This age knew better than to fast and pray. Good sense in sacred worship would appear, So to begin, as they might end the year. Such feats in former times had wrought the falls Of crowing chanticleers in cloistered walls. Expelled for this, and for their lands, they fled; } And sister Partlet, with her hooded head,[238] } Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed.} The way to win the restiff world to God, Was to lay by the disciplining rod, Unnatural fasts, and foreign forms of prayer; Religion frights us with a mein severe. 'Tis prudence to reform her into ease, And put her in undress, to make her please; A lively faith will bear aloft the mind, And leave the luggage of good works behind. Such doctrines in the Pigeon-house were taught; You need not ask how wondrously they wrought; But sure the common cry was all for these, Whose life and precepts both encouraged ease. Yet fearing those alluring baits might fail, And holy deeds o'er all their arts prevail, (For vice, though frontless, and of hardened face, Is daunted at the sight of awful grace,) An hideous figure of their foes they drew, } Nor lines, nor looks, nor shades, nor colours true; } And this grotesque design exposed to public view.[239]} One would have thought it some Egyptian piece,} With garden-gods, and barking deities, } More thick than Ptolemy has stuck the skies. } All so perverse a draught, so far unlike, It was no libel where it meant to strike. Yet still the daubing pleased, and great and small, To view the monster, crowded Pigeon-hall. There Chanticleer was drawn upon his knees, Adorning shrines, and stocks of sainted trees;[240] And by him, a mishapen, ugly race, The curse of God was seen on every face: No Holland emblem could that malice mend,[241] But still the worse the look, the fitter for a fiend. The master of the farm, displeased to find So much of rancour in so mild a kind, Enquired into the cause, and came to know, The passive church had struck the foremost blow; With groundless fears, and jealousies possest, } As if this troublesome intruding guest } Would drive the birds of Venus[242] from their nest.} A deed his inborn equity abhorred; But interest will not trust, though God should plight his word. A law, the source of many future harms, Had banished all the poultry from the farms; With loss of life, if any should be found To crow or peck on this forbidden ground. That bloody statute chiefly was designed For Chanticleer the white, of clergy kind;[243] But after-malice did not long forget The lay that wore the robe and coronet.[244] For them, for their inferiors and allies, Their foes a deadly Shibboleth devise; By which unrighteously it was decreed, }