Satires upon the Jesuits: Prologue

For who can longer hold? when every press,
The bar and pulpit too, has broke the peace?
When every scribbling fool at the alarms
Has drawn his pen, and rises up in arms?
And not a dull pretender of the town,
But vents his gall in pamphlet up and down?
When all with licence rail, and who will not,
Must be almost suspected of the plot,
And bring his zeal or else his parts in doubt?
In vain our preaching tribe attack the foes,
In vain their weak artillery oppose;
Mistaken honest men, who gravely blame,
And hope that gentle doctrine should reclaim.
Are texts, and such exploded trifles, fit
To impose, and sham upon a Jesuit?
Would they the dull old fishermen compare
With mighty Suarez, and great Escobar?
Such threadbare proofs, and stale authorities
May us, poor simple heretics, suffice;
But to a seared Ignatian's conscience,
Hardened, as his own face, with impudence,
Whose faith in contradiction bore, whom lies,
Nor nonsense, nor impossibilities,
Nor shame, nor death, nor damning can assail,
Not these mild fruitless methods will avail.
'Tis pointed satire, and the shafts of wit
For such a prize are the only weapons fit;
Nor needs there art, or genius here to use,
Where indignation can create a muse:
Should parts, and nature fail, yet very spite
Would make the arrantest Wild, or Wither write.
It is resolved: henceforth an endless war,
I and my muse with them, and theirs declare;
Whom neither open malice of the foes,
Nor private daggers, nor St. Omer's dose.
Nor all that Godfrey felt, or monarchs fear
Shall from my vowed and sworn revenge deter.
Sooner shall false court favourites prove just,
And faithful to their king's and country's trust;
Sooner shall they detect the tricks of state,
And knavery, suits, and bribes, and flattery hate;
Bawds shall turn nuns, salt duchesses grow chaste,
And paint, and pride, and lechery detest;
Popes shall for kings' supremacy decide,
And cardinals for Huguenots be tried;
Sooner (which is the greatest impossible)
Shall the vile brood of Loyola and hell
Give o'er to plot, be villains, and rebel;
Than I with utmost spite, and vengeance cease
To prosecute, and plague their cursed race.
The rage of poets damned, of women's pride
Contemned and scorned, or proffered lust denied;
The malice of religious angry zeal,
And all cashiered resenting statesmen feel;
What prompts dire hags in their own blood to write,
And sell their very souls to hell for spite;
All this urge on my rank envenomed spleen,
And with keen satire edge my stabbing pen,
That its each home-set thrust their blood may draw,
Each drop of ink like aquafortis gnaw.

Red hot with vengeance thus, I'll brand disgrace
So deep, no time shall e'er the marks deface;
Till my severe and exemplary doom
Spread wider than their guilt, till it become
More dreaded than the bar, and frighten worse
Than damning Pope's anathemas and curse.