And ease him, by degrees, of public care. 
  Yet, to consult his dignity and fame,
  He should have leave to exercise the name,
  And hold the cards, while commons play’d the game. 
  For what can power give more than food and drink,
  To live at ease, and not be bound to think? 
  These are the cooler methods of their crime,
  But their hot zealots think ’tis loss of time;
  On utmost bounds of loyalty they stand,
  And grin and whet like a Croatian band, 240
  That waits impatient for the last command. 
  Thus outlaws open villainy maintain,
  They steal not, but in squadrons scour the plain;
  And if their power the passengers subdue,
  The most have right, the wrong is in the few. 
  Such impious axioms foolishly they show,
  For in some soils republics will not grow: 
  Our temperate isle will no extremes sustain,
  Of popular sway or arbitrary reign;
  But slides between them both into the best, 250
  Secure in freedom, in a monarch blest: 
  And though the climate, vex’d with various winds,
  Works through our yielding bodies on our minds. 
  The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds,
  To recommend the calmness that succeeds.

   But thou, the pander of the people’s hearts,
  O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts,
  Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored,
  And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord;
  What curses on thy blasted name will fall! 260
  Which age to age their legacy shall call;
  For all must curse the woes that must descend on all. 
  Religion thou hast none:  thy mercury
  Has pass’d through every sect, or theirs through thee. 
  But what thou giv’st, that venom still remains,
  And the pox’d nation feels thee in their brains. 
  What else inspires the tongues and swells the breasts
  Of all thy bellowing renegado priests,
  That preach up thee for God, dispense thy laws,
  And with thy stum ferment their fainting cause? 270
  Fresh fumes of madness raise; and toil and sweat
  To make the formidable cripple great. 
  Yet, should thy crimes succeed, should lawless power
  Compass those ends thy greedy hopes devour,
  Thy canting friends thy mortal foes would be,
  Thy God and theirs will never long agree;
  For thine, if thou hast any, must be one
  That lets the world and human kind alone: 
  A jolly god that passes hours too well
  To promise heaven, or threaten us with hell; 280
  That unconcern’d can at rebellion sit,
  And wink at crimes he did himself commit. 
  A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints
  A conventicle of gloomy, sullen saints;
  A heaven like Bedlam, slovenly and sad,
  Foredoom’d for souls with false religion mad.