Dear catamite! who rules alone the state,
While monarch dozes on his unpropt height,
Silent, yet thoughtless, and secure of fate.
Could you but fee the fulfome hero led
By loathing vaffals to his noble bed!

In flannen robes the coughing ghost does walk,
And his mouth moates like cleaner breech of hawk.
Corruption, fpringing from his canker'd breast,

Furs up

the channel, and disturbs his reft.

With head propt up the bolster'd engine lies ;
If pillow flip afide, the monarch dies.

}

RELIGIO LAICI:
C I:

OR, A

LAYMAN'S FAITH.

ΑΝ EPISTLE.

THE PREFAC E.

A Poem with fo bold a title, and a name prefixed

from which the handling of fo ferious a fubject would not be expected, may reasonably oblige the author to fay fomewhat in defence, both of himself and of his undertaking. In the first place, if it be objected to me, that, being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myself with fpeculations, which belong to the profeffion of divinity; I could answer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of facred things; but, in the due fenfe of my own weakness and want of learning, I plead not this: I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confesfion of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, but wait on it with the reverence that becomes me at a distance. In the next place I will ingenuously confefs, that the helps I have used in this fmall treatise, were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the church of England; fo that the weapons with which I combat irreligion, are already confecrated; though I suppose they may be taken down

as

as lawfully as the fword of Goliah was by David, when
they are to be employed for the common cause against the
enemies of piety. I intend not by this to intitle them to
any of my errors, which yet I hope are only thofe of cha-
rity to mankind; and fuch as my own charity has cauf-
ed me to commit, that of others may more easily ex-
cufe. Being naturally inclined to fcepticifm in philo-
fophy, I have no reafon to impofe my opinions in a
fubject which is above it; but, whatever they are, I
fubmit them with all reverence to my mother church,
accounting them no further mine, than as they are au-
thorised, or at least uncondemned, by her. And, in-
doed, to fecure myself on this fide, I have used the ne-
ceflary precaution of fhewing this paper before it was
published to a judicious and learned friend, a man in-
defatigably zealous in the fervice of the church and

ftate;
and whofe writings have highly deserved of both.
He was pleased to approve the body of the difcourfe,
and I hope he is more my friend than to do it out of
complaifance: it is true he had too good a tafte to like
it all; and amongst some other faults recommended to
my fecond view, what I have written perhaps too bold-
ly on St. Athanafius, which he advised me wholly to
omit. I am fenfible enough that I had done more pru-
dently to have followed his opinion: but then I could
not have satisfied myself that I had done honeftly not
to have written what was my own. It has always been
my thought, that heathens who never did, nor without
miracle could, hear of the name of Chrift, were yet in
a poffibility of falvation. Neither will it enter eafily

into my belief, that before the coming of our Saviour the whole world, excepting only the Jewish nation, should lie under the inevitable neceffity of everlafting punishment, for want of that revelation, which was confined to so small a spot of ground as that of Palestine. Among the fons of Noah we read of one only who was accursed; and if a bleffing in the ripeness of time was referved for Japhet (of whofe progeny we are), it seems unaccountable to me, why fo many generations of the fame offspring, as preceded our Saviour in the flesh, fhould be all involved in one common condemnation, and yet that their pofterity should be entitled to the hopes of falvation: as if a bill of exclufion had passed only on the fathers, which debarred not the fons from their fucceffion. Or that fo many ages had been delivered over to hell, and fo many referved for heaven, and that the devil had the first choice, and God the next. Truly I am apt to think, that the revealed religion which was taught by Noah to all his sons, might continue for some ages in the whole pofterity. That afterwards it was included wholly in the family of Sem, is manifeft; but when the progenies of Cham and Japhet fwarmed into colonies, and thofe colonies were fubdivided into many others: in procefs of time their defcendants loft by little and little the primitive and purer rites of divine worship, retaining only the notion of one deity; to which fucceeding generations added others: for men took their degrees in thofe ages from conquerors to gods. Revelation being thus eclipfed to almost all mankind, the light of nature as the next in

dignity was fubftituted; and that is it which St. Paul concludes to be the rule of the heathens, and by which they are hereafter to be judged. If my fuppofition be true, then the confequence which I have affumed in my poem may be also true; namely, that Deifm, or the principles of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah and that our modern philofophers, nay and fome of our philofophifing divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our fouls, when they have maintained that, by their force, mankind has been able to find out that there is one fupreme agent or intellectual being, which we call God: that praife and prayer are his due worship; and the rest of those deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our difcourfe, I mean as fimply confidered, and without the benefit of divine illumination. So that we have not lifted up ourselves to God, by the weak pinions of our reason, but he has been pleased to defcend to us; and what Socrates faid of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philofophers of feveral nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the fun of it was fet in the race of Noah. That there is fomething above us, fome principle of motion, our reafon can apprehend, though it cannot difcover what it is by its own virtue. And indeed it is very improbable, that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any Being, not fo much as of our own, thould be able to find out by them, that fupreme nature, which we cannot

other