{5} `Well, yet I am not fully satisfied,
That this your book will stand, when soundly tried.’ 
Why, what’s the matter? `It is dark.’  What though?
`But it is feigned.’  What of that?  I trow? 
Some men, by feigned words, as dark as mine,
Make truth to spangle and its rays to shine.

`But they want solidness.’  Speak, man, thy mind. `They drown the weak; metaphors make us blind.’

Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writeth things divine to men;
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak?  Were not God’s laws,
His gospel laws, in olden times held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors?  Yet loth
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom.  No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out what by pins and loops,
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs,
God speaketh to him; and happy is he
That finds the light and grace that in them be.

{6} Be not too forward, therefore, to conclude
That I want solidness —­ that I am rude;
All things solid in show not solid be;
All things in parables despise not we;
Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive,
And things that good are, of our souls bereave.

My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold
The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.

The prophets used much by metaphors
To set forth truth; yea, who so considers Christ,
his apostles too, shall plainly see,
That truths to this day in such mantles be.

Am I afraid to say, that holy writ,
Which for its style and phrase puts down all wit,
Is everywhere so full of all these things —­
Dark figures, allegories?  Yet there springs
From that same book that lustre, and those rays
Of light, that turn our darkest nights to days.

{7} Come, let my carper to his life now look,
And find there darker lines than in my book
He findeth any; yea, and let him know,
That in his best things there are worse lines too.

May we but stand before impartial men,
To his poor one I dare adventure ten,
That they will take my meaning in these lines
Far better than his lies in silver shrines. 
Come, truth, although in swaddling clouts, I find,
Informs the judgement, rectifies the mind;
Pleases the understanding, makes the will
Submit; the memory too it doth fill
With what doth our imaginations please;
Likewise it tends our troubles to appease.

Sound words, I know, Timothy is to use,
And old wives’ fables he is to refuse;
But yet grave Paul him nowhere did forbid
The use of parables; in which lay hid
That gold, those pearls, and precious stones that were
Worth digging for, and that with greatest care.

Let me add one word more.  O man of God,
Art thou offended?  Dost thou wish I had
Put forth my matter in another dress? 
Or, that I had in things been more express? 
Three things let me propound; then I submit
To those that are my betters, as is fit.