But, probably, the author meant no more than to give a general representation of the lay-elders. Lawless, because it was forbidden by the Levitical law to wear a mixture of linen and woollen in the same garment. A bolter is a sieve by which the millers dress their flour. See, in Platina's Lives of the Popes, the well-known story of pope Joan, or John VIII. The stercorary chair, as appears by Burchard's Diary, was used at the installations of Innocent VIII. and Sixtus IV. See Brequigny in account of MS. in the French king's library, 8vo. 1789, vol. i. p. 210. For haste, the proverb says, makes waste. Are false, and built upon mistake: And I shall bring you, with your pack 1255 And put your arguments in mood And figure to be understood. 1260 I'll force you by right ratiocinationt To leave your vitilitigation,‡ And make you keep to the question close, And argue dialectic@s.§ 1265 The question then, to state it first, Is, which is better, or which worst, I grant, but not rationalia: For though they do agree in kind, 1270 1275 1280 *Elenchi are arguments which deceive under an appearance of truth. The knight says he shall make the deception apparent. The name is given, by Aristotle, to those syllogisms which have seemingly a fair, but in reality a contradictory conclusion. A chief design of Aristotle's logic is to establish rules for the trial of arguments, and to guard against sophism: for in his time Zeno, Parmenides, and others, had set up a false method of reasoning, which he makes it his business to detect and defeat. The poet makes tio, in ratiocination, constitute but one syllable, as in verse 1378, but in P. i. c. i. v. 78, he makes tio two syllables. That is, your perverse humor of wrangling. Erasmus, in the Moriæ encomium, has the following passage: "Etenim non de"erunt fortasse vitilitigatores, qui calumnientur partim leviores "esse nugas quam ut theologum deceant, partim mordaciores แ quam ut Christian conveniant modestia." Vitilitigatores, i. e. obtrectatores et calumniatores, quos Cato, novato verbo, a vitio et morbo litigandi vitilitigatores appellabat, ut testatur Plin. in præfat. historiæ mundi. That is, logically. Suppose we read: That both indeed are animalia. ¶ Between animate and inanimate things, as between a man And can no more make bears of these, 1285 1290 But yet we are beside the question Which thou didst raise the first contest on : For that was, Whether bears are better Than synod-men? I say, Negatur. That bears are beasts, and synods men, 1295 1300 1305 and a tree, there is a generical difference; that is, they are not of the same kind or genus. Between rational and sensitive creatures, as a man and a bear, there is a specifical difference; for though they agree in the genus of animals, or living creatures, yet they differ in the species as to reason. Between two men, Plato and Socrates, there is a numerical difference; for, though they are of the same species as rational creatures, yet they are not one and the same, but two men. See Part ii. Canto i. 1. 150. * Or that my horse is a man. Aristotle, in his disputations, uses the word Socrates as an appellative for man in general. From thence it was taken up in the schools. We must not expect our poet's philosophy to be strictly true: it is sufficient that it agree with the notions commonly handed down. Thus Ovid: Nec catulus partu, quem reddidit ursa recenti, Sed male viva caro est. Lambendo mater in artus Pliny, in his Natural History, lib. viii. c. 54, says: "Hi sunt "candida informisque caro, paulo muribus major, sine oculis, "sine pilo: ungues tantum prominent: hanc lambendo paula That ever synod-man was lickt, 1310 But thou dost further yet in this Oppugn thyself and sense; that is, Thou would'st have presbyters to go For bears and dogs, and bearwards too; 1315 A strange chimæra* of beasts and men, Either to grant them, or refuse. Much thou hast said, which I know when, 1325 And where thou stol'st from other men ; Whereby 'tis plain thy light and gifts Are all but plagiary shifts; And is the same that Ranter said, Who, arguing with me, broke my head,t 1330 And tore a handful of my beard; "rim figurant." But this silly opinion is refuted by Brown in his Vulgar Errors, book iii. ch. 6. * Chimæra was a fabulous monster, thus described by Homer: · ἡ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἔην θεῖον γένος, οὐδ ̓ ἀνθρώπων Πρόσθε λέων, ἔπιθεν δὲ δράκων, μέσση δέ χίμαιρα. Iliad. vi. 180. Eustathius, on the passage, has abundance of Greek learning. Hesiod has given the chimæra three heads. Theog. 319. †The ranters were a wild sect, that denied all doctrines of religion, natural and revealed. With one of these the knight had entered into a dispute, and at last came to blows. See a ranter's character in Butler's Posthumous Works. Whitelocke says, the soldiers in the parliament army were frequently punished for being ranters. Nero clothed Christians in the skins of wild beasts; but these wrapped wild beasts in the skins of Christians. Dr. South, in his sermon preached in Westminster Abbey, 1692, says, speaking of the times about 50 years before, Latin unto them was a mortal crime, and Greek looked upon as a sin |
