And rested Conscience?  No! she would not rest,
Yet was content with making a protest: 
Some acts she now with less resistance bore,
Nor took alarm so quickly as before: 
Like those in towns besieged, who every ball
At first with terror view, and dread them all;
But, grown familiar with the scenes, they fear
The clanger less, as it approaches near;
So Conscience, more familiar with the view
Of growing evils, less attentive grew: 
Yet he, who felt some pain and dreaded more,
Gave a peace-offering to the angry poor. 
   Thus had he quiet—­but the time was brief;
From his new triumph sprang a cause of grief;
In office join’d, and acting with the rest,
He must admit the sacramental test. 
Now, as a sectary, he had all his life,
As he supposed, been with the Church at strife:  —
No rules of hers, no laws had he perused,
Nor knew the tenets he by rote abused;
Yet Conscience here arose more fierce and strong
Than when she told of robbery and wrong. 
“Change his religion!  No! he must be sure
That was a blow no Conscience eould endure.” 
   Though friend to Virtue, yet she oft abides
In early notions, fix’d by erring guides;
And is more startled by a call from those,
Than when the foulest crimes her rest oppose: 
By error taught, by prejudice misled,
She yields her rights, and Fancy rules instead;
When Conscience all her stings and terror deals,
Not as Truth dictates, but as Fancy feels: 
And thus within our hero’s troubled breast,
Crime was less torture than the odious test. 
New forms, new measures, he must now embrace,
With sad conviction that they warr’d with grace;
To his new church no former friend would come,
They scarce preferr’d her to the Church of Rome;
But thinking much, and weighing guilt and gain,
Conscience and he commuted for her pain;
Then promised Fulham to retain his creed,
And their peculiar paupers still to feed;
Their attic-room (in secret) to attend,
And not forget he was the preacher’s friend: 
Thus he proposed, and Conscience, troubled, tried,
And wanting peace, reluctantly complied. 
   Now, care subdued, and apprehensions gone,
In peace our hero went aspiring on;
But short the period—­soon a quarrel rose,
Fierce in the birth, and fatal in the close;
With times of truce between, which rather proved
That both were weary, than that either loved. 
   Fulham e’en now disliked the heavy thrall,
And for her death would in his anguish call,
As Rome’s mistaken friend exclaimed, ‘Let Carthage fall,’
So felt our hero, so his wish express’d,
Against this powerful sprite—­delenda est: 
Rome in her conquest saw not danger near,
Freed from her rival and without a fear;
So, Conscience conquer’d, men perceive how free,
But not how fatal, such a state must be. 
Fatal, not free, our hero’s; foe or friend,