A MUZZLE FOR CERBERUS, and his three Whelps Mercurius Elenticus, Bellicus, and Melancholicus: Barking against Patriots & Martialists, in the present reign of their unwormed rage. With Critical reflections, on the revolt of Inchequin in Ireland. By Mercurio-Mastix Hibernicus. To every unpartial Reader, Clear and Candid, without prejudicated Opinion. OH! be not prepossessed (as much I fear) With a forestalled opinion, as no ear, Nor eye to lend, this Antidote swift flying On paper wings, against three Mercuries lying: (For in all books, prejudicated opinions, Do bane the best of all the Muse's Minions.) Let not thy wits in wild-goose chase so wander, As not to tract the paths of Alexander. Who ever such unpartial Justice used, To keep one ear for him who was accused. As a wise man, hear then both parties speak: So shalt thou try Wolves bark, yea Rats who squeak, From bleats of Lambs, from moans of mournful Doves. Pure Gold from tinkling brass, the touchstone proves. When Steeles and Flints be smit, the fire comes forth, So in cross tones, the truth here vents true worth. London Printed for R. Smithurst, and are to be sold near Hosier-Lane, 1648: In laudem Authoris, Et in fraudem derisoris. THanks to thy pains: I speak it to thy praise, I ne'er read moe strong lines, spun in two days, So many quoted Authors, mixed with wit And judgement, in short space, I scarce viewed yet. Thy learned truth, the lying spirit hath shamed, Of a poor sneak, not worthy to be named: I put thee on this task; thou hast repelled them, In forty hours, thy night or days pains quelled them. In truth I do not flatter thee at all, Awalking Library, if I thee call. It's fit thy meritting worth should be rewarded, And thy strong active parts and pains regarded. If any Whale or Otter vent, the like To this, thy pen-spear, his fond head can strike. M. J. AS an Antidote against Cavilling Cavilliering exception, ready to find a knot in a straight rush, or as Mice and Rats in walls, and Apes and Monkeys in pure lawns, to make or rend holes where they find none; lest I mistake in the number of these railing Rabshakehs: I must confess, I am a doubting Sceptic, and an unresolved Didimist, whether only one furious fantastic make his three fools bolts which he throws (as sometimes Thirsites against Ulysses, Semei against David, Rabshakeh against Hezekias, Scopius against King James, and Endemon or Cacodaemon, against our worthiest Peers and Church lights) in the very face of the Parliamentary Patritians of our state, and against the Militia in his malitia flying bird alone, as an individuum vagum, or a Woodcock in a mist of ignorance; or rather like one Goliath defying the host of Israel, it being something probable that here we find the tongue and tooth but of one Cerberus with three heads, or of one monstrous Chimaera in three shapes; like one echo (composed like this wordy work of wind and air) oft resonating and redoubling three or four sounds, as one babbling Battus and verbalist, three or four words to as small purpose, as the sounding of an empty Hogshead: Or that there be three Rakehells twisting and twining this their rope Rhetoric to choke or strangle our best Patriots, with their three paper cords, as the Turkish mutes oft the best of Pashas with their halters, at the mere lust for Law of their tyrannising Ottomans: but the matter is but like a matter of Moonshine in the water, whether one Mooncalf here bleat in three libels, one Ass brey, one Wolf howl, and one Owl houte against the shining Sun of Magistracy and Ministry, high Court and Camp; or there be three Curs all barking, or three Mastive dogs, like Butcher's dogs with bloody mouths, biting and snarling at emulated Supremacy; as like one another in their stigmatising stile, as John a Nokes in the same case and cause to John a Styles; or as a Snake to Snake, Serpent to Serpent, Viper to Viper, all stinging the breasts that have bred them, and fed them. All three (if three) led like Ahabs false Prophets in their vain prognostics by one deluding spirit, all birds of one black & bloody feather, all frogs croaking one tone out of the infernal pit; all broken bells better for hanging, ringing of the same peal in their large and lose appeals (like Libertines) from all Parliamentary Laws; all like Armenian Dragons spitting fire, with tongues set on fire by hell, more flamivorous than the Northern Hecla, the Sicilian Aeina, or that Vesuvus which choked the good Patriot Pliny; all like Simeon and Levi brethren in iniquity, never a barrel better Herring, all fellows well met at football, even to make footballs (if cursed cows like Jezabel one against Elias, and the Arrians against Athanasius had not short horns) even of our wisest and worthiest heads, even such spurned Bulls as cruel Scylla made of the head of Matius, Mark Anthony of the head of Tully that eloquent speaker, and ungrateful Ptolemy and Scep●●nius the head of their best deserving friend undaunted Pompey; but if they plead that they know not one another: Sure if similitude be the cause of love, and the adamant of friendship, they may be acquainted without a couple of Capons, as soon as the Devil with the Collier, they are so like, that they cannot but say (when they meet at Daws cross, or in Knave's alley, or in Toss-pot alley, like kind Poetasters or pot tasters) ego novi sinonem & sinon novit me; its merry when knaves meet, to keep Hillary Term, Cicada, Cicadae, Chara, one Grasshopper and Creckit cleats to another mulus mulum scabit, one scabbed mule knaps another, & graculus assidit graculo, one jaw jangles with another; we sing all one song, though clean out of tune, as that ungrateful scabgooke; the Cuckoo in June, after she have torn (like our Church and State Vipers) the kind bird who bred her and fed her: yea I say more, though these three junior Rabshekahs, should be as snarling heretofore one against another as hounds in a kennel, or in couples, yet as they are united Nimrods' in hunting to the very death, if they could, the most honourable and noble blood which runs in the veins of both Houses, with bloody pens and tongues (till they get cain's sword, and Herod's axe, for all innocuous john's, Naboths and Abel's) me thinks eo nomine, even this tye of fraternity in villainy, should reconcile them, as much as ever Herod and Pilate against Christ. Ephraim and Manasses against Judah, Jesuits, Priests, and Friars, against true Protestants, Antinomians, Socinians, Familists, Arminians, and other Heretics, all against the orthodox and true believers, how ever different all amongst themselves, like the heads of the serpent Amphis●ena, one fight against another (as indeed Bees agree together in one hive, Pismires in one mossy hill; yea sevis inter se convenit ursis, Bears in one cave; Foxes in woods, yea in Towns, in sheep's clothing; in Cities in fox fur gowns, yet all against innocent Lambs) as Devils agree together in one hell, and their agents, and Jesuitized, Achitophilized, Hammanized, Papized, Athized working tools on earth, as Tobiah the Ammonite, and Sanballat the Horonite, and Geshem the Arabian against our Ezraes and Nebemiahs & the Elders of Israel, to hinder the re-edifying of our Jerusalem, the Reformation of Religion, and the repairing, & purging of our Temples, Neb. 2. 19 & 6. 2. as the Scribes and Pharisees, and Saduces, and Herodians, still against Christ and his Disciples, his true Ministers and his Messengers, as the Syrians, the Ammonites, and the Moabites, against every zealous Jehosaphat, 2 Chr 20. 2. as the Elders of the people, the Priests, and my Lord Pashur whilom against Jeremy, to imprison his body, to smite him with the tongue, and not to hearken to his words, Jer. 18. 18. (more then schismatics, Episcopists, and deaf adders now, to such true Seers, and Prophets, as God hath sent and set amongst us) all that bear evil unto Zion, and that hate to be reform, Ps. 50. now being tied and combined together like Sampsons' foxes, with firebrands in their tails and in their tongues too, to fire our Church and State in new raised combustions, as we may see the nature of every other Fox and Malignant wolf in the Church even in these now, who by their lewd Libels, and poisonous Pamphlets, have cast aspersions both upon our Senators and Synod, as foul as false, to bring them in contempt with the fluctuate and credulous mutable multitude, who will believe their ears in a manner before their eyes, and take up aught like a ball at rebound, and snug in any scandal, chief against great men and good men their superiors, though they knew the Devil were the author of it, or his hell hatched Seminaries, like these lying Mercuries: with whom to grapple a little closer. First, I wonder they blush not, as they would, if they had not impudent harlot's brows of brass, and foreheads of iron, to stumble so foul at the threshold (as Crassus did when he went his fatal expedition against the Parthians, and Caesar to the Senate where he was stabbed, even in the Title wherewith they christened the spurious brats of their brains with the name of Mercury, which Mercury if we believe Poets or Historians, was as very a Thief, as ●●yron, or Ca●us, or our English Luke Hutton and Mannering, or any of our Robcarriers in these late wars (though now of the Hastings, deserving a Newcastle) with all he was a cheater, and a liar, a cozener, and an imposter, like the Turkish Mahomet, the Spanish Gusman, Lazarillo de Tormes, and our most nimble Troynovant City Sinon's, besides he was euripus homo a wavering wimble, a fluctuate fellow, an unconstant weathercock, suited as a temporizer for all persons and places, as the planet Mercury is said to be good