rite turned the wrong side outward; for, as the one wears his vices
within and the other without, so when they are counterchanged the ranter
becomes a hypocrite, and the hypocrite an able ranter. His church is the
devil's chapel, for it agrees exactly both in doctrine and discipline
with the best reformed bawdy-houses. He is a monster produced by the
madness of this latter age; but if it had been his fate to have been
whelped in old Rome he had passed for a prodigy, and been received among
raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop
to all public affairs until he had been expiated. Nero clothed
Christians in the skins of wild beasts, but he wraps wild beasts in the
skins of Christians.

AN AMORIST

Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an
officer in a corporation. Though no one in particular will own any title
to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and
they as seldom to turn it back again untouched. He commits nothing with
them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again
to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he
does fail of it everywhere else. His passion is as easily set on fire as
a fart, and as soon out again. He is charged and primed with love-powder
like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he
goes, but seldom or never hits the mark. He has commonplaces, and
precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as
readily into his method of making love as a parson does into his form of
matrimony. He converses, as angels are said to do, by intuition, and
expresses himself by sighs most significantly. He follows his visits as
men do their business, and is very industrious in waiting on the ladies
where his affairs lie; among which those of greatest concernment are
questions and commands, purposes, and other such received forms of wit
and conversation, in which he is so deeply studied that in all questions
and doubts that arise he is appealed to, and very learnedly declares
which was the most true and primitive way of proceeding in the purest
times. For these virtues he never fails of his summons to all balls,
where he manages the country-dances with singular judgment, and is
frequently an assistant at _l'ombre_; and these are all the uses they
make of his parts, beside the sport they give themselves in laughing at
him, which he takes