An Almond for a Parrot: Being a reply to Martin Mar-Prelate.
Religion
An Almond for a Parrot: Being a reply to Martin Mar-Prelate.
Marprelate controversy
must belabour you when all is done, for your backbiting and slandering
of your honest neighbours, and open inueighing against the established
gouernment in your sermons. Helpe him _Martin_, or else his vpbraided
absurdities will make thee repent that euer thou belyedst or disgracedst
_Hone_, _Cottington_ or _Chatfield_ in his cause. May it please you
therefore that are in authoritie, considering how reuerently hee hath
abused Christs birthright, to restore him to preach that the blockes and
stones of Kingstone, do not crie out against you. I followe the riuers
of folly, whiles the fountaines of infection do propagate their poison.
_Martin_ all this while thinkes himself in league with obscuritie,
whiles Phebus the discouerer of Mars and Venus adultery, hath streamed
his bright day light into the net where he daunceth. Blush squint-eied
caitife, since thy couert no more wil contain thee. _Cælum te contegit
non habes vrnam_. Therfore let al posteritie that shall heare of his
knauerie, attend the discouery which now I will make of his villanie.
_Pen. I. Pen._ welch _Pen. Pen._ the Protestationer, Demonstrationer,
Supplicationer, Appellationer, _Pen._ the father, _Pen._ the sonne, _Pen.
Martin Iunior_, _Martin Martinus_, _Pen._ the scholler of Oxford to his
friend in Cambridge, _Pen. totum in toto, et totum in qualibet parte_,
was somtimes (if I be not deceiued) a scholler of that house in Cambridge
whereof D. _Per._ was maister. Where, what his estimation was, the scorn
wherin he liued can best relate. For the constitution of his bodie, it
was so cleane contrarie to all phisiognomie of fame, that a man wold haue
iudged by his face, God and nature deuising our disgrace, had enclosde
a close stoole in skinne, and set a serpentine soule, like a counterfet
diamond, more deepe in dong. Neither was this monster of Cracouia vnmarkt
from his bastardisme to mischiefe: but as he was begotten in adultery
and conceiued in the heate of lust, so was he brought into the world
on a tempestuous daie, and borne in that houre when all planets wer
opposite. Predestination yᵗ foresaw how crooked he should proue in his
waies, enioyned incest to spawne him splay-footed. Eternitie, that knew
how aukward he shoulde looke to all honesty, consulted with Conception
to make him squint-eied, and the deuill that discouered by the heauens
disposition on his birth-day, how great a lim of his kingdom was comming
into the world, prouided a rustie superficies wherinto wrapt him, as
soone as euer he was separated from his mothers wombe: in euerie part
whereof these words of blessing were most artificially engrauen, _Crine
ruber, niger ore, breuis pede, lumine lustus_. To leaue his natiuitie
to the Church porch, where the parish found him, and come to his riper
yeres, that now had learnd _Puerilis_, of the poore mans boy, and nere
as pretily entred in Aue Marie English, as any parish clarke in those
parts. I am to tel you how laudibly he behaued himselfe in Peterhouse,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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