with the good, and bad with the bad, like our Mercurialized newters, Disciples with Disciples, and Traitors with Pharisees, as once Judas; soft wax fit for any impression, and white paper fit for any print, as Chameleons for any colour but white (being every thing but honest.) Fourthly, as Hermes was one of the names of Mercury, joined with Aphrodite, signifying the Sea foam, one of the Epithets of Venus, there was produced a kind of masculine feminine monster, called Hermaphrodite (like some Harres and Hienaes') neither male, nor female, but both, as these our Mercuries are: as we say of archized Buffoons and Tarltonists, neither knaves, nor fools, but both; as a mule is neither an Horse nor an Ass, but both; a Cynecepholist neither Ape nor Dog, but both; a Meermaid neither fish nor flesh, but both; mulier formosa superne desine as in piscem: thus like some Popes in their own usurped names, these Chaiphasses or Caitiffs, have prophesied trulier of themselves than they witted; Naball is a name, and folly is in it; and Mercury is their name, and lying, and leizing, and colouging, and rouging, and dissembling is in it, as in that grand Impostor the Egyptian Moses, and Bencosba the son of lying in Josephus, and in these Pseudo Princes recorded in the same Josephus, lib. 17. cap. 14. antiq. and in Melancton Chronicle lib. 4: p. 358. and in Tacitus lib. 18. pag. 587. and in Munster's Cosmography pag. 171. who took upon them the names of great Potentates, though they were but Peasants, Se conveniunt rebus nomina sepe suis, as which Resetters, Thiefs have sympathies, so to their names answer our Mercuries. Lastly, as Mercury an Outlandish drug, is as rank poison as either Ratsbaine or Henbane, or Cicuta, or Bulls-blood that poisoned Themistocles, or any other poisons not worth naming, by which the Athenians poisoned Socrates and Photion, Queen Elinor, fair Rosamond, the Roman Calphurinus his sleeping wives, and Pope Alexander and his Bastard Borgia themselves, instead of some Cardinals: so there is as much tongue-venome and poison dropped from the pens of these our lying libelling Mercuries, as there were diseases in the opened ●anidraes box, or armed Greeks' in the Trojan horse to the intended ruination of all true Trojans, loyal Patricians in the Senate, and godly well-affected Ministers in the Synod: yea I add more, As Mercury is a poisoned drug, though enclosed in a gaudy Apothecary's box, or given like Jaels' butter to Sicera in a Lordly dish; or in the Sacramental bread or wine, as the Monks once so poisoned King John of England, and Henry the seventh, an Emperor of Germany; So these and such like mercurialized Scycophants, how did they flatter regality, and soothe it up to an unlimited transcendency, in a Persian and Turkish trampling upon all Laws human, divine, natural, national, and municipal, being like Craterus rather friends to Alexander's fortunes as a King, then to his person like Ephestion; yet for all their daubings, and sowing cushions under their elbows, like their Court Chaplains, they give them but poisoned pills in sugar: Joabs' kisses, Judasses', Hail Master, and Ravillacks Jesuitized cringes, with a rotten heart, and oft a truculent hand; they do but pave their way, as Damocles to Dionysius to injustice, cruelty, and usurpation, yea to their own acted Tragedies, as with oil and butter; they do but hang them (as once Darius had prepared) with golden halters, stab them as with Heliogabulus his golden knives, sting them as the Serpent Tarantula lurking in green grass till they die laughing, claw them as Tigers to mollify them to themselves, & to put the spur of oppression to all others; as Patritius in his second Book of a Kingdom, tit. 1. pag. 82. and he that writes the Political Courtier, pag. 82. resolve their own questions? What made Nero so well educated by Seneca, so cruel? Caesar such an usurping Rebel against his own Country? Rehoboam so stern and austere? Tygranes the King of Pontus so tyrannical, ere the Romans kerbed him: in one word, their verdict is to every query, adulatio, adulatio, flattery, flattery? Mercurialized flattery (which though at first, like sweet poisons, it be pleasing to the , yet at last, as Solomon speaks of wine and women, Prov. 9 17. 18. & cap. 23. 32. it stings like a Serpent and bites like an Adder, which caused Sigismond the Emperor, as Melancton hath it in his Chronicles (lib. 5. pag. 630.) to hit a flatterer a good box on the ear, with this memento, Cur me mordes, why dost thou by't me, and caused Zerpes' saith Strigellus in his Chronicles part. 2. pag. 119. to desire Demaratus a wise Counsellor ever to speak to him, rather vera, things that might profit him, then jucunda, delightsome things to please him: This caused also Attila the King of the Huns, to cast some scycophantizing Poems of the Portuguese Poet Marulus into the fire, in which he had too hyperbolically extolled him: Antigonus for the same cause, saith Tholosanus in his Commonwealth, lib. 6. cap. 12. pag. 339. distasting and detesting the flaughing Poems of Hermoditus, because he would have made him (as they some Gnatonists, Alexander) the son of Jupiter, and si quid mea carmina possunt: if I might be held wise or worthy enough to censure, our Mendatious and malignant Mercuries mixed with saturnal spirits, which cast aspersions on our state Ephorists and Patriots as black as their ink, or that which the fish Scilopendra vomits out to blunder oft, and to trouble clean waters; and these Court holy waters more poisonous than those of the Stygian lake, which they sprinkle upon a Princely Monarchy, to do after the Persian Law, quod libet, licet, every thing, or any thing, without being questioned, Pope like, with cur ita facis, why doth it so? or without such relation to counsel and counsellors (as the best temperamentum ad Pondus, in the body Politic) as the hot Hart (an emblem of regality) hath reference to the bellows of the lungs to blow upon it, and to cool it: I say, I would have all such Mercurialized guilded paper poisons, merely consumed by Tobacco pipes, like Tobacco, to smoke, or like the flattering Courtier Thurinus by smoke, as merely consecrated to Vulcan; or in the best use, if reprieved: I would have them employed by some Chandelours to stop Mustard-pots; or by monsieur A-jaix, as harrington's Satyrs have metamorphized him. Withal I further expostulate with my mercenary Mercury, or monsieur Mendax, why he, or any of his fraternity, was so long from the 10, 11, and 12, to the 17, 18, 19 of April in weaving a poor spider's web or Arachnees clew out of their own envenomed bowels, to catch poor credulous plebeian flesh fleas; or rather in hatching of a wind egg or two, which by the incubation of some Toads, as poisonous as themselves, may bring forth Cockatrices; egregiam certe laudem & spolia ampla tulisti, every one of you have stoutly lied and vied for the whetstone: and after some pumping of your hidebound genius, with Juno Lucina fer opem, perturiunt montes, nascitur riduculus mus, you have brought forth a mouse to get into the Trunks of Alephants, or rather a black Rat to gnaw all Parliamentary papers and edicts; yet I prophesy, that if you be once catcht out of your lurking holes, and Cacus dens, where you securely croak (as all Schismatical frogs) in corners, we have state storks would catch you by the crags, and Lionized Cats, would clapperclaw you till you squeaked; and perhaps you may at last find by woeful experience, that you may sigh or sing Ovid's Elegiackes, with ingenio perii; your own wits may be your own woes, as Cambyses and Saul were slain with their own swords; as Adonijah spoke words, and a Lieutenant of the Tower writ lines, like Urias his letters, to their own deaths; so your own pens (with propriis configimur pennis) with which you prick and pierce our Senators, as with the sharpened quills of Porcupines, may pierce yourselves; as it's noted that Cassius and Brutus, killed themselves with those very swords which they drew against Caesar; it may be you may know what it is to pulLions by the beard; you may buy repentance as dear by your abused wickedwits spurted (as mad dogs their slavers, as enraged Boars their froth, and horses their foams) in the very faces of disgraced Grandees; as Antiphon bought his bold jest broken upon Dionysius which cost him his head; or as Anaxarchus bought his sarcismes cast upon Anacreon, which afterwards brayed him in a mortar; as Pantaleon was cast into a dark cave, and fed with the bread of affliction to his dying day for his base aspersions cast upon Arsinoe the wife of Lysimachus. No less tragical were the Iromes which some of the Nobles of Arragon spurted on Ranimirus their King, recalled out of a Monastery, which cost no less than eleven of them their lives, with this caveat, ignor at vulpecula, cum quo ludat, the Fox knows not with whom he plays when he is too bold with the Lion, as the tongue tragedies of these and many more, you may see writ in their own blood (as yours may be in time) if you have either will to read them, or skill to understand them, largely historified by Collenutius in his first book of the History of Naples p. 20. by Hagaceus in his Bohemian Chronicle, part. 2. pag. 171. by Strigellius upon Justin. pag. 169. by Woffius in his memorables Tom. 1. pag. 359. chief by Erasmus in his Apothegms in his sixth book, fol. 478, 479. sc. 548, 549, and in his 7 book fol. 633. to all whom their own licentious and scurrilous wits, unguided like Bellirophus horses, without the Minerva's bridle of wisdom, were as fatal and tragical, as the horse of Sejanus was to Cassius and Tolobella, and to every one of his Masters, and the