Can they the age thus torture with their lyes, Low’d bellowing to the world Impieties, Black as their coates, and such a silent feare Lock up the lips of men, and charme the eare? Had that same holy Israelite bin dumb, That fatall day of old had never come To _Baals_ Tribe, and thrice unhappy age While zeale and piety like mask’d in rage And vulgar ignorance. How we doe wonder Once hearing, that the heavens were fir’d to thunder Against assailing Gyants, surely men, Men thought could not presume such violence then: But ’twas no Fable, or if then it were, Behold a sort of bolder mortals here, Those undermining shifts of knavish folly, Using alike to God and men most holy; Infidels who now seem to have found out A suttler way to bring their ends about. Against the Deity then op’nly to fight By smooth insinuation and by flight: They close with God, seem to obey his Lawes, They cry alowd for him and for his cause. But while they doe their strict injunctions preach, Deny in actions what their words doe teach. _O what will men not dare, if thus they dare_ _Be impudent with Heaven, and play with Prayer!_ Yet if they can no better teach than thus, Would they would onely teach themselves, not us: So while they still on empty out-sides dwell, They may perhaps be choakt with husk and shell: While those, who can their follies well refute, By a true knowledge, doe obtaine the fruit. _FINIS._ PUBLICATIONS OF THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY FIRST YEAR (1946-47) Numbers 1-6 out of print. SECOND YEAR (1947-1948) 7. John Gay’s _The Present State of Wit_ (1711); and a section on Wit from _The English Theophrastus_ (1702). 8. Rapin’s _De Carmine Pastorali_, translated by Creech (1684). 9. T. Hanmer’s (?) _Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet_ (1736). 10. Corbyn Morris’ _Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, etc._ (1744). 11. Thomas Purney’s _Discourse on the Pastoral_ (1717). 12. Essays on the Stage, selected, with an Introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch. THIRD YEAR (1948-1949) 13. Sir John Falstaff (pseud.), _The Theatre_ (1720). 14. Edward Moore’s _The Gamester_ (1753). 15. John Oldmixon’s _Reflections on Dr. Swift’s Letter to Harley_ (1712); and Arthur Mainwaring’s _The British Academy_ (1712). 16. Nevil Payne’s _Fatal Jealousy_ (1673). 17. Nicholas Rowe’s _Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare_ (1709). 18. “Of Genius,” in _The Occasional Paper_, Vol. III, No. 10 (1719); and Aaron Hill’s Preface to _The Creation_ (1720). FOURTH YEAR (1949-1950) 19. Susanna Centlivre’s _The Busie Body_ (1709). 20. Lewis Theobold’s _Preface to The Works of Shakespeare_ (1734). 21. _Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela_ (1754). 22. Samuel Johnson’s _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749) and Two _Rambler_ papers (1750).