[370]"Next these, a troop of busy spirits press, Of little fortunes, and of conscience less; With them the tribe, whose luxury had drained Their banks, in former sequestrations gained; Who rich and great by past rebellions grew, And long to fish the troubled streams anew. Some, future hopes, some, present payment draws, To sell their conscience and espouse the cause. Such stipends those vile hirelings best befit, Priests without grace, and poets without wit. Shall that false Hebronite escape our curse, Judas,[371] that keeps the rebels' pension-purse; Judas, that pays the treason-writer's fee, Judas, that well deserves his name-sake's tree; Who at Jerusalem's own gates erects His college for a nursery of sects; Young prophets with an early care secures, And with the dung of his own arts manures! What have the men of Hebron[372] here to do? What part in Israel's promised land have you? Here Phaleg,[373] the lay-Hebronite, is come, 'Cause like the rest he could not live at home; Who from his own possessions could not drain An omer even of Hebronitish grain, Here struts it like a patriot, and talks high Of injured subjects, altered property; An emblem of that buzzing insect just, That mounts the wheel, and thinks she raises dust. Can dry bones live? or skeletons produce The vital warmth of cuckoldizing juice? Slim Phaleg could, and, at the table fed, Returned the grateful product to the bed. A waiting-man to travelling nobles chose, He his own laws would saucily impose, 'Till bastinadoed back again he went, To learn those manners he to teach was sent. Chastized he ought to have retreated home, But he reads politics to Absalom; For never Hebronite, though kicked and scorned, To his own country willingly returned. --But, leaving famished Phaleg to be fed, And to talk treason for his daily bread, Let Hebron, nay let hell, produce a man So made for mischief as Ben-Jochanan;[374] A Jew of humble parentage was he, By trade a Levite, though of low degree; His pride no higher than the desk aspired, But for the drudgery of priests was hired To read and pray in linen ephod brave, And pick up single shekels from the grave. Married at last, and finding charge come faster, He could not live by God, but changed his master; Inspired by want, was made a factious tool, They got a villain, and we lost a fool. Still violent, whatever cause he took, But most against the party he forsook: For renegadoes, who ne'er turn by halves, Are bound in conscience to be double knaves. So this prose-prophet took most monstrous pains, To let his masters see he earned his gains. But as the devil owes all his imps a shame, He chose the apostate[375] for his proper theme; With little pains he made the picture true,