toulouse gold to every one that possessed and plundered it, in whose broken glasses you may see so far your own faces; that as generous spirits (like Alexander in pardoning King Porus, and in killing audacious Clitus and too bold Calisthenes) are always more exasperated with words then with swords, and will rather pardon Targets against them then tongues; so you may at last come to buy your impetuous scurrility in your scandalum magnatum in the highest degree, as dear as Semei his reviling of David, 2 Sam. 16. as Ra●shekah his rail against Ezekias, 2 Kin. 19 as Michol her mockings of her royal husband, 2 Sam. 6. as Ishmael and Hagar their profane scoffs against Isaac▪ Gen. 21. yea as copious as I have heard his invectives against a Platonical Rex pacificus, revenged by an English Heroes; or as those brats of Bethlehem brought their hereditary scurrilous taunts against that Round-head, sound-head Elisha, torn (as their tongues had torn him) by She-bears in a just retaliated vengeance, 2 King. 2. such Curs as you bawling so long against Lions, and such Crows as you, chattering so long against incensed Eagles, that they may lacerate and tear you as Hercules did Ops, since patientia lae sa furor, the most noble and masculine patience abused turns into rage, as sweet wine into sour vinegar; even a patiented Abner too far provoked beyond his temper may smite with his sharp spear a scurrilous Hazael, whose lose tongue runs swifter than his heels, 2 Sam. 2. 23. and for your parts, were you known, I am persuaded as you speak and write what you will, you should suffer what you would not, nemesis a Tergo, a just revenge, dogs and haunts your unjust railing, like Brutus his ghost, you have a Cerberus that barks within you, called conscience, if it be not seared and cauterised, that multa miser timeo, quia seri multa proterve. Needs must I fear to suffer much ere long, Since against earthly Gods raged hath my tongue. I have brought on me earth, and Heaven's ire, By my inflamed tongue, with hell's hot fire. In Phlegeton my tongue must feel most flames, Because it here hath scorched most noble names. Poena culpa proportionata. My punishment shall answer my demerit, When I belch out my Lucianized spirit. Since against Christ, and all his Saints I fought, My wage must suit the work that I have wrought. As I have acted parts of Porphi●ie, And Julian, their hell still gapes for me. In the mean space, quod defertur non aufertur, adest Rammisia nemesis, Thy tongue deviseth mischief like a sharp raizour, working deceitfully; Thou lovest evil more then good, and lying rather then to speak righteousness; Thou lovest all deceiving words, Oh thou deceitful tongue, God shall likewise for ever destroy thee, he shall take thee away and pluck thee out of thy dwelling house, and out of the land of the living; the righteous also shall see and fear, and laugh at thee, Psal. 52, 53. 4, 5, 6. The verdict is past, the decree thou seest is gone out like the decrees of the Medes and Persians from the upper house of Heaven, how ere thou slight, vilify and nullify this lower house on earth, where God is terrible in the assembly of his Saints, both in the Senate and the Synod: but thou sayest, quid haec ad rome bum, what is this to sly Mercury, thou scofest them as bruta fulmina, squibs and fireworks, lightning and thunder, without bolts, and sleights the decrees of God, as much as of our terrestrial Gods, yea, as over shoes, over boots, adding thirst to drunkenness, the Cain-like defence of the sin to the offence, thou with a brazen brow pleads recte fecisti; like Saul, that thou hast said and done all well, I Sam. 15. though mors in olla, death be in the ink pot, & in penna Gehenna, hell be in the pen (as in the sanguinnolent letters once of Ahab and Jezabel against Naboth, 1 King. 21. 6. of the Scribes and Pharisees against the primative Saints, Acts 9 2, 3. of that accursed Court Comet Hamman, against the Jews, Hester 6. and (as some say, aut mentiuntur poëtae) out of the English Court Frenchified into Ireland, died red with the blood of a C. and so thousand Protestants) yet Matchiavillian Mercury like Solomon's Harlot wipes his mouth, and saith, he hath not sinned; he presents like some Churchwardens once omnia bene all is well on his part, he finds an ignoramus in himself of any delinquency against the Parliament, he is not lose i'th' fast, he will stand stiffly to his tackling, and like Tom tell troth, justify what he hath said, as a plain Macedonian, calling a spaid, a spaid; he is not bird-mouthed, he will say more; but to stop his mouth with this bone to gnaw on, or choke-pear, and to cope up this Bear with this muzzle: how is it then, that like the Persians and our wild vild Irish, he throws his poisoned darts and runs away? how is it that after crowing before the victory, this Craven flies the pit (as the French coward once in a duel from the Irish Curtsy) ere ever struck be given? how is it that he plays least in sight, walks by owl-light, and keeps hearts in Tenebris? how is it that like a wagtail, a Scarabaean flea, or a Gentleman in debt, he skips here and there, as a squirrel in a tree, we know not how to seize on him; nay as though he had Gyges his ring, walking invisibly? how is it that we cannot find him? how is it that he dare not father his bastard-lyes, of which his corrupt heart was the mother, his tongue the midwife, and the wicked world (now fostering all villainy) the nurse; sure truth seeks no corners: And if Mercury reply that I am an Anomist as well as he, and so retort upon me medice cura teipsum, to cure myself in what I think him diseased; I tell him impar congressus; there is not the like case nor cause: for first, its probable I am known, or may be ex consequenti, as Hercules his proportion by his foot, and the Lion by his paw, so far as I can scarce be concealed, if I would live, lurk, and sleep in a warm skin. Secondly, why should I reveal myself to an Antagonist? I know not against whose imaginary person to fight, I should but beat the air, sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind: but let Mr. Mercury be Mercury sublimating, or- Mercurius sublimus, hold up his head like a man; sub dio, sub jove f●igus, let him not as the woodcock from the fouler, or the Ass from the Wolf, hid his head in a bush; or as the Panther hides his horrid head from the lesser beasts till he devour them, showing them only his speckled, and spotted body, and then I will so show myself in displayed colours, that we will run at Tilt, till I hope to unhorsed him, though perhaps I shall never un-Asse him, making himself here a wicked witty fool in Print, a mere As in presenti, that to please his Malignant masters, he may have As in futuro, so many yellow dusted studs, as may trap him, like Apuleius his golden Ass, being as yet but mere Eu●nanus his Ass, feigning to roar in a Lion's skin, or a sympathising foal of Balaams' Ass boldly kicking both at Prophets and Patritians, to kick both out of Ecclesiastical and secular seats. But I have curried this Ass enough with my toothed pen in general satirizing, only to make him as humble as that Ass who only of irrationals carried Christ (as Saint Christopher and his Virgin mother of rationals) being for the present as proud in his imaginary carrying of Regality on his back to Westminster, as that Ass was in the Poet, which carried the goddess Isis; or that Mule in the French Stevens Apology, who being borrowed of a Lady, to carry a Pope, would never suffer any to bestride her after, but the Pope, as though she had been a Beucephalus, and her carriage an Alexander. But let us hear the Mercurialized Ass (in his own conceit, tanquam Asinus ad Liram, or Asinus ad Tribunal) brey in his own dialect, as fare from the wit of a true Mercury indeed, Nuncius deorum▪ who charmed Argus, or of Mercurius Trismegistus, who was the Legifer of the Aegrohans, as Thirsites is fare from the wit of an Ulysses, or wisdom of Nestor, or Bavius and Mevius from the sweet numbers▪ of Virgil and Ovid; but listen how he gins, as the Irish, with an▪ O hone, like a Bittern and dying Hena. With a groan, O, he cries, Sick, sick, sick. Alas! what's the matter? some Gallienist or Paracelsian soon to▪ cast his water, or some Jupiter menecrates to save himself, we lose a most precious done quipot, whose wits sparkle like salt in the fire, and make such pastime-passing measure, as there needs no other fool nor fiddler where he comes: But what's his sickness, sure he hath▪ took no surfeit, like his Idolized Prelates of slit noses and cropped ears, whose heads have been ever since wrapped with rend rotchets; nor is he pained with the stone in his Pharoized heart, for that as white powder and sulfuration kills without noise; but its probable by his hot mouth and his furred tongue that had need be scaped by some Skinner, it is so foul, that his blood is wondrously distempered in the burning favour of some raging lust: I see by his colour he is troubled with a very bad liver, and I smell by the vapours of his stinking breath, blasting even pure white paper, much more Patutians, that he hath very rotten lungs; and without question he is much troubled with the spleen, that Epidemical disease spreads further than any plague amongst all his fellows, from all parts of the land, running as frenzy and Popery in a blood, as an hereditary disease amongst them; or it may be this Bacchanalean, is top or tap heavy, he hath wanted sleep so long, that he gins to rave or talk idly, he had need have some poppy, opium, or dormitory drug, or Hellibore to restore him to his right wits. Oh, but he is sicker than he was, call in neighbours, hold up his