650
  As for my sons, the family is bless’d,
  Whose every child is equal to the rest;
  No Church reform’d can boast a blameless line;
  Such Martins build in yours, and more than mine: 
  Or else an old fanatic[128] author lies,
  Who summ’d their scandals up by centuries. 
  But through your parable I plainly see
  The bloody laws, the crowd’s barbarity;
  The sunshine that offends the purblind sight: 
  Had some their wishes, it would soon be night. 660
  Mistake me not; the charge concerns not you: 
  Your sons are malcontents, but yet are true,
  As far as non-resistance makes them so;
  But that’s a word of neutral sense, you know,
  A passive term, which no relief will bring,
  But trims betwixt a rebel and a king.

    Rest well assured, the Pardelis replied,
  My sons would all support the regal side,
  Though Heaven forbid the cause by battle should be tried.

    The matron answer’d with a loud Amen, 670
  And thus pursued her argument again. 
  If, as you say, and as I hope no less,
  Your sons will practise what yourselves profess,
  What angry power prevents our present peace? 
  The Lion, studious of our common good,
  Desires (and kings’ desires are ill withstood)
  To join our nations in a lasting love;
  The bars betwixt are easy to remove;
  For sanguinary laws were never made above. 
  If you condemn that prince of tyranny, 680
  Whose mandate forced your Gallic friends to fly,
  Make not a worse example of your own;
  Or cease to rail at causeless rigour shown,
  And let the guiltless person throw the stone. 
  His blunted sword your suffering brotherhood
  Have seldom felt; he stops it short of blood: 
  But you have ground the persecuting knife,
  And set it to a razor edge on life. 
  Cursed be the wit, which cruelty refines,
  Or to his father’s rod the scorpion’s joins! 690
  Your finger is more gross than the great monarch’s loins. 
  But you, perhaps, remove that bloody note,
  And stick it on the first reformer’s coat. 
  Oh, let their crime in long oblivion sleep! 
  ’Twas theirs indeed to make, ’tis yours to keep. 
  Unjust, or just, is all the question now;
  ’Tis plain, that not repealing you allow.

    To name the Test would put you in a rage;
  You charge not that on any former age,

  But smile to think how innocent you stand, 700
  Arm’d by a weapon put into your hand,
  Yet still remember that you wield a sword
  Forged by your foes against your sovereign lord;
  Design’d to hew the imperial cedar down,
  Defraud succession, and dis-heir the crown. 
  To abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
  Is to hate traitors, and the treason love. 
  What means it else, which now your children say,
  We made it not, nor will we take away?