Prison-Pietie or, Meditations Divine and Moral. Digested into Poetical Heads, On Mixt and Various Subjects. Whereunto is added A Panegyrick to The Right Reverend, and most Nobly descended, Henry, Lord Bishop of London. By Samuel Speed, Prisoner in Ludgate, London |
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On Hypocrisie. |
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On Hypocrisie.
The Hypocrite, with his deceitful eye,Doth serve the Devil in God's Livery;
And therefore to the Lord so well is known,
Both Earth and Heaven doth his craft disown.
Man sees his Livery and cunning Art,
And hateth him; but God doth view his heart,
And hates him too. Men see his outward Zeal,
For which they do deride him. He, like steel,
Grows strong and stubborn, pleas'd with his own case,
Though God and Man do both abhor his face:
So that he in a Wilderness doth rove,
And never doth become a Canaan's Dove.
The sum of all his labours doth at last
Consume with the Almighty's dreadful blast:
And a dire doom, when he at Judgment stands,
Who hath required these things at your hands?
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Took greatest pains his own Soul to defeat:
He steals his own Damnation, and can tell
(For he with sweat hath found) the way to Hell.
So that the Sinner openly prophane,
And Hypocrite, as they together reign
On Earth, although in different degrees,
They both at last lament their little ease.
Only two ways they finde unto their fate,
One steals to Hell thorow the Postern-gate,
The other keeps the open beaten Road;
But both at last in Tophet make abode.
Hypocrites habit is Formality;
But, Lord, cloath me with thy Sincerity.
Perhaps men may not of my state approve;
It matters not, so I obtain thy love.
Saints here but labour to peruse their story,
When they arrive to their eternal Glory.
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