head, he gins to parbreak his mind in a dog-sicke drunken vomit, a bosom and a bowl presently, or a Scavinger, up with it man, if it be but a gallon it will ease thy stomach; I doubt he will disgorge his very gall, there comes matter from him as black as ink, as poisonous as Sodoms' lake, which infects the fish thrown in it, and the birds which fly over it. The only way to cure him throughly now, that he casts naturally, and as physically as any hawk (since he still raves) is to phlebotomize him in his vain veins, and to make an incision into his scull (perhaps there may fly out●dotterils, widgyns, and woodcocks, and to take out his brains and well washed with holy water, and stopped like a calf's head with salt and sage, so stitch it up again with some solid counsel, he may come to be as sound both in body and brain, as the eight wise men, or a gull of Gotham, capable to be vicar of all fools, chief if he be dieted daily with Rew, and Thrisis and True love, and Hearts-ease, and All heal, alias patience, and rubbed over a while with unguentum baccalinum, or Crabtree oil in Bedlam, or Bridewell, he may yet live many a fair day, to come to the office of Mr. of Revels or Rebels, or Lord of misrule: but he is not only sick himself, as I gather by his groaning O: and by the symptoms of his diseases, dropped even from his polluted pen, but as though this Mountebank quacksalver, or some of his fellow Empirics, pitied them, or could prescribe their cure, he tells us that the Saints are sick, and he disturbs their distempers with more distemper in himself (as Diogenes once trampled Plato's pride with his dirty feet in greater pride) that the Saints are sick I marvel not, yea sick to the very heart, mourning like Doves in the desert, and Pelicans in the wilderness, yea washing their very couches with tears, and their beds with weeping, for their own sins, and the sins and sufferings of the times, as did David, Hezekias, Lot, Jeremy, Ezra, Nehemiah, and other holy mourners in Zion, in their days, Psal. 6. Psal. 38. Psal. 51. 2 King. 20. Esay 38. 2 Pet. 2. Nehem. 1. Ezra 10. Jer. 9 1. as indeed they have now more cause than ever to be soul-sick, and to weep streams of blood for the slain of the people both corporeally and spiritually; to see still the distempers of these unjointed cuperate, bleeding, if not last breathing, Antipodized times, in which the whole head is sick in the body Political, and the heart heavy; yea from the crown of the head, to the sole of the foot, nothing but wounds, blains and putrefactions, Esa 1. 6. and likely to mend (like winter ways, sour Ale in summer, rotten apples, and old gangreen ulcers) still worse and worse, chief when the State Physicians are obstructed in their cures by such rash and rude Empirics as himself, who all infected as with the King's evil, from Dan to Beershebah, would so cure Church and State, by reducing again Papized, Diotrephian, domineering Episcopacy, without any modification, as by prosecuting in statu quo prius, Altar bowing, and turning all Religion like▪ bottle Ale into frothy Ceremonies, drawing in so, perverted Popery by Hispaniolized and Frenchified stratagems, as by head and shoulders (as Talus beasts into his den) by bringing upon us downright Popery, to the probable more than Parisian Portuguese, Merindolian, and Queen Mary's Mass massacring of our bodies, to the loss of Religion, the life of our souls, by a conflagration, and a Phaetonian confusion of all; he and his Parliamentary antagonists, would so bring us peace with loss of grace: as the sons of Brutus brought peace to themselves and Rome, in sweeting to bring in the banished Taraquins; or as the Duke de Alva, that Stork amongst Belgic frogs, brought peace to the Netherlands, in labouring with Cardinal Greenvill to plant (with Bishops) the Spanish Inquisition; or as the Macedonian Philip, proffered peace to the Athenians upon the delivery of their City Atlas, (the Speaker in their Parliament) Demosthenes; which was as he told them, parallel to the Wolves, who would swear peace and truce with the Shepherds, upon condition they would hang up all their dogs, the keepers of them, and of their flocks. Alas poor Quacksalvers, you knew much the true cause of our war, or cause or cure for grace and peace, as if you should cure an ulcerous rankling wound with oils of mace or vitruo, without cutting out the poisoned bullet: you are so drunk with wine and wrath, or prejudicated opinion, as Crows with vomiting nuts, that you discern of things that differ, as blind men of colours, yea betwixt transcendent regality, and legality (keeping it Sealike within its bounds and limits) as Midas with his Ass' ears, betwixt Pan's harsh and untuned pipe, and Apollo's harmonious lute. This mental madness, and intoxication of French Philters makes Mercury smile (to give you his Rhymes without reason) to see our Senators cursed plots should want success, and leave them sots; in which to give him a Rowland for his Oliver, and to pen prick this windy bladder, or watery bubble, lest he swell too big, even till he burst like the fabled frog. WHat a Simplician, what a Sot, Have I to grapple with, God wots? By what inventions, wiles, and strains, Shall I beat wit into his brains? With what Collirium Celidine, Shall I rub, scrub his dazzled eyen? Where shall I beg, or buy in sadness, Right Hellibore to cure this madness. Of this unwormed, mouth-foaming Cur, Who foists, and keeps a stinking stir. As Cerberus his fiercest whelp, Who against Sun and Moon doth yelp; Our Planets, and our fixed Stars, As Centaur's bold, once managed Wars 'Gainst Heaven: and Pelion piled high On Ossa, for to scale the sky: How this mad head, malignant heart Re-acts again, each furious part Of Ajax, Hercules' enraged, And Bajazet in irons caged: Who like that demonaick Saul Just Jonathans' would nail tothth' wall; Our Davids, our sage Senators kill, And stab with his Goose (poisoned) quill; That to a Pistol turns his pen To shoot to death out Statized men. Now Cyclopst, like blind Polypheme, Ulysses doth no more esteem, Then a Phlebeian Corrydon, Who woolfe-like would gnaw on his bone: What Orphean lyre, can charm brute blocks, More than wild Tiger's Panthers fox: When they a quarrel mean to pick, Both sheep and shepherd's blood to lick: For who, but an incarnate devil, A villainy trained and fleshed in evil, Like Jaques Clement, Ravillack, Faux Lopus, worst of all the pack, Of Papized Serpents, subtle snakes, Fresh spawned from the stygian lakes, Would make such dire and damned constructions, That they should be the State's destructions, Who are State Decians, Photions', Horatians, Scipios, Fabians; Yea the King's friends, and in their wars Foes to his Gavestons, Hammans, Cars; With all props to our Church's vines For falling, rotting, it declines To dregs of Papal superstition, The worst of any vines condition; To call such Cato's, Catelines, Hannibal's, our Hectors in base lines; Heretics, and Schismatics, our Divines, Orthodox in Synod, or dry vines; Our Patriots, Pirates, pilate's, Traitors, Tymous misanthropists, Prince-haters; Our strongest Pillars, Caterpillars, Cannibals, assidates, blood-spillers Our peace projectors, and protectors, Delinquents, Censors, and Correctors: Who but known knaves, Dulmen proud sots, Would stigmatize, all these for plots. But I leave descanting in Verse, to plain prose, like plain dealing, (Poets being the best of writers, except Orators in prose, by Sir Henry Savils censure;) only I take notice of his jeer, risi successuposse career dolos, that their plots, as he blasphemes their political proceed should want success; so had they been successful he had hugged them, as doli boni, & pia frauds, very legal plots in his own phrase: blind buzzard, that measures the regularity or irregularity of an action by the success: so no doubt this Simplician had applauded the powder Treason, had it succeeded as much as Pope sextus the assassinating of the French King, or Mariana the Parisian massacre, or Cardan his Nero, and Catiline, or some the Sicilian evening song, in butchering the French, and York's betraying of Devontree; Sinon of Troy, Zopirus of Babylon, Pope Clemens and the French Kings ruinating of the Templars, (as some Carnalists now justify, the barbarous cruelties, and Canniballized inhumanities' of the Irish wolves, lately devouring our English Protestant's) because of their good success: O Pasquil Madcaps, and giddyheaded Ganders, to measure actions fame-worthy in their own nature, to be blame-worthy because of bad success; blame the preaching of the word then, because it is to some the savour of death, as it was to Herod, Judas, Pharaoh, the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles; blame the Sun, because it hardens the clay, causeth weeds and tares to grow as well as fruits and corn, and makes dunghills to stink; blame good seed, because falling into stony and thorny ground, it brings forth no fruit; blame a skilful Physician, and his best physic, because it always works not wished effects in some impatient patients, which effects must come from God, as we may see in the cases of Hezekias and Asa, 2 Chr. 16. 2 King. 20. for non est in medico semper relevetur ut aeger, bad causes oft producing good effects, as ex malis moribus bonae leges, good laws proceeding from bad manners; as pearls, it's said, are got in the heads of some Serpents, yea Antidotes against poisons, even from poisonous snakes and newtes: And the Redemption of the world, by divine providence helped forward by Judas his treachery, and the Jews cruelty, Acts 4. 27, 28. as the Lord gets glory in Justice or Mercy, in punishing or pardoning, even from the sins of men, Rom. 5. 