As I remember, said the sober Hind, Those toils were for your own dear self design'd, As well as me, and with the self-same throw, 20 To catch the quarry and the vermin too. (Forgive the slanderous tongues that call'd you so.) Howe'er you take it now, the common cry Then ran you down for your rank loyalty. Besides, in Popery they thought you nursed, As evil tongues will ever speak the worst, Because some forms, and ceremonies some You kept, and stood in the main question dumb. Dumb you were born indeed; but thinking long The Test[111] it seems at last has loosed your tongue. 30 And to explain what your forefathers meant, By real presence in the sacrament, After long fencing push'd against the wall. Your salvo comes, that he's not there at all: There changed your faith, and what may change may fall. Who can believe what varies every day, Nor ever was, nor will be at a stay? Tortures may force the tongue untruths to tell, And I ne'er own'd myself infallible, Replied the Panther: grant such presence were, 40 Yet in your sense I never own'd it there. A real virtue we by faith receive, And that we in the sacrament believe. Then, said the Hind, as you the matter state, Not only Jesuits can equivocate; For real, as you now the word expound, From solid substance dwindles to a sound. Methinks an Æsop's fable you repeat; You know who took the shadow for the meat: Your Church's substance thus you change at will, 50 And yet retain your former figure still. I freely grant you spoke to save your life; For then you lay beneath the butcher's knife. Long time you fought, redoubled battery bore, But, after all, against yourself you swore; Your former self: for every hour your form Is chopp'd and changed, like winds before a storm. Thus fear and interest will prevail with some; For all have not the gift of martyrdom. The Panther grinn'd at this, and thus replied: 60 That men may err was never yet denied. But, if that common principle be true, The canon, dame, is levell'd full at you. But, shunning long disputes, I fain would see That wondrous wight Infallibility. Is he from Heaven, this mighty champion, come; Or lodged below in subterranean Rome? First, seat him somewhere, and derive his race, Or else conclude that nothing has no place.