MAC FLECKNOE

OR, A SATIRE UPON THE TRUE-BLUEPROTESTANT POET

T. S.

BY THE AUTHOR OF ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL

[Publ. 1682.]

[Thomas Shadwell, once Dryden's friend, now his enemy, and an ardent Whig, had published an answer to The Medal, entitled, The Medal of John Bayes, a Satire against Folly and Knavery, in which he assailed Dryden with foul and scur rilous abuse. Dryden's reply was the following poem, published, according to Malone (I, 1, 169), who probably had some authority for his statement, on October 4, 1682.]

ALL human things are subject to decay, And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus,

pets keep,

And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep. Near these a Nursery erects its head, Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred;

Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry,

Where infant punks their tender voices
try,

And little Maximins the gods defy.
Great Fletcher never treads in busk ins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear; 80
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds:
Pure clinches the suburbian Muse affords,
And Panton waging harmless war with
words.

Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well

known,

Ambitiously design'd his Sh's throne;
For ancient Dekker prophesied long since,
That in this pile should reign a mighty
prince,

Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense;
To whom true dulness should some Psyches

Now Empress Fame had publish'd the

renown

Of Sh -'s coronation thro' the town. Rous'd by report of Fame, the nations meet, From near Bunhill, and distant Watling Street.

No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way, But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay; From dusty shops neglected authors come, Martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum. 101 Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay, But loads of Sh- almost chok'd the way. Bilk'd stationers for yeomen stood prepar'd, And Herringman was captain of the guard. The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,

High on a throne of his own labors rear'd. At his right hand our young Ascanius sate, Rome's other hope, and pillar of the State His brows thick fogs, instead of glories,

120

The king himself the sacred unction made,
As king by office, and as priest by trade.
In his sinister hand, instead of ball,
He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale;
Love's Kingdom to his right he did convey,
At once his scepter, and his rule of sway;
Whose righteous lore the prince had prac-
tie'd young,

And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung.

His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,

That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head. Just at that point of time, if fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did

fly.

So Romulus, 't is sung, by Tiber's brook, 130 Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.

Th' admiring throng loud acclamations

make,

And omens of his future empire take.
The sire then shook the honors of his head,

And from his brows damps of oblivion shed

Full on the filial dulness: long he stood, Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in this prophetic mood:

"Heavens bless my son, him reign

from Ireland let

To far Barbadoes on the western main; 140 Of his dominion may no end be known, And greater than his father's be his throne; Beyond Love's Kingdom let him stretch his pen!"

He paus'd, and all the people cried," Amen." Then thus continued he: "My son, advance Still in new impudence, new ignorance. Success let others teach, learn thou from me Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry. Let Virtuosos in five years be writ;

Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit. Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,

151

Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And in their folly shew the writer's wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defense,
And justify their author's want of sense.
Let 'em be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid;
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own. 160
Nay, let thy men of wit too be the same,
All full of thee, and differing but in name.
But let no alien S-dl-y interpose,
To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.
And when false flowers of rhetoric thou
wouldst cull,

Trust nature, do not labor to be dull;
But write thy best, and top; and, in each
line,

Sir Formal's oratory will be thine:

Sir Formal, tho' unsought, attends thy quill, And does thy northern dedications fill. 170 Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,

By arrogating Jonson's hostile name. Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,

And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.

Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no

part:

What share have we in nature, or in art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,

Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?

RELIGIO LAICI

OR, A LAYMAN'S FAITH

A POEM

[Publ. 1682.]

Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri

THE PREFACE

A POEM with so bold a title, and a name prefix'd from which the handling of so serious a subject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the author to say somewhat in defense both of himself and of his undertaking. In the first place, if it be objected to me that, being a layman, I ought not to have concern'd myself with speculations which belong to the profession of divinity, I could answer that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of sacred things; but, in the due sense of my own weakness and want of learning, I plead not this; I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confession of my own; I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, but wait on it, with the reverence that becomes me, at a distance. In the next place I will ingenuously confess that the helps I have us'd in this small treatise were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the Church of England; so that the weapons with which I combat irreligion are already consecrated; tho' I suppose they may be taken down as lawfully as the sword of Goliath was by David, when they are to be employ'd for the common cause, against the enemies of piety. I intend not by this to intitle them to any of my errors, which yet, I hope, are only those of charity to mankind; and such as my own charity has caus'd me to commit, that of others may more easily excuse. Being naturally inclin'd to scepticism in philosophy, I have no reason to impose my opinions in a subject which is above it; but whatever they are, I submit them with all reverence to my Mother Church, accounting them no further mine, than as they are authoriz'd, or at least uncondemn'd by her. And, indeed, to secare myself on this side, I have us'd the necessary precaution of showing this paper before it was publish'd to a judicious and learned friend, a man indefatigably zealous in the service of the Church and State; and whose writings have highly deserv'd of both. He was pleas'd to approve the body of the discourse, and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of complaisance. "T is true, he had too good a taste to like it all; and amongst some other faults recommended to my second view what I have written, perhaps too boldly, on St. Athanasius, which he advis'd me wholly to omit. I am sensible enough that I had done more pru

dently to have follow'd his opinion; but then I could not have satisfied myself that I had done honestly not to have written what was my own. It has always been my thought that heathens who never did, nor without miracle could, hear of the name of Christ, were yet in a possibility of salvation. Neither will it enter easily into my belief that, before the coming of our Savior, the whole world, excepting only the Jewish nation, should lie under the inevitable necessity of everlasting punishment, for want of that revelation which was confin'd to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the sons of Noah we read of one only who was accurst; and if a blessing in the ripeness of time was reserv'd for Japhet, (of whose progeny we are,) it seems unaccountable to me why so many generations of the same offspring, as preceded our Savior in the flesh, should be all involv'd in one common condemnation, and yet that their posterity should be intitled to the hopes of salvation; as if a bill of exclusion had pass'd only on the fathers, which debarr'd not the sons from their succession. Or that so many ages had been deliver'd over to hell, and so many reserv'd for heaven, and that the Devil had the first choice, and God the next. Truly I am apt to think that the reveal'd religion which was taught by Noah to all his sons might continue for some ages in the whole posterity. That afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Sem is manifest; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet swarm'd into colonies, and those colonies were subdivided into many others, in process of time their descendants lost by little and little the primitive and purer rites of divine worship, retaining only the notion of one deity; to which succeeding generations added others; for men took their degrees in those ages from conquerors to gods. Revelation being thus eclips'd to almost all mankind, the light of nature, as the next in dignity, was substituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judg'd. If my supposition be true, then the consequence which I have assum'd in my poem may be also true; namely, that Deism, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of reveal'd religion in the posterity of Noah: and that our modern philosophers, nay, and some of our philosophizing divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintain'd that by their force mankind has been able to find out that there

is one supreme agent or intellectual being which we call God; that praise and prayer are his due worship; and the rest of those deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our discourse; I mean as simply consider'd, and without the benefit of divine illumination. So that we have not lifted up ourselves to God by the weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleas'd to descend to us; and what Socrates said of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of

the heathen philosophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it was set in the race of Noah. That there is something above us, some principle of motion, our reason can apprehend, tho' it cannot discover what it is, by its own virtue. And indeed 't is very improbable that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any being, not so much as of our own, should be able to find out by them that supreme nature, which we cannot otherwise define than by saying it is infinite; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a subject for our narrow understanding. They who would prove religion by reason do but weaken the cause which they endeavor to support: 't is to take away the pillars from our faith, and to prop it only with a twig; 'tis to design a tower like that of Babel, which, if it were possible (as it is not) to reach heaven, would come to nothing by the confusion of the workmen. For every man is building a several way; impotently conceited of his own model and his own materials: reason is always striving, and always at a loss; and of necessity it must so come to pass, while 't is exercis'd about that which is not its proper object. Let us be content at last to know God by his own methods; at least, so much of him as he is pleas'd to reveal to us in the sacred Scriptures; to apprehend them to be the word of God is all our reason has to do; for all beyond it is the work of faith, which is the seal of heaven impress'd upon our human understanding.