20. so on the contrary, good causes oft produce bad effects: as zealous preaching, like a good mother, produced bad daughters, in the undeserved imprisoning of Paul, Silas, Jeremy, the beheading of John Baptist, the burning of Hierome of Prague, John Husse, Savinoriola, our Latimer, it costing him his heart's blood, as he oft prophesied it would. Oh the madness not only of this many headed beast the multitude, but of all other Brutized Carnalists, Moralists, Newters, papized, and illaffected of all sorts, who bellow against the Parliament, and gore them in the sides, and toss them as mad Bulls of Basan, on the horns of their powers, because their devours and endeavours as yet want wished and expected success; having eyes as quick as Lynceus, or the Serpent Epidaurus to look at their real or imaginary failings perhaps as men (they being neither Gods nor Angels, but men, subject to errors like Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, & the rest, the best) and like Cockatrices and Basilisks, poisoning what they spy in their Heteroclite successes: but being blind as moles in descerning what God hath done by them already (eaten bread being forgotten) in securing the Kingdom from foreign invasion, in removing or obstructing Achitophellized counsellors and counsels from the King, in preventing that massacre which was plotted for England, as well as Ireland, by Cardinal Barbarino Cimeus, the Pope's Nuntio, and other sanguinnolent agents here, discovered in Mr. pryn's Rome's Masterpiece, by securing every man's propriety from a sic volo, sic jubeo, Dominus opus habet, chief from an overflowing and innundation of Popery, as it broke in upon us in many opened sluices unstopped, but daily made wider, as any may see that is not purblind, or shuts not his eyes against the Sun. And what though as is pretended, and as this Ismalitish Mercury scoffs, that the Parliament hath an Army of Sectaries, though the Husbandmen perhaps were too supine, whilst these tares were sown by Jesuits unsuspected, undetected, camelionized into pretended Tradesmen▪ and Soldiers, Enthusiastically inspired, as Lay plebeian preachers; yet these Sectaries are not so strongly radicated as Popery, nor so sanguinnolent, and State-firing, nor so difficult to be suppressed, being but like their primitive predecessors in all ages, nubiculae cito transenutes, cloud which will soon be blown over, felt we but once the Favonian winds and gales of a gracious-peace, besides these Sects are not to be ascribed to the Parliament more than goodwin's sands to Steutertons steeple, they being but as ill humours to be purged out, or as Kibes, Carbuncles, Botches, glassy eyes, and wooden legs in the body; no part of the body Political or Ecclesiastical; and suppose they be too glutinous and viscous, as yet to be purged, yea that the sons of Zerviah be as yet too strong for those of the house of David, Zach. 12. 10. yea suppose to speak mystically that Themistocles his young boy should by degrees and gradations, sway too much in Athens; yet our Parliamenteires are to be pitied as passives, not scoffed as actives, if in any thing exposing them to the stars or spits of construction, they be as some in a Coach carried or hurried, not in their own natural, but in a more coactive motion, as in some cases (as I have found experimentally in myself and others) and as many can give the probatum est, a man as David once, yea a conglobed society may be in such straits, 2 Sam. 24. 14 sailing as it were betwixt the Scylla of some inconveniencies, & the Charybdis of some mischiefs, that do what he can with the improvement of all his best powers and parts, he shall split upon one or other with some shipwreck, will he, nill he; like to him in the Fable, who held a wolf by the ears, who if he held him longer would be sure to by't him, yet if he let him go, he would worry; and is it not with State Physicians think we, as with corporeal? the patiented may be in such a posture by contrary diseases, some from hot, some from cold causes, that their best skill and will knows not so to cure one, but they must to their grief, and non-plussing of Physic increase the other, the salve being oft as ill or worse than the sore; and the medicine more precious than the disease, dangerous. But to trace this tripping Mercury further in his impudiating humour, he danceth without a piper, and cuts his cross capers & Levaltoes, as though he had a Welsh harp, or Scotch bag piper tuned in such Martial streyns as his heart could wish; our present frets being his mental music, he plays as a Porpoyce and a Dolphin, in our supposed storms, and makes himself merry (with that which makes every gracious heart sorry) with the City murmuring, the Apprentices mutining, the Scots voting the Parliament Covenant-crackers, false, fraudulent, every one cursing them, ready to cut their throats, the West and Wales, and all against them; and this is his sandy and unglewed argument that therefore their cause is nought: he might as well have concluded as much against Elias when Ahab, Jezabel, the Priests of Baal, all Israel bowing to Baal, he thought himself Bird alone, not one to stand for him, 1 King. 9 14 and against Jeremy when the Fedifragous' King, the fluctuate people, the perfidious Elders, the Prelatical Pashur, and all were against him, except one Blackamoor, and he saw nothing but pikes, perils, imprisonments, death and danger; all being so adulterous and treacherous against him, that he wished for a wilderness to lurk from them, Jer. 9 2. cap. 20. 2. & 9 10. and against Moses and Aaron, against whom the people so oft murmured, and were so sore incensed, that they took up stones to stone them, Exod. 15. 24. cap. 16. 2. 3. Num. 20 3. cap. 21 5. Numb. 16. 41, 42. but chief against David, against whom as the trial of his faith, fortitude, patience and dependence on God, ere God settled him in his promised Kingdom, that he might first crown his sufferings (as he did Jobs patience, and Paul's perseverance, 2 Tim. 4. 7, 8. and make him exemplary to all employed by God in great works, for his glory, and the good of a people) he set not only Saul against him to hunt him as a Partridge, but the Zephins, Achitophel, Doeg and his own wife Micholl to mock him, and Shemei to revile him, yea the very people to stone him, being oft in such straits, (greater than our Parliament ever yet) that he thought there was but a step betwixt him and death, 1 Sam. 20. 3. chap. 23. 16. chap. 24. 14. chap. 30. 6. Yea, might not this fellow have concluded as much against some of the Germane Henry's, and frederick's: fight the Lords battles, when one Antichristian Pope after another had excommunicated them, and armed their own Subjects against them: yet some of them for all this marvellously, and miraculously delivered, as were oft the Hugonites in France, Huniades in Hungare, Luther in Saxon, Queen Elizabeth here in England, the late Polsgrave (called the King of Bobemia) and millions more in History, whom God preserved and reserved to better times, and to better ends and purposes, after he had pulled them as brands out of the fire, and brought them Daniel-like out of the very jaws of Lions, and as his three courageous servants out of the very flaming furnace, where they were tried as pure gold, ere the Lord effected by them those great works of reformation, or preservation of a people, for which he fitted them by many fiery trials, and sure if the Parliament stand for God, as he hath promised to stand for them, and to deliver them as all his true Members, Ministers and Magistrates, out of all their troubles, and to honour them which honour him, Josh, 1. 5. Heb. 12. 6. Psal. 34. 18, 19 1▪ Sam. 2. 30. Act. 18. 10. Esay 43. 1, 2, 3. Though all the created principalities and powers in earth and hell were against them, they must prosper and flourish: if their work be of men, I must confess the decree is against them, it will come to naught, Act. 5. 38▪ the branches that are not in Christ whither, Joh. 15. 6. But if their work be of God it cannot be overthrown, Act. 5; 39 who fight against it fight against God, as glass tilting against brass, to their breaking, as waves surging and blustering against a rock, dashing themselves to froth and foam; omnes priminter divinitus, he that consults with many Instances given by Melancton in his postils, part, 3. p. 553. and Strigellius on the Psalms, pag 66. in Psal. 8. shall see God's hand fearfully on those who have had heads, hearts, or hands against his Church: as also other Instances given by the same Author, in Psal. 41. pag. 334. in Hezekias, Constantine, Obediah, Abdemelech, the widow of Sarepta, John Frederick the Duke of Saxony; and I may add our English late Deborah, our Elizabeth, with many more, friends of the Church, in hac vita gloriose ornati, ever gloriously honoured and patronised in this life, which I prescribe as a cordial and cooler to our Senators, against the hot tongue poison of this Mercurialized son of belial, who being more perfect in his lying, then in his Latin-tongue, tells us of the brave exploits of two turncoats in Wales, Poyer and powel in three times defeating the forces sent against them, though I have it from the mouth of a credible Colonel, that being but one 100 or 2000 sent against them, have driven them into their Cony-burrowes, their Castles (stronger than Tyrones' old Forts of bogs, woods and mountains) but I see in most lying and flying news, most speak not as the truth is, but as they would tune it, as they are affected and infected; but leaving this as trivial, that in which his serpentina quedam sanies, his serpentine spirit shows