Exemplifying sacred mysteries by these absurd theorems is surely open to the severest satire; and to heighten his ridicule, the artist has, by adding three legs to the triangle, rendered it a complete trivet, and given to his jesuitical and theatrical declaimer (who, as his text intimates, "speaks as a fool") a pointed antithesis,--"If you do not believe in this trivet, you shall broil on that gridiron." Dangling on pegs around the pulpit, and to be exhibited as there shall be occasion, are six other puppets, copied from the absurd misrepresentations which some of the old masters have made of Adam and Eve, Peter and Paul, Moses and Aaron. Adam and Eve are a little caricatured, but evidently intended to hint at the dry designs of Albert Durer. Adam, though naked, has the air of a first-rate coxcomb. Eve, encircled with a zone of fig leaves, has neither grace in her step nor dignity in her gesture. Peter, displaying his ponderous key, and pulling off Paul's black periwig, is copied from Rembrandt, and to him referred in Hogarth's inscription. Paul, with a beard of Hudibrastic cut and dye, being low of stature, is elevated by high-heeled shoes, and armed with two swords: that in his hand, massy as the weapon wielded by John a Gaunt; the other, which, like the dagger of Hudibras, might serve as its page, tucked to his side. Moses and Aaron, one bearing the tables and the other an incense pot, are retreating to the other side. The Jewish lawgiver's having made many ordinances concerning food, may be hinted at by his being crowned with a porridge pot; the two feet may serve for horns. The bells on the hem of Aaron's garments are sufficiently obvious, and, as saith Master Thomas Goodwin, in his _Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites_--"By the bells are typed the sound of his doctrine." The nobleman in a pew beneath, unquestionably refers to some known character; but for whom it is meant I am unable to determine. He may either be a peer who was at that time very constant in his attendance at the Tabernacle, or a wolf who has found his way into the fold, and is prowling among the lambs of the flock. His face presents the index of a mind in which hypocrisy is united with another passion, and is in an eminent degree characteristic. The holy fervour[87] of the female, who, seduced by the tender touches of an earthly lover, lets her celestial model fall to the ground, is equally remarkable. A ragged figure[88] in the same pew, dropping his tears into a bottle, we know, by his rueful countenance, his handcuffs, and the letter T marked on his cheek, to be a repentant thief. A tattered and coal-black proselyte at the foot of the reading-desk, inspired with the epidemical enthusiasm of the place, is embracing the idolatrous image of her adoration, which in colour is similar to herself.