William, the great successor of Nassau,
Their prayers heard and their oppressions saw:
He saw and saved them; God and him they praised,
To this their thanks, to that their trophies raised.
But, glutted with their own felicities,
They soon their new deliverer despise;
Say all their prayers back, their joy disown,
Unsing their thanks, and pull their trophies down;
Their harps of praise are on the willows hung,
For Englishmen are ne’er contented long.
The reverend clergy, too! Who would have thought
That they, who had such non-resistance taught,
Should e’er to arms against their prince be brought,
Who up to Heaven did regal power advance,
Subjecting English laws to modes of France,
Twisting religion so with loyalty,
As one could never live and t’other die.
And yet no sooner did their prince design
Their glebes and perquisites to undermine,
But, all their passive doctrines laid aside,
The clergy their own principles denied;
Unpreached their non-resisting cant, and prayed
To Heaven for help and to the Dutch for aid.
The Church chimed all her doctrines back again,
And pulpit champions did the cause maintain;
Flew in the face of all their former zeal,
And non-resistance did at once repeal.
The Rabbis say it would be too prolix
To tie religion up to politics:
The Church’s safety is suprema lex.
And so, by a new figure of their own,
Their former doctrines all at once disown;
As laws post facto in the Parliament
In urgent cases have obtained assent,
But are as dangerous precedents laid by,
Made lawful only by necessity.
The reverend fathers then in arms appear,
And men of God become the men of war.
The nation, fired by them, to arms apply,
Assault their Antichristian monarchy;
To their due channel all our laws restore,
And made things what they should have been before.
But when they came to fill the vacant throne,
And the pale priests looked back on what they’d done;
How English liberty began to thrive,
And Church of England loyalty outlive;
How all their persecuting days were done,
And their deliverer placed upon the throne:
The priests, as priests are wont to do, turned tail;
They’re Englishmen, and nature will prevail.
Now they deplore the ruins they have made,
And murmur for the master they betrayed,
Excuse those crimes they could not make him mend,
And suffer for the cause they can’t defend.
Pretend they’d not have carried things so high,
And proto-martyrs make for Popery.
Had the prince done as they designed the thing,
Have set the clergy up to rule the King,
Taken a donative for coming hither,
And so have left their King and them together,
We had, say they, been now a happy nation.
No doubt we had seen a blessed reformation:
For wise men say ’tis as dangerous a thing,
A ruling priesthood as a priest-rid king;
And of all plagues with which mankind are curst,
Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.
If all our former grievances were feigned,
King James has been abused and we trepanned;
Bugbeared with Popery and power despotic,
Tyrannic government and leagues exotic:
The Revolution’s a fanatic plot,
William a tyrant, Sunderland a sot:
A factious army and a poisoned nation
Unjustly forced King James’s abdication.
But if he did the subjects’ rights invade,
Then he was punished only, not betrayed;
And punishing of kings is no such crime,
But Englishmen have done it many a time.
When kings the sword of justice first lay down,
They are no kings, though they possess the crown:
Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things:
The good of subjects is the end of kings;
To guide in war and to protect in peace;
Where tyrants once commence the kings do cease;
For arbitrary power’s so strange a thing,
It makes the tyrant and unmakes the king.
If kings by foreign priests and armies reign,
And lawless power against their oaths maintain,
Then subjects must have reason to complain.
If oaths must bind us when our kings do ill,
To call in foreign aid is to rebel.
By force to circumscribe our lawful prince
Is wilful treason in the largest sense;
And they who once rebel, most certainly
Their God, and king, and former oaths defy.
If we allow no maladministration
Could cancel the allegiance of the nation,
Let all our learned sons of Levi try
This ecclesiastic riddle to untie:
How they could make a step to call the prince,
And yet pretend to oaths and innocence?
By the first address they made beyond the seas,
They’re perjured in the most intense degrees;
And without scruple for the time to come
May swear to all the kings in Christendom.
And truly did our kings consider all,
They’d never let the clergy swear at all;
Their politic allegiance they’d refuse,
For whores and priests do never want excuse.
But if the mutual contract were dissolved,
The doubts explained, the difficulties solved,
That kings, when they descend to tyranny,
Dissolve the bond and leave the subject free,
The government’s ungirt when justice dies,
And constitutions are non-entities;
The nation’s all a mob; there’s no such thing
As Lords or Commons, Parliament or King.
A great promiscuous crowd the hydra lies
Till laws revive and mutual contract ties;
A chaos free to choose for their own share
What case of government they please to wear.
If to a king they do the reins commit,
All men are bound in conscience to submit;
But then that king must by his oath assent
To postulatus of the government,
Which if he breaks, he cuts off the entail,
And power retreats to its original.