itself the most is; that as Satan's working tools desirous to cast his Ataes ball, and Phaetonian flames betwixt the Scots and Parliament. This Bedlam blatters that they have voted them Covenant-crackers, false, and fraudulent in all their undertake. A sharp fanged Cur, indeed he bites deep in taxation, if the clapper of his tongue were not lose hung in his probation; venting but merely like the echo, an airy sound, for it were better his tongue were cheese, and all the Cats in the Town were nibbling it, ere this were any truer than Aesop's fables, or Lucian's Dialogues. I hope our Parliament hath more care of credit with man, and confidence with God, then to break that Covenant which is witnessed and sealed by oath before the great God of heaven, which even medea in euripides, calls Juramentorum custos, the great Lord Keeper of oaths inviolable, most severely always punishing their infringers; as any that will but consult Historians, chief Honicer his Theatre of examples, our D. Beard in his Theatre of God's judgements, and Paul of Hitzin in his Ethics, lib. 2. cap. 18, 20. shall see the fearful justice of Earth and Heaven, falling upon Zedekias breaking▪ his sworn fealty with Nabuchadnezzar, upon the Carthaginians, so oft in fringing their oaths with the Romans. One Hatto the Bishop of Mentz at last eaten with Rats, by perjury betraying Albert the marquis of Bamburg, to Lodovick the third Emperor chief, on Paches the Athenian Captain, killing himself after he had by a false oath murdered Hippias, and won his besieged City. One Ladislaus King of Hungary and Poland, who the year 1614 by the counsel of Cardinal Julian breaking his sworn truce with Amurath the Turk, brought him into Europe severely to revenge it, with the loss of his life and Crown; as also of the great Macedonian Philip, who by the judgement of Pausanias' perished so miserably with all his blood, because according to the proverb and practice of Lisander, he thought Peers and Princes were to be deceived with oaths, as children with babbles and toys; but I hope I need prescribe no salve, where as yet I find no sore. In his next morris dance, this hobby-horse neighs out profane mirth, in the revolt of the Lord Inchequin from the Parliament, of whom I will only interpose thus much: First, that to give him his due, he hath done acts worthy of a brave Gentleman, a pretended Protestant, and a Martialist, because to the Irish, so long as he was himself tuned in a right key, as Tanibut sometimes was to the French, and Huniades, and Richard the first to the Turks, Terror malae gentis, a terror to his wicked natives; but finis coronat opus, what is it to begin well, as did Paul's Galathians, Judas the Disciple, Demas Paul's follower, Julian the Apostate, Nero in his quinquennium: the mutable Occebolius, and some Pernized weathercocks in our days, and to end ill: to make shipwreck in the haven, to give, like the Cow, a good meal of milk, and to throw it down with her heels; to wove and unweave a Penelope's web, since the end crownes every work; and constancy next to conscience is the grace of every great man, who would gain and retain the repute of a good man. Secondly, his revolt is more distasteful to such judicious ones as have observed his postures as he was active or passive, in that he was not (as vox populi, which is not ever vox veri, hath reported him) in any great wants or exigents in defects of moneys, ever held the very nerves and sinews of War, since he received as much as any in the Kingdom, large sums from the Parliament, besides his considerable contributions from the greatest part of the Province of Munster; for I know the want of men, munition and moneys, hath oft much distracted and distressed many Heroic spirits, and put them upon strange exigents and inconveniencies, when their silver music was too long in tuning, and made them all frets. Thirdly, I distaste it the most, that he is joined to the Rebels; but though I cannot say, as Noah of his son, nec de ●o melius putavi, that I never hoped better of him; for indeed, his flowery spring promiseth yet a better harvest than Popery: yet thus much I say, as I thought once of the great Ormond when he protected so many Rebels, to the no small prejudice of the Protestants, and suffered some in Castles to fly out as Woodcocks in a mist, some officers who had them in a pinfold, being blinded with white and yellow dust: So I have thought of Inchequin in some political respects, that at last tandem aliquando, Joseph could not, would not forget his brethren, more than Queen Hester could forget her people and kindred, Hest. 8. 6. Nor more than a Catholic Queen can forget her Catholics, not lying for nothing in the bosom of a Protestant Prince. Yet notwithstanding I persuade myself he is so resolute a Protestant, that Totman will not so far turn French, as that he will revolt to Papism; the grounds of my persuasion is this: 1. Because his vessel was seasoned with the truth in his childhood, therefore its hopeful to savour of the tincture, quo semel est imbutare. Secondly, his conversion from Popery was not coactive, as whipped to it when he was a ward, as by a violent motion, non trabendo sed ducendo, but by a work of illumination upon him in hearing of Sermons, therefore more probable to be more sincere and permanent, it being very observable, that those that are haled and drawn to any Religion by force or fear, are like Cytteron strings too high stretched, to stand long in tune without breaking (as Sigebert in his Chronicles tells us of some Jews enforced to be baptised in Leo Isaurus the third his time, presently washed it off again, and returned like judaizing dogs to their own vomit, the like did some Jews in Ratisbone in Henry the 4▪ time, anno dom. 1086. as P. Diaconus relates in his Roman History, lib. 11. and Tholosanus in his Commonwealth, lib. 12. cap. 4▪ pag. 722. records the like, Pageants of some Jews in Spain, anno dom. 694. and Cranzius in his History, lib. 5. cap. 14. of some Vandals, who after the death of their Protestant Prince Gotschalcus, revolted as sows to their wallowing, presently to Paganism, but ex meliori luto finxit precordia Titan, it was not so with Inchequin. Yet thus much I prognosticate further, That as I hear, he is strongly Episcopized, this without question was a great prologue to his Regalizing, as it is indeed judiciously observed, both by Melancton in his Postils, part I pag. 77. And Strigellius in his Chronicles, part. I. pag. 233. that as Princes do accommodate Religion to the splendour of their Courts (as it was glorious to see my Lord Bishop like a Pope in pomp, or a Cardinal with his train: so amongst most Courtiers and Nobles, there be some that even in their Religion, serviunt principium cupiditatibus, do too much comply with the humours and inclinations of Princes, pinning their Religion on the sleeves of Monarches, to carry which way they will, as true or false, to heaven or to hell; as Pencer observes in his Chronological Lectures, anno 1570. how far both Peers and people sympathized with Jeroboam in his Golden Calves. Lastly, I partly prophesy (though like Calchas or Cassandra perhaps I be scarcely believed) that this confederacy of Inchequin, a Protestant, with the bloody Canniballized Popish Rebels, will be no more successful, than the federacy or confederacy of Jehosaphat with wicked Ahab, which we know the issue it had, 2 Chro. 18. 31. and how sharply God reproved it, 2 Chron. 19▪ 2. even with a threatened wrath: for I believe Bucholcherus in his Chronicles, pag. 358. That Covenants made with the wicked, are both invisa Deo, hateful to God, & pernitiosa hominibus, dangerous to men: And he that hath books to read, and brains to understand, shall see this, not only affirmed but confirmed in many instances both of Christians and Pagans, by Melantions Chronology, lib. 1. pag. 6. by Strigellius in his Chronicles, part. 1. pag. 56. and his Common places, part. 3. pag. 414. as also by Chitreus on Genesis pag. 282. and in his Chronicles of Saxony, lib. 14. pag▪ 423. and by our Modern Historians, our most judicious▪ Guiccaronie in his Politics, part. 2. pag. 29. & pag. 100 and Cominaeus in his passages lib. 2. pag. 52. betwixt the French Lewis and Charles, whither in this rhapsody, for brevity, I refer my Reader, as also to Manl●us his Common places, p. 407. Strigenitius his third Sermon of the calling of Jeremy, pag. 18. and to Pencers' Historical Lectures, anno 1569. Decemb. 3. & 1570. july 29. where any shall see Covenants made with Heretics, Idolaters, men of strange Nations, Natures, Religions, to be as prosperous usually as for hens to hold leagues with hawks, Israelites to join in affinities and compacts with Canaanites; as Doves with Eagles, and Sheep with Wolves. But once more to retrieve my Sprung Woodcock, and to pounce him to some purpose; as the Poet said, sepe Jocum sepeque bilem vestri movere tumultus. I know not whether I shall more pity monsieur Mercury as a witty fool, or be angry with him as a professed enemy, as Paul said of Elimas' the sorcerer, Acts 13. of all goodness and grace; or as Peter of Simon Magus, in the very gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity, Acts 8. First in terming the Rebels of Ireland Catholics (he means good Catholic subjects as ever man hanged upon his hedge) and with these Catholics forsooth, and the Lord Taffe, a professed polypragmaticall Papist, a great stickler in the last massacre in Ireland, and still a firebrand and incendiary in both Climes, he tripudiates that Inchequin is to join against an Army of Sectaries: very good stuff, Christ must be untrue, his verdict must not stand, Satan's kingdom must be divided by Mercury's divinity, his servants and agents for his hellish Hierarchy, must like the brethren of Cadmus oppose one another, and as the Medianites thrust their swords in the sides one of another, Sectaries against Sectaries, Irish against English. 