Led blindly on by avarice and pride,
    What mighty numbers follow them;
    Each fond of erring with his guide: 
  Some whom ambition drives, seek Heaven’s high Son
  In Caesar’s court, or in Jerusalem: 
    Others, ignorantly wise,
Among proud doctors and disputing Pharisees: 
What could the sages gain but unbelieving scorn;
  Their faith was so uncourtly, when they said
That Heaven’s high Son was in a village born;
    That the world’s Saviour had been
    In a vile manger laid,
    And foster’d in a wretched inn?

IX

Necessity, thou tyrant conscience of the great,
Say, why the church is still led blindfold by the state;
  Why should the first be ruin’d and laid waste,
  To mend dilapidations in the last? 
And yet the world, whose eyes are on our mighty Prince,
    Thinks Heaven has cancell’d all our sins,
And that his subjects share his happy influence;
Follow the model close, for so I’m sure they should,
But wicked kings draw more examples than the good: 
  And divine Sancroft, weary with the weight
Of a declining church, by faction, her worst foe, oppress’d,
    Finding the mitre almost grown
    A load as heavy as the crown,
  Wisely retreated to his heavenly rest.

X

  Ah! may no unkind earthquake of the state,
    Nor hurricano from the crown,
Disturb the present mitre, as that fearful storm of late,
  Which, in its dusky march along the plain,
    Swept up whole churches as it list,
    Wrapp’d in a whirlwind and a mist;
Like that prophetic tempest in the virgin reign,
  And swallow’d them at last, or flung them down. 
  Such were the storms good Sancroft long has borne;
  The mitre, which his sacred head has worn,
Was, like his Master’s Crown, inwreath’d with thorn. 
Death’s sting is swallow’d up in victory at last,
    The bitter cup is from him past: 
    Fortune in both extremes
  Though blasts from contrariety of winds,
    Yet to firm heavenly minds,
Is but one thing under two different names;
And even the sharpest eye that has the prospect seen,
  Confesses ignorance to judge between;
And must to human reasoning opposite conclude,
To point out which is moderation, which is fortitude.

XI

Thus Sancroft, in the exaltation of retreat,
  Shows lustre that was shaded in his seat;
    Short glimm’rings of the prelate glorified;
Which the disguise of greatness only served to hide. 
    Why should the Sun, alas! be proud
    To lodge behind a golden cloud? 
Though fringed with evening gold the cloud appears so gay,
’Tis but a low-born vapour kindled by a ray: 
    At length ’tis overblown and past,
    Puff’d by the people’s