Is a diseased piece of apocalypse: bind him to the Bible, and he
corrupts the whole text. 'Ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his
nurses, railing, rabies, and round breeches. His life is but a borrowed
blast of wind: for between two religions, as between two doors, he is
ever whistling. Truly, whose child he is is yet unknown; for, willingly,
his faith allows no father: only thus far his pedigree is found, Bragger
and he flourished about a time first. His fiery zeal keeps him
continually costive, which withers him into his own translation; and
till he eat a schoolman he is hide-bound. He ever prays against
non-residents, but is himself the greatest discontinuer, for he never
keeps near his text. Anything that the law allows, but marriage and
March beer, he murmurs at; what it disallows and holds dangerous, makes
him a discipline. Where the gate stands open, he is ever seeking a
stile; and where his learning ought to climb, he creeps through. Give
him advice, you run into traditions; and urge a modest course, he cries
out counsel. His greatest care is to contemn obedience; his last care to
serve God handsomely and cleanly. He is now become so cross a kind of
teaching, that should the Church enjoin clean shirts, he were lousy.
More sense than single prayers is not his; nor more in those than still
the same petitions: from which he either fears a learned faith, or
doubts God understands not at first hearing. Show him a ring, he runs
back like a bear; and hates square dealing as allied to caps. A pair of
organs blow him out of the parish, and are the only glyster-pipes to
cool him. Where the meat is best, there he confutes most, for his
arguing is but the efficacy of his eating: good bits he holds breed good
positions, and the Pope he best concludes against in plum-broth. He is
often drunk, but not as we are, temporally; nor can his sleep then cure
him, for the fumes of his ambition make his very soul reel, and that
small beer that should allay him (silence) keeps him more surfeited, and
makes his heat break out in private houses. Women and lawyers are his
best disciples; the one, next fruit, longs for forbidden doctrine, the
other to maintain forbidden titles, both which he sows amongst them.
Honest he dare not be, for that loves order; yet, if he can be brought
to ceremony and made but master of it, he is converted.