2. Or it may be he means the Papists in Ireland must (as they fought for the King before, under that colour) be employed once more for the purging of the Temple from Independency and Presbytery, for the re-establishing and re-planting of Episcopacy, for setting the petty Popes of Lambeth, London, Lincoln, and other parts, once more on Cockhorse to ride to Dunstable, or to the Devil, over the necks, and backs of all zealous, powerful, and painful preachers. In conclusion for confusion, they must forsooth reform Religion, as Woolves heal and tear ulcerous and rotten sheep; as clay and mire scour vessels brighter, as soot and ink wash foul faces fairer; as Mercury heals green wounds, vinegar sore eyes, the sting of an Asp takes away the ache in the flea-blowes; all these the more increasing maladies, miseries, pains, and perplexities, this reforming being as though Verres and Gusman were appointed Judges to scour their Circuits of Rogues and Thiefs, as Claudius & Clodius, to reform adulterers, Messalina and Pasiphad, Courtesans Bawds and Concubines, by inflicting corrective mulcts upon them for their incontinency, and to read them directive Lectures for chastity. But to strike with the main Hammer, reflect a little on Mercury's policy, as well as piety, and see what a wise and well-wishing worthy Patriot Mercury and his Mercurialized one's are to their Country, in that they would bring in under the conduct of Inchequin, now an Army of known, real, foreign Rebels from another Country, where they are fleshed in blood, to fight for their King forsooth, whom they love as I love their Pope, against his real friends, his mere imaginary foes, the Westminsterians, whom Mercury marks for Rebels; bringing them in forsooth, into England to side with his Regalists against Roundheads, with as much wisdom as the Carians to their cost brought in Cyrus to end their Civil wars; as the Thebans called in the Macedonian Philip to help them against the Phocians; as Duke Boniface brought into Africa, Genserick the King of the Vandals against the Emperor Valens, as Leo the Grecian Emperor fetched in the Turks against the Bulgarians; as Lascus called in Solyman the Ottoman into Hungary against Fardinand. Theodosius, the Goths against the Franckes; Stillico the Durgundians, and Swedes against the Goths, Heraclus the Arabians against the Persians, or the Spaniards in modern times were brought into Sicily and Naples against the French; or as the last Caliph of Egypt, called Sarracon, the last Sultan of Syria, into his Country against Almericus the successor of Baldwin King of jerusalem, even with such success as these, and many more, which I could Historify from Authors and experiments at this day, may we perhaps bring in for either divided party, either Irish, French, Spaniard, or Pope, or any foreign Nation, as these recited felt to their cost, to fish in our troubled waters, to catch silver Eels in our muds, our bloods, like Buzzards to swapper at, and tear both Frog and Mouse fight, to suck our bloods, sponge our goods, possess our seats, and once got in amongst us, not to get out, more than pitch out of the bottom of a Can, scarce rensht out with silver streams, running as clear as Tyne or Tweed: as he that will be fully possessed of the prejudice of other states, as the glass of our fates in fetching in foreign Nations to end our controversies, as the Wolf to be umpire betwixt the Sheep and the Ass, let him read the verdicts of Politicians, and the Tragedies of these recited, with numerous moe. In Bucholcherus his Chronology, pag. 389. In Melanctons' Chronicle, lib. 4. pag. 301. 443, 444. In Strigellius his Chronicle part. 1. pag. 207. part. 2. pag. 60. In Crutreus his lesser Chronicle, Amor. 93, 94, 95. pag. 44. In Tholosanus his Commonwealth, lib. 11. cap. 3. pag. 656. In Bodius Commonwealth, lib. 5. c. 5. pag. 888. In Patritius his Commonwealth, lib. 9 ●it. pag. 396. As also in heathenish Authors, chief Polybus, lib. 1. p. 15, 16. And Heroditus l. 6. p. 163. & l. 7. p. 207. which Authors I allege as on a sudden, in two days I recollected them, both to discover the folly of this frivolous Mercury, in spinning a web to catch Grandees, with mere rock and spindle of a natural wit, without any yarn of reading or judgement, as also to muzzle or puzzle him from barking any more against, either the Parliament or the Authors, I allege throughout this Rhapsody, the Champions against his cavils and ungrounded calumny. In the rest of his Sarrismes, this Don quipot fights as it were with Rams and posts, and Windmills, for Giants, I mean with his own mere airy and windy conceits, as the Cat plays with her own tail, chief he fights as with his own shadow, when as a mad man he casts his brands at King Noll, whom his fellow Melancholicus, or his alter ego, his second self, plainly calls King Crumwell, a man that is not in rerum natura, not so much as in the orb of the Moon, nor on the centre of the Earth, within the sphere of our knowledge; for although many meaner men for gifts and place, than the Marshal Crumwell, even some Country Peasants, by similitude of physiognomies, have usurped the names of Kings, as one Wooldeman a Miller in Marchia, in Pencers' Chronicles, lib. 5. pag. 60. and in Lauclavius his Turkish History, pag. 291. and a Pseudo sinerdis in Persia, who went long under the name of the son of Cyrus, in Justin. pag. 23. lib. 1. and in Heroditus lib. 3. 90. and one Philip in Thessalia, a mean Plebeian in the third Punic war, related by Florus in his Epitome, lib. 49. 50. & 52. and a Peasant in Saxony, a false Frederick, anno 1262. in Cuspiman pag. 440. also we know in Henry the seventh days, what broils were kindled by Lambert and Perkin, Warbeck, vulgar youths pretended to be of the blood Royal; yet that ever Crumwell, or his fame-worthy General, called or counted themselves Kings, or were so held or reputed by their Soldiers, shall be proved in Plato's great year, or in the calends of the Greeks when all Priapized Priests, and Friars, and all the vestal Nuns of Venus, live chastely together; or when Jesuitized Papists, what ere they pretend shall love a Protestant Prince so well, unless moulded downright their creature, as to spare him in the basilical veins, more than the two French Henry's, so long as they had ever at hand a junior Faux, Rivillack Parry, Lopus or Lupus, with a poniard, a poison, or a pistol in his hand, as Treason in his heart. In his next strains, which deserve neck straining, as though he were an Incubus or Succubus, or one of the College of Bird or Merlin, and Mother Shipton, or were some Witch, or Conjurer, or had some Mephistophiles or familiar spirit, as once Doctor Faustus, Cornelius, Agrippa, Simon Magus, and other Nicromancers; or at least were some judicial Ass-stronomer, Ass Colens, Astra: consulting with the stars, or at best some Familist, and mushroom Enthusiast, as once John a Leidan, and Munster his Prophet; he takes upon him to prophesy, sepe malum hoc nobis predixit ab ilice cornix) as ominously and fatally, as the prognostics of any ominous Screech-owl, croaking Raven, or howling dog; yea with as much confidence as any blessing, white Witch, Gipsy or Fortune-teller of strange and heavy news, that we both have it, and must have from France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, every part of the Kingdom, and the virtual Island to: more specially as though he should cry, the Fox gives you warning, and I give you warning to take heed of your Geese: this jack juggler, or Hocus, Pocus, shoots off a terrible warning-piece, like a Balaams curse, a Papal excommunication coming out, or a Brutum Fulmen, to take heed of the 28. of June, for 28. was like to prove a fatal number, to all Parliamentarians, such as these dies nefandi, these unlucky days which the Romans held as fatal, in which Caesar was stabbed in the Senate, and in which they lost so much blood and honour in the battles at Canna and Thrasimen, but mira Cannat non credenda Poetae, your Almanac is held to be merely like yourself, a Mercurialized liar, and you are thought to study only Errapater; for when did you pry into God's Ark, or were admitted into God's Cabinet-counsel? If Grandees hold you fit to be of their Privy (as Sco●gan once to the French King) then of their privy-counsel, and if you scoff at Plebeians, for perking from ploughs and shops into Moses his chair; how dare you perk into God's chair, to reveal his secrets locked in his own decree: sure as there is a ●easting Epitaph of one Fiddle, That the one and twentieth day of June, John Fiddle he went out of tune: so the eight and twenty day of june, thy Cuckoo's note goes out of tune. Much I know the Platonists, and pythagoreans, have ascribed to numbers, and to their days, yea years fatal, chief to their Climactericalls in their revolutions of seven and nine, ominous in the falls of great Peers and Princes; as much at large is said for numbers by Cornelius Agrippa, de occulta Philosophia, lib. 3. and many instances are given by Levinus L●mnius in his second Book of the secrets of Nature, cap. 32. pag. 381. and by Ranzovius in his Climacterical years, pag. 227, 228. & seq. Patritius also in his Commonwealth, lib. 5. tit. 7. pag. 234. interposeth much to this purpose; and for my poor part, I have read how fatal the twenty eighth year hath been to many great ones, Atropos then cutting short the thread