But soon his followers grew a sovereign lord,
And Peter’s keys exchanged for Peter’s sword,
Which still maintains for his adopted son
Vast patrimonies, though himself had none;
Wresting the text to the old giant’s sense,
That heaven, once more, must suffer violence. 
Then subtle doctors Scriptures made their prize;
Casuists, like cocks, struck out each others eyes;
Then dark distinctions reason’s light disguised,
And into atoms truth anatomised. 120
Then Mah’met’s crescent, by our feuds increased,
Blasted the learn’d remainders of the East;
That project, when from Greece to Rome it came,
Made Mother Ignorance Devotion’s dame;
Then he whom Lucifer’s own pride did swell,
His faithful emissary, rose from hell
To possess Peter’s chair, that Hildebrand
Whose foot on mitres, then on crowns, did stand;
And before that exalted idol all
(Whom we call gods on earth) did prostrate fall. 130
Then darkness Europe’s face did overspread
From lazy cells where superstition bred,
Which, link’d with blind obedience, so increased,
That the whole world some ages they oppress’d;
Till through these clouds the sun of knowledge brake,
And Europe from her lethargy did wake: 
Then first our monarchs were acknowledged here,
That they their churches’ nursing fathers were. 
When Lucifer no longer could advance
His works on the false grounds of ignorance, 140
New arts he tries, and new designs he lays,
Then his well-studied masterpiece he plays;
Loyola, Luther, Calvin he inspires,
And kindles with infernal flames their fires,
Sends their forerunner (conscious of th’event)
Printing, his most pernicious instrument! 
Wild controversy then, which long had slept,
Into the press from ruin’d cloisters leap’d;
No longer by implicit faith we err,
Whilst every man’s his own interpreter; 150
No more conducted now by Aaron’s rod,
Lay-elders from their ends create their god. 
But seven wise men the ancient world did know,
We scarce know seven who think themselves not so. 
When man learn’d undefiled religion,
We were commanded to be all as one;
Fiery disputes that union have calcined;
Almost as many minds as men we find,
And when that flame finds combustible earth,
Thence fatuus fires, and meteors take their birth; 160
Legions of sects and insects come in throngs;
To name them all would tire a hundred tongues. 
So were the Centaurs of Ixion’s race,
Who a bright cloud for Juno did embrace;
And such the monsters of Chimaera’s kind,
Lions before, and dragons were behind. 
Then from the clashes between popes and kings,
Debate, like sparks from flints’ collision, springs: 
As Jove’s loud thunderbolts were forged by heat,
The like our Cyclops on their anvils beat;