that she
  Nor wholly stands condemn’d, nor wholly free. 
  Then, like her injured Lion, let me speak;
  He cannot bend her, and he would not break. 
  Unkind already, and estranged in part,
  The Wolf begins to share her wandering heart. 
  Though unpolluted yet with actual ill,
  She half commits, who sins but in her will. 340
  If, as our dreaming Platonists report,
  There could be spirits of a middle sort,
  Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell,
  Who just dropt half way down, nor lower fell;
  So poised, so gently she descends from high,
  It seems a soft dismission from the sky. 
  Her house not ancient, whatsoe’er pretence
  Her clergy heralds make in her defence. 
  A second century not half-way run,
  Since the new honours of her blood begun. 350
  A Lion[105] old, obscene, and furious made
  By lust, compress’d her mother in a shade;
  Then, by a left-hand marriage, weds the dame,
  Covering adultery with a specious name: 
  So Schism begot; and Sacrilege and she,
  A well match’d pair, got graceless Heresy. 
  God’s and king’s rebels have the same good cause,
  To trample down divine and human laws: 
  Both would be call’d reformers, and their hate
  Alike destructive both to Church and State:  360
  The fruit proclaims the plant; a lawless prince
  By luxury reform’d incontinence;
  By ruins, charity; by riots, abstinence. 
  Confessions, fasts, and penance set aside,
  Oh, with what ease we follow such a guide,
  Where souls are starved, and senses gratified! 
  Where marriage pleasures midnight prayers supply,
  And matin bells, a melancholy cry,
  Are tuned to merrier notes, Increase and multiply. 
  Religion shows a rosy-colour’d face; 370
  Not batter’d out with drudging works of grace: 
  A down-hill reformation rolls apace. 
  What flesh and blood would crowd the narrow gate,
  Or, till they waste their pamper’d paunches, wait? 
  All would be happy at the cheapest rate.

    Though our lean faith these rigid laws has given,
  The full-fed Mussulman goes fat to heaven;
  For his Arabian prophet with delights
  Of sense allured his eastern proselytes. 
  The jolly Luther, reading him, began 380
  To interpret Scriptures by his Alcoran;
  To grub the thorns beneath our tender feet,
  And make the paths of Paradise more sweet;
  Bethought him of a wife ere half way gone,
  For ’twas uneasy travelling alone;
  And, in this masquerade of mirth and love,
  Mistook the bliss of heaven for Bacchanals above. 
  Sure he presumed of praise, who came to stock
  The ethereal pastures with so fair a flock,
  Burnish’d, and battening on their food, to show 390