Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform Main Menu Introduction Will Fenton Using Digital Paxton Historical Overview Will Fenton Digital Collection Keywords GHOST RIVER Education Transcriptions Public Outreach Contact Credits The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and The Library Company of Philadelphia

A Battle! A Battle! - 3

7200
A Battle, A Battle, &c.

IN days of yore, our annals say.
The Saints would sit at home and pray,
But not vouchsafe to stir an inch,
Or lend assistance at a pinch;
Tho’ for their King’s and Country’s good,
Stiff to their text the Quakers stood.
  For feuds and quarrels they abhor ’em,
The Lord will fight their battles for ’em.
In this of late they were so stanch,
As not to move against the French:
The few that did they roughly handle,
And curse with bell, with book and candle.
  They read ’em out, and rank’d ‘em in,
A Class they call’d the men of sin.
But now the case is alter’d quite,
And what was wrong, is chang’d to right.
These very drones, these sluggish cattle,
Prepare their guns and swords for battle.
  So acts the sly perfidious bat,
Sometimes for this side, sometime that.
  When first duke Mushroom silence broke,
And thus in croaking accents spoke:
When dangers threaten, ‘tis mere nonsense,
To talk of such a thing as conscience:
Conscience a net has ever been,
To catch religious woodcocks in:
But (as it is most just and fit)
Was made for us, not we for it.
To be contracted, or stretch’d wide,
As were the thongs of Dido’s hide:
And he whose is too great or small,
Must answer for just none at all.
  Where Quaker notions lead the way,
Conscience implicit must obey:
For we, just like three legs in man,
Quocunque jeceris, will stand;

Contents of this annotation:

  1. A Battle! A Battle! - 3