Is not th’ High-Court of Justice sworn 325
To judge that law that serves their turn,
Make their own jealousies high-treason,
And fix ’m whomsoe’er they please on? 
Cannot the learned counsel there
Make laws in any shape appear? 330
Mould ’em as witches do their clay,
When they make pictures to destroy
And vex ’em into any form
That fits their purpose to do harm? 
Rack ’em until they do confess, 335
Impeach of treason whom they please,
And most perfidiously condemn
Those that engag’d their lives for them? 
And yet do nothing in their own sense,
But what they ought by oath and conscience? 340
Can they not juggle, and, with slight
Conveyance, play with wrong and right;
And sell their blasts of wind as dear
As Lapland witches bottled air? 
Will not fear, favour, bribe and grudge 345
The same case sev’ral ways adjudge? 
As seamen, with the self-same gale,
Will sev’ral different courses sail? 
As when the sea breaks o’er its bounds,
And overflows the level grounds, 350
Those banks and dams, that, like a screen,
Did keep it out, now keep it in;
So when tyrannic usurpation
Invades the freedom of a nation,
The laws o’ th’ land, that were intended 355
To keep it out, are made defend it. 
Does not in chanc’ry ev’ry man swear
What makes best for him in his answer? 
Is not the winding up witnesses
And nicking more than half the bus’ness? 360
For witnesses, like watches, go
Just as they’re set, too fast or slow;
And where in conscience they’re strait-lac’d,
’Tis ten to one that side is cast. 
Do not your juries give their verdict 365
As if they felt the cause, not heard it? 
And as they please, make matter of fact
Run all on one side, as they’re pack’t? 
Nature has made man’s breast no windores,
To publish what he does within doors, 370
Nor what dark secrets there inhabit,
Unless his own rash folly blab it. 
If oaths can do a man no good
In his own bus’ness, why they shou’d
In other matters do him hurt, 375
I think there’s little reason for’t. 
He that imposes an oath, makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it: 
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made? 380
These reasons may, perhaps, look oddly
To th’ Wicked, though th’ evince the Godly;
But if they will not serve to clear
My honour, I am ne’er the near. 
Honour is like that glassy bubble 385
That finds philosophers such trouble,
Whose least part crack’t, the whole does fly,
And wits are crack’d to find out why.