If just your sentence be;
Or must not innocence appeal
To heaven from your decree.
Your wicked hearts and judgments are
Alike by malice swayed;
Your griping hands, by mighty bribes,
To violence betrayed.
Here the congregation awoke to the meaning of what they were singing, and left the clerk and the children to offend the ears of the legal dignitaries with:
To virtue, strangers from the womb,
Their infant steps went wrong;