When I at first your grave deportment saw, (I own my folly,) I was fill'd with awe; You spoke so warmly, and it seem'd so well, I should have thought it treason to rebel. Is it a wonder that a man like me Should such perfection in such teachers see - Nay, should conceive you sent from Heaven to brave The host of sin, and sinful souls to save? But as our reason wakes, our prospects clear, And failings, flaws, and blemishes appear. "When you were mounted in your rostrum high, We shrank beneath your tone, your frown, your eye: Then you beheld us abject, fallen, low, And felt your glory from our baseness grow; Touch'd by your words, I trembled like the rest, And my own vileness and your power confess'd: These, I exclaim'd, are men divine, and gazed On him who taught, delighted and amazed; Glad when he finish'd, if by chance he cast One look on such a sinner as he pass'd. "But when I view'd you in a clearer light, And saw the frail and carnal appetite; When at his humble pray'r, you deign'd to eat, Saints as you are, a civil sinner's meat; When, as you sat contented and at ease, Nibbling at leisure on the ducks and peas, And, pleased some comforts in such place to find, You could descend to be a little kind; And gave us hope in heaven there might be room For a few souls beside your own to come; While this world's good engaged your carnal view, And like a sinner you enjoy'd it too; All this perceiving, can you think it strange That change in you should work an equal change?" "Wretch that thou art," an elder cried, "and gone For everlasting!"--"Go thyself," said John; Depart this instant, let me hear no more; My house my castle is, and that my door." The hint they took, and from the door withdrew, And John to meeting bade a long adieu; Attached to business, he in time became A wealthy man of no inferior name. It seem'd, alas! in John's deluded sight, That all was wrong because not all was right: And when he found his teachers had their stains, Resentment and not reason broke his chains: Thus on his feelings he again relied, And never look'd to reason for his guide: Could he have wisely view'd the frailty shown, And rightly weigh'd their wanderings and his own, He might have known that men may be sincere, Though gay and feasting on the savoury cheer; That doctrines sound and sober they may teach, Who love to eat with all the glee they preach; Nay! who believe the duck, the grape, the pine, Were not intended for the dog and swine: But Dighton's hasty mind on every theme Ran from the truth, and rested in th' extreme: Flaws in his friends he found, and then withdrew (Vain of his knowledge) from their virtues too, Best of his books he loved the liberal kind That, if they improve not, still enlarge the mind; And found himself, with such advisers, free From a fix'd creed, as mind enlarged could be. His humble wife at these opinions sigh'd, But her he never heeded till she died: He then assented to a last request,