of the lives of Philip King of Spain, father to Charles the fifth, of Lodovicke the sixth, Lamdgrave of Thuringo, of Oswald an English King, son to Acha, sister to Edmund called the Saint; of Cardinal Hippolytus medices, at those years poisoned of C. Caligula, Caesar, son to Germanicus stabbed with thirty wounds, of john Medici's, father to that great Cosmus Duke of Hetraria slain with a Canon; as also of Persius the Satirical Poet, Daniel Gricaeus, Hierom Vrsinus, and many more, who in the prime and April of their years, at the age of twenty eight years, acting short parts on the world's stage, were then struck nonplus by death, most by a violent rather than a natural stroke. But for any great disasters that have fallen on the twenty eight day of June, I have not slept with the Lune: Nor am I versed so in the Skies, To vent with Mercury loud lies. But these are but the off-scums of the wit of this junior Rombus, this fritter of fraud, this seething pot of iniquity (as I could pay him home in his own coin, in retorting jests as sharp as the teeth of a Pike, to nip this Gudgeon) at best these are but ludicra genii, vel ingenii, the spots of his wit, the playing but the Buffoon, or the Monkey, to make himself and others sport, with his, Come a loft Jack an Apes with a whim wham: but in his rhyme-doggerills, which in them have no jot of rhyme nor reason, like snow in June, and Harvest out of season; in these his toothed Satyrs, on his Epitaphs, or nipping-taphs, as the Countryman miscalled them, which the malicious momist makes on our Parliament men ere they be dead, (who perhaps may live to eat of the Goose which grazed on the grave of this Gander of Gotham) in these he shows himself in his colours indeed, like the devil in his horns, there he tosseth them on the pike of his pen, as a baited Royston Bull, the valorous Mastiffs; there he acts the parts not of a Davus only to disturb all, but of a Daemon a devil to destroy all, as homo homini daemon, he verifies in his damned desires, that one man is a devil to another in boiling wrath, like wild fire, and the coals of juniper, scarce quenched by dead ashes: for he so far like a snarling Fox shows his tongue and his teeth, when he is cooped in his chain, that he cannot worry as he would, that if he could he would sevire in manes, tyrannize over their very deaths, as the Greeks which abused Hector; and the Papists (in acts fit for Wolves and Hienaes' then Christians) in digging up the dead bodies of Paulus Fagius, and of Peter Martyr's wife; for whereas in his other Satiricalls, (his Satyrae satirae) he stings like a Serpent (as it's said of a Serpent that eats a Serpent) in his detestable Epitaph, he proves a Dragon spitting wildfire; besides some rough passages betwixt Hierom and Ruffinus, Chrisostome, and Ephanus, Erasmus, and Julius Scaliger, Luther and Carolostadius, more indeed then well became grave Divines, and modest Christians. I have read invectives as sharp as raizours, and cutting swords of Sallust, against Tully, Tully against Mark Anthony, Varres and Catiline, Estchines against Demosthenes, and of latter times of Cocleus and Bolsecus against Luther and Calvin, of Himmimus Ecardus, and most ridged Lutherans against Calvinists, more than against Papists; of Stapleton in his Promptuary, Faverdentius upon Judas, Kellison in his scurrilous Survey, and most Romish Rabshekahs against all Protestants, chief of Turner in his orations against Queen Elizabeth: but as if the spirits of all these in a Pythagorean transmigration, with all the Satirical spleen of Lucian against the learned (called the Cerberus of the Muses) and of Tom Nash against the three Harvies, marching as though their guts with his Gunpowder terms, were infused into his eldest son of Satan, as Polycarpus called Martion, he so sympathizeth with Satan in his false accusations; all these concurring as one (as the venom of all Serpents in one Basilisk) they could not express worse than he is in his damnable Epitaph upon the fictious deaths of the chief Ephorists of our state; for like an Atheist little heeding, nor believing the Epithets and Titles, with which the Scriptures honour them, as of Rulers, Heads, and Elders of the people, 1 King. 4. 1, 2. Num. 11. 16, 17. Deut. 33. 10. Privy-counsellours to Kings, as sometimes to Ashuerus, Hester 1. 3. and to the Kings of Israel, Jer. 26. 10. and conjoined with them in their Edicts, jonas 3. 7. nor regarding the honourable names of Patritians given to such as they in Rome, of Ephorists in Lacedaemon; of Senators in Venice, of great Dons in Spain, of Peers in France; of pillars, ribs, sides, foundation, strength, of the Empire in Germany; by the Bull of Charles the fifth, Cap. 3. 12. 24, 26. all these honourable and authoritative Titles, being spurned of such blatrant beasts as this malevolent Timonist, as dogs and hogs spurn pearls, he squeezeth his wits, pumps his brains, digs as low as hell for gunpowdered calumnies, and borrows moe galling, girding, stigmatising opprobries to cast in their Faces, and on their places, than ever Tailors, Poets, Players, Perriwigmakers, and Courtiers, borrowed fantasticalities, or Jews and Jesuits new invented poisons; or as our new Shakers' and Seekers, new invented Heresies and Sects of black Pluto himself. Oh how he roars as in a Pump, though in other passages this hot Gamester play all his tricks at noddy, ever turning up knave o'th' Clubs, yet here he trumps no less than Treason, and plays all his pranks at Loadum, or Loadhome, loading our wisest, & worthiest Senators, with the base and bloody imputations of ambition, rebellion, pride, lust, murder, sacrilege; and what not? as give the devil an inch, and he'll take an ell, over shoes, over boots in villainy; now that he is in his Rope-rhetoricke in a high way march (like railing Jesuits from Tiber to Tyburn, up Gallows gate, and down Hemp-street) he cannot get out, he can no more be got out of his tract, than a Carrier's horse in his way to Dunstable, or Dublin, or the devil's Inn, where he intends to take up his lodging: hence he bites them further with his Theonine teeth, sharper than Foxes and Badgers, and more poisoned then the teeth of Vipers and Adders, and sets his brands and imistions upon them of grand Impostors, perjured Knaves, out-veying any, otherwise Newgate-bird, Pick-hatch, Shoarditch, or Turnball-street Cockatrice, or the most hot-mouthed Scold, and blackmouthed cursing Witch, in all the devil's Territories; such black and base stinking stuff he vomits, as would make the Devil himself, the black Dog of Hell, sick to lick it up: for my part, it smells worse to me, or to any right nasuted man, than any Fox or Fowmart, yea then any carrion, or assafaetida, as any may read what the blawant beast roars out in his reasonless raging rhymes, in aspersions more false and foul then ever were cast upon Themistocles and Socrates in Athens, on Cato himself the marrow of Justice, and the two Scipios and other Patriots in Rome oft questioned by calumniating emulating spirits even in the Senate (as well as ours now) yet ever came fairly or squarely off, and bore the Bucklers (as ours may do) and then rumpantur ilia Codri. But to conclude, I retort these his rascally raylings, with Epithets of honour, yea with this Epitaph of fame, if they should perish in their projects and prosecutions of the common good, incuria & injuria temporum; by the ungrateful and ungracious times: yet this Encomium is fit to be engraven on their graves, than his Roguish Rhymes. THough Codrus guts should burst asunder, Here be interred our age's wonder. The famed physicians of our Seat, Recorded with unworthy hate Of dog sick Times; who not enduring Their purging pills, did snarl their curing; Yet their undaunted zeal, stood shocks, And storms of Time, like Neptune's Rocks: And like the two fixed Poles in Sky, They touched all strings; all ways did try To curb and cure the maladies Of Albion's felt feared Tragedies; Both the King's evil in the head, And Gangrenes through the body spread, By strong French Philters and sly tricks Of Michavillian Empirics: The surging streams did rise so strong From Po, Rheims, Tiber; and so throng From fluctuate frothy fools the waves In their mad moods, and Bedlam raves: Yea so Antipathized was their hate, 'Gainst all reforms in Church and State, That they are swallowed (as by whales Just Jonasses) in Tragic falls: Yet Phoenix like burnt in the flame Of love and zeal, they shall again: Rise and out live an ancient story, As Albion's Patriots, England's glory; Whom Prince, Pope, Pests, nor vulgars' lust Can once divert from Laws, right, just; They sacrificed their dearest blood, 'Gainst England's sins, for England's good. Let Zoilists, Momists here defaee them, This Epitaph in their urns shall grace them. Their honoured ashes 'gainst the times Shall rise, for all thy Roguish Rhymes. And so I leave thee, and all thy croaking frogs and ominous Owls and Ravens of thy base, black, and bloody feather, chief thy Comraide Mercury Bellicus and Melancholicus, since as striking two Woodcocks with one bolt, in putting a hook in thy nose I also hook them, you hanging together in one subject, like burrs, as you deserve to hang like bells; or reasty Bacon, much better for hanging: for I prophesy, if you hold on to vent your envenomed galls as you do, your libelling lines may cut short the lines of your loathed lives, dabit Deus his quoq▪ fluvem, and then you may sing or sigh your Lacrimae per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum, tendemus in laqueum: Through different, base, bad courses, all our hopes Tending, their ending have, in Tibornes' ropes. FINIS.