And now for what concerns the holy bishop Athanasius, the preface of whose creed seems inconsistent with my opinion; which is, that heathens may possibly be sav'd: in the first place I desire it may be consider'd that it is the preface only, not the creed itself, which (till I am better inform'd) is of too hard a digestion for my charity. 'Tis not that I am ignorant how many several texts of Scripture seemingly support that cause; but neither am I ignorant how all those texts may receive a kinder and more mollified interpretation. Every man who is read in Church history knows that belief was drawn up after a long contestation with Arius concerning the divinity of our blessed Savior, and his being one substance with the Father; and that, thus compil'd, it was sent abroad among the Christian churches, as a kind of test, which whosoever took was look'd on as an orthodox believer. 'Tis manifest from hence that the heathen part of the empire was not concern'd in it; for its business was not to distinguish betwixt pagans and Christians, but betwixt heretics and true believers. This, well consider'd, takes off the heavy weight of censure, which I would willingly avoid from so venerable a man; for if this proportion, whosoever will be sav'd,' be restrain'd only to those to whom it was intended, and for whom it was compos'd, I mean the Christians; then the anathema reaches not the heathens, who had never heard of Christ, and were nothing interess'd in that dispute.

After all, I am far from blaming even that prefatory addition to the creed, and as far from caviling at the continuation of it in the liturgy of the Church, where, on the days appointed, 't is publicly read: for I suppose there is the same reason for it now, in opposition to the Socinians, as there was then against the Arians; the one being a heresy which seems to have been refin'd out of the other; and with how much more plausibility of reason it combats our religion, with so much more caution to be avoided; and therefore the prudence of our Church is to be commended, which has interpos'd her authority for the recommendation of this creed. Yet, to such as are grounded in the true belief, those explanatory creeds, the Nicene and this of Athanasius, might perhaps be spar'd; for what is supernatural will always be a mystery in spite of exposition, and, for my own part, the plain Apostles' Creed is most suitable to my weak understanding, as the simplest diet is the most easy of digestion.

I have dwelt longer on this subject than I intended, and longer than, perhaps, I ought; for having laid down, as my foundation, that the Scripture is a rule; that in all things needful to salvation it is clear, sufficient, and ordain'd by God Almighty for that purpose, I have left myself no right to interpret obscure places, such as concern the possibility of eternal happiness to heathens; because whatsoever is obscure is concluded not necessary to be known.

But, by asserting the Scripture to be the canon of our faith, I have unavoidably created to myself two sorts of enemies: the Papists indeed, more directly, because they have kept the Scripture from us, what they could; and have reserv'd to themselves a right of interpreting what they have deliver'd under the pretense of infallibility: and the Fanatics more collater ally, because they have assum'd what amounts to an infallibility in the private spirit; and have detorted those texts of Scripture which are not necessary to salvation, to the damnable uses of sedition, disturbance, and destruction of the civil government. To begin with the Papists, and to speak freely, I think them the less dangerous, at least in appearance, to our present State, for not only the penal laws are in force against them, and their number temptible; but also their peerage and commons are excluded from parliaments, and consequently those laws in no probability of being repeal'd. A general and uninterrupted plot of their clergy, ever since the Reformation, I suppose all Protestants believe. For 't is not reasonable to think but that so many of their orders, as were outed from their fat possessions, would endeavor a reentrance against those whom they account heretics. As for the late design, Mr. Coleman's letters, for aught I know, are the best evidence; and what they discover, without wiredrawing their sense, or malicious glosses, all men of reason conclude credible. It there be anything more than this requir'd of me, I must believe it as well as I am able, in spite of the witnesses, and out of a decent conformity

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