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g-candle _ray_ Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace. Well!--be the graceless lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";-- No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious-- Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. I pray for grace--repent each sinful act-- Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turn'd by application to a libel. My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As anybody's rotten borough. What else? no part I take in party fray, With troops from Billingsgate's slang-whanging tartars, I fear no Pope--and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Foxs' Martyrs! I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham-Abr'am saints with wicked banters, I even own, that there are times--but then It's when I've got my wine--I say d----canters! I've no ambition to enact the spy On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry-- 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses, Who thrust them into matters none of theirs; And tho' no delicacy discomposes Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray'rs Amongst the privatest of men's affairs. I do not hash the Gospel in my books, And thus upon the public mind intrude it, As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks, No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it. On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk; Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk,-- For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat; 'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth, A man has got his belly full of meat Because he talks with victuals in his mouth! Mere verbiage,--it is not worth a carrot! Why, Socrates--or Plato--where's the odds?-- Once taught a jay to supplicate the Gods, And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot! A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is Not a whit better than a Mantis,-- An insect, of what clime I can't determine, That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence, By simple savages--thro' sheer pretence-- Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the _nous_, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a stalking-horse or hobby,
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