And while they’re busy at their ease,
Can carry what designs we please. 
How easy is it to serve for agents, 1355
To prosecute our old engagements? 
To keep the Good Old Cause on foot,
And present power from taking root? 
Inflame them both with false alarms
Of plots and parties taking arms; 1360
To keep the Nation’s wounds too wide
From healing up of side to side;
Profess the passionat’st concerns
For both their interests by turns;
The only way to improve our own, 1365
By dealing faithfully with none;
(As bowls run true, by being made
On purpose false, and to be sway’d:)
For if we should be true to either,
’Twould turn us out of both together; 1370
And therefore have no other means
To stand upon our own defence,
But keeping up our ancient party
In vigour, confident and hearty: 
To reconcile our late dissenters, 1375
Our brethren, though by other venters;
Unite them, and their different maggots,
As long and short sticks are in faggots,
And make them join again as close
As when they first began t’ espouse; 1380
Erect them into separate
New Jewish tribes, in Church and State;
To join in marriage and commerce,
And only among themselves converse;
And all that are not of their mind, 1385
Make enemies to all mankind: 
Take all religions in and stickle
From Conclave down to Conventicle;
Agreeing still, or disagreeing,
According to the Light in being. 1390
Sometimes for liberty of conscience,
And spiritual mis-rule, in one sense;
But in another quite contrary,
As dispensations chance to vary;
And stand for, as the times will bear it, 1395
All contradictions of the Spirit: 
Protect their emissaries, empower’d
To preach sedition and the word;
And when they’re hamper’d by the laws,
Release the lab’rers for the Cause, 1400
And turn the persecution back
On those that made the first attack;
To keep them equally in awe,
From breaking or maintaining law: 
And when they have their fits too soon, 1405
Before the full-tides of the moon,
Put off their zeal t’ a fitter season
For sowing faction in and treason;
And keep them hooded, and their Churches,
Like hawks from baiting on their perches, 1410
That, when the blessed time shall come
Of quitting Babylon and Rome,
They may be ready to restore
Their own Fifth Monarchy once more.

Meanwhile be better arm’d to fence 1415
Against revolts of Providence. 
By watching narrowly, and snapping
All blind sides of it, they happen
For if success could make us Saints,
Or ruin turn’d us miscreants:  1420
A scandal that wou’d fall too hard
Upon a few, and. unprepar’d.