In that spacious HALL, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it,
driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their
might and main, the wrong way! ----kicking it _out_ of the great doors,
instead of _in_----and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree
of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been
originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind: ----perhaps a
more enormous mistake committed by them still------a litigated point
fairly hung up; ------for instance, Whether _John o’Nokes_ his nose
could stand in _Tom o’Stiles_ his face, without a trespass, or
not--rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with
the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might
have taken up as many months----and if carried on upon a military plan,
as your honours know an ACTION should be, with all the stratagems
practicable therein, ------such as feints, ----forced marches,
----surprizes----ambuscades----mask-batteries, and a thousand other
strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on
both sides------might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding
food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.
As for the Clergy ------No----if I say a word against them, I’ll be shot.
----I have no desire; --and besides, if I had --I durst not for my soul
touch upon the subject----with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the
condition I am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth,
to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account--and
therefore ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as
fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to
clear up----and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least
_wit_ are reported to be men of most judgment. ----But mark --I say,
_reported to be_--for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and
which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to
be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.
This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already
weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith
make appear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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