IN vain do we give Kings the pompous Titles of Great and Mighty: In vain has Heaven allotted them a Power, re­sembling that of its own, free and uncontrolable, if like Billiard-Table Kings they are onely set up to be shaken and thrown down by the saucy touches of their humble Vassals. If their Authority has such confinements, as some Men would have us persuaded it has, Princes are at best but glittering Pageants, all the professions of steady Loyalty but solemn impertinencies, and Heaven it self is a sharer in the gaudy Delusion. It is not long since this Isle was reckon'd amongst the blackest instances of Trea­son and Rebellion, when the best of Kings and the best of Men fell by the rude violence of a consecrated Axe; ever since we have felt the unfortunate consequences of that dismal Blow; a Blow which like that that was given to the Worlds great Redeemer, rent the Vail of the Church of England in two, abolish'd all its pious Canons, and made them give place to the New-fangled Whimsies of Religious Hypocrites; a fact so horrid and unexampled, that if we may believe Salmasius, Cui simile nec praeterita secula vidêrunt, nec ventura forsitan videbunt. All this was done under the flattering disguises of Religion, by Men who had the im­pudence to boast of a more than ordinary Inspiration, and who pre­tended to have received more light from Heaven, than that Ass whom the Antients fondly accused for drinking up the Moon, who [Page] could throw themselves into all the Postures of Religion, with as great facility as a Skilfull Tumbler can act the Italian Strades, and with a sort of popular Piety cheated three Nations into a belief, that whatsoever they did, was highly lawful, so true is that which Machiavel says, fere omnes homines magis specie, & colore rerum, quàm rebus ipsis permoventur & judicant. In vain do our learned Tribe go about to reclaim these Men by dint of Argument, all their sober reasonings are to them but important Trifles, and were always accounted too weak baits to catch the Carpes of Geneva Lake. And who I pray would take the pains to convince a Taylor by a Syllogism, who perhaps af­ter the consummation of a pair of Breeches, creeps into a Cof­fee-House, where after he has lin'd his Pallet with that facti­ous juice, he looks upon his long and limber Fingers to have been contriv'd by Nature for the handling of a Scepter, and curses the bitter fates that had dwindled it into a Needle, away he goes home, and performs the Offices of distributive Justice upon his Ap­prentices shoulders, and fancies every piece of Parchment cut from an old Bond to make his measures withal, little less to be than clippings from of Magna Charta. Such a Knave as this de­serves no other Logick than what the Pillory can afford him, to make his Ears pay for the petulancy of his Tongue. Another sort of Man there is, whom in the Country Language we may call Sub­stantial, who perhaps has got fourscore pounds a year, and joys in having a little Dove-coat annex'd to his Farm-house, who is famous all over the Neighbouring Villages for his little Chesnut Mare, who in a Race at a late Wake signalized her self by di­stancing a Cart-horse; such a Man as this you can never convince by dint of Argument, he tells you roundly that at the first oppor­tunity be'l draw his Yard and half of Rapier to defend his Religi­on and rusty Bacon from the rude insults of Arbitrary Power: You would laugh in your Sleeve (if you have any) to hear his brisk and debonair reasonings, about the Authority of the Com­mons of England, and you cannot imagine with what deference and regard he is entertain'd amongst the Mobile, beeause he gives them to know the transactions of State, and fills the whole Lord­ship with News; 'tis odds but you shall see him at the next E­lection of a Knight of the Shire, brandishing in his Campagn Coat and Mountero, at the head of a Troop of Dapper-Day-Labourers, on whom prodigal Fortune has munificently bestow'd two pounds a [Page] Year, and who with complicated Interests are striving to set up their Idol Representative. Now the defections of such a Man as this from the Principles of Loyalty, we cannot think to obviate by the most improved reasonings; his Prejudices stop up all the Avenues of his Soul, hindring the least beam of Truth to enter in, and enlighten his Understanding: his too fervent Zeal for his Principles will not give him the leisure to be convinced, and his ignorance baffles all the attempts of Reason: as he does not take up any Opinion for the Affinity it bears to Truth, so neither does he relinguish any for its opposition to the same, if his interest invites him he easily accords with any thing, and his Reason finds no regrets in enter­taining a profitable Error: as you cannot disengage him from his mistakes, so neither can you settle him in a Truth, although you bring all the Credentials of a firm Demonstration, and the reason is, because a Discourse to him is no more than it is to a School-Boy, the jingling of a Noun and Verb together. If then any thing will do, it must be Satyr, and we may if we observe, find in the dullest apprehensions a quicker resentment of a Jest than of an Argument, the one renders that ridiculous, which the other perhaps cannot make appear to be false, and Satyrs are like those Indian Apes, of whom I have read, that when Alexander came into those parts, They straight rally'd thelr deformed Squa­drons, rank'd themselves in Battalia, camp'd and decamp'd with all the moving Solemnities of a real Army, and brought greater affronts upon that all-conquering Army with their Martial Grima­ces, than all the force of Darius and Parus, I have made the Comparison, let some courteous Reader make out the Application. For this cause it is that I have ridicul'd all the Commonwealths that lay in my way, from great old Rome to little modern Geneva; What I have said on this Theam, if the Peruser be not too phlegmatick, must needs create in him some fastidious thoughts of that way of Governing. More especially I have hinted at our late pretended Republican Powers, and in particular at their mon­strous innovations about Religions; where I have let any thing slip from my Pen, that may seem extravagant, I hope it will not be look'd upon as an unruly Effort of my own, but onely as an endeavour to expose the Giddy Enthusiasts of those times. I shall say nothing neither as to the matter or manner of the Verse, I know the whole Poem will labour under the imputations of uneasie roughness, yet I could never imagine that smoothness should be so [Page] absolutely necessary in the dressing up of a Satyr; it always seem­ing to me as disagreeable to see a Satyr Cloath'd in soft and ef­feminate Language, as to see a Woman scold and vent her self in Billings-gate Rhetorick in a gentile and advantageous Garb. I have no more to say, onely to desire the Reader to be as favou­rable as he can to the first endeavours of an unexperienc'd Pen, which is all from