What makes a church a den of thieves? —­ 1285
A dean and chapter, and white sleeves.

Ad what would serve, if those were gone,
To make it orthodox? —­ Our own.

What makes morality a crime,
The most notorious of the time; 1290
Morality, which both the Saints,
And wicked too, cry out against? —­
Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin
And therefore no true Saint allows, 1295
They shall be suffer’d to espouse;
For Saints can need no conscience,
That with morality dispense;
As virtue’s impious, when ’tis rooted
In nature only, and not imputed 1300
But why the wicked should do so,
We neither know, or care to do.

What’s liberty of conscience,
I’ th’ natural and genuine sense? 
’Tis to restore, with more security, 1305
Rebellion to its ancient purity;
And christian liberty reduce
To th’ elder practice of the Jews. 
For a large conscience is all one,
And signifies the same with none. 1310

It is enough (quoth he) for once,
And has repriev’d thy forfeit bones: 
Nick MACHIAVEL had ne’er a trick,
(Though he gave his name to our Old Nick,)
But was below the least of these, 1315
That pass i’ th’ world for holiness.

This said, the furies and the light
In th’ instant vanish’d out of sight,
And left him in the dark alone,
With stinks of brimstone and his own. 1320

The Queen of Night, whose large command
Rules all the sea, and half the land,
And over moist and crazy brains,
In high spring-tides, at midnight reigns,
Was now declining to the west, 1325
To go to bed, and take her rest;
When Hudibras, whose stubborn blows
Deny’d his bones that soft repose,
Lay still expecting worse and more,
Stretch’d out at length upon the floor; 1330
And though he shut his eyes as fast
As if h’ had been to sleep his last,
Saw all the shapes that fear or wizards
Do make the Devil wear for vizards,
And pricking up his ears, to hark 1335
If he cou’d hear too in the dark,
Was first invaded with a groan
And after in a feeble tone,
These trembling words:  Unhappy wretch! 
What hast thou gotten by this fetch; 1340
For all thy tricks, in this new trade,
Thy holy brotherhood o’ th’ blade? 
By sauntring still on some adventure,
And growing to thy horse a Centaure? 
To stuff thy skin with swelling knobs 1345
Of cruel and hard-wooded drubs? 
For still th’ hast had the worst on’t yet,
As well in conquest as defeat. 
Night is the sabbath of mankind,