Thus, what you call corruptions, are, in truth,
  The first plantations of the Gospel’s youth;
  Old standard faith:  but cast your eyes again,
  And view those errors which new sects maintain,
  Or which of old disturb’d the Church’s peaceful reign;
  And we can point each period of the time,
  When they began, and who begot the crime;
  Can calculate how long the eclipse endured,
  Who interposed, what digits were obscured: 
  Of all which are already pass’d away, 610
  We know the rise, the progress, and decay.

   Despair at our foundations then to strike,
  Till you can prove your faith Apostolic;
  A limpid stream drawn from the native source;
  Succession lawful in a lineal course. 
  Prove any Church, opposed to this our head,
  So one, so pure, so unconfinedly spread,
  Under one chief of the spiritual state,
  The members all combined, and all subordinate. 
  Show such a seamless coat, from schism so free, 620
  In no communion join’d with heresy. 
  If such a one you find, let truth prevail: 
  Till when your weights will in the balance fail: 
  A Church unprincipled kicks up the scale. 
  But if you cannot think (nor sure you can
  Suppose in God what were unjust in man)
  That He, the fountain of eternal grace,
  Should suffer falsehood, for so long a space,
  To banish truth, and to usurp her place: 
  That seven successive ages should be lost, 630
  And preach damnation at their proper cost;
  That all your erring ancestors should die,
  Drown’d in the abyss of deep idolatry: 
  If piety forbid such thoughts to rise,
  Awake, and open your unwilling eyes: 
  God hath left nothing for each age undone,
  From this to that wherein he sent his Son: 
  Then think but well of him, and half your work is done. 
  See how his Church, adorn’d with every grace, 639
  With open arms, a kind forgiving face,
  Stands ready to prevent her long-lost son’s embrace. 
  Not more did Joseph o’er his brethren weep,
  Nor less himself could from discovery keep,
  When in the crowd of suppliants they were seen,
  And in their crew his best-loved Benjamin. 
  That pious Joseph in the Church behold,
  To feed your famine,[117] and refuse your gold: 
  The Joseph you exiled, the Joseph whom you sold.

    Thus, while with heavenly charity she spoke,
  A streaming blaze the silent shadows broke; 650
  Shot from the skies; a cheerful azure light: 
  The birds obscene to forests wing’d their flight,
  And gaping graves received the wandering guilty sprite.