POETRY in elder days was the Servant of Religion; by that our Ancestors transmitted Divine Truths to their Posterity; and Prophets and Priests con­vey'd the Precepts of Morality and the Mysteries of Faith down to their Disciples: and perhaps Holy Scripture it self affords us nothing more Antient, than the Israelites Song after the drowning of Pharaoh and his Egyptian Army in the Red Sea, and the History of Job, which with the Songs of Moses, Deborah, Habakkuk, and the Canticles, are the most exalted Pieces of Poesy in the World.

But as Religion her self, the greatest Beauty of the rational Soul, has been abus'd to cover the Extravagances of the worst of Villains; so Poetry, the Gift of Hea­ven, has, by the Activity of Hell and wicked Men, been perverted to affront its Giver, to explode Religion, to vitiate Manners, and to countenance and encourage whatsoever might provoke God, and scandalize consider­ing Men.

Soft Words, harmonious Numbers, lofty Fancy, da­ring Figures, and noble Expressions, have been the Leaf-Gold to disguise infectious Pills. Our most celebra­ted Poets of late have led the Way to Vice, and the rest of the crawling Vermine have sometimes croak'd even in the Royal Chambers; Wit has been measur'd by its [Page viii]Lewdness, and he has been esteem'd the best Poet who has made the most numerous Proselytes to the Devil.

This Reflection made some of my Reverend Brethren invite me to assert the Antient Rights of Poetry. They thought it worthy the Study of a Divine, to make her talk in her Original Language; promote the Honour of God, and the Interests of Religion; convince the World that heavenly things were capable of all the Embellishments with which a Poetical Genius could accoutre them; and that without the ridiculous Garniture of a Fantastick Beau, Religion might appear in publick with the charm­ing Modesty of a Virgin, the Majesty of a Queen, the Purity of an Angel, and the Awfulness of a God.

When I was perswaded to try my Talent that way, the Bookseller, whose Interest was like to be concern'd, pitch'd upon the CHRISTIAN PATTERN, as meriting a bet­ter Dress than at present it appear'd in. [...] The Original is extreamly plain and very pious, much bought up by well-inclin'd Christians, and very likely to advance De­votion. Verse may render it yet more pleasant to the Reader, more impressive on the Memory; the very mode of Expression may add something to the Excellency of the Matter, and both together raise the Soul to a nobler pitch in quest of Divine Vertues, and never-ending Fe­licity.

The present Book then is the Product of some, unwish'd for, leisure Hours. Who was the first Author of it, is as impertinent a Disquisition, as that after the true Au­thor of the Epistles ascrib'd to Phalaris, or the Writer of Aesop 's Fables. Yet Monsieur Launoy has discharg'd Thomas â Kempis, and ascribes it to John de Cana­baco, or Gersen, or Gessen, Abbot, as I think, of Vercelles, and contemporary with St. Francis: The [Page ix]Book has a sufficient Tincture of the Age it was writ­ten in; a sour kind of Leaven run through it, which I have endeavour'd so far to purge out, that it might be at once a pleasant and wholesome Reefction for a Pious Contemplative Christian.

The Work is a Paraphrase, sometimes close to the Text, sometimes more Libertine, a [...] the matter would al­low. Sometimes I have only kept my Author in view at a distance, making his Religious my Christian Priest, expunging his whole 17th Chap. of Book I. for I per­swade my self, that nothing but Persecution should drive Christians into a continued Solitude; and that Monasteries and Convents, those Academies of Super­stition and refin'd Lewdness, were none of the Insti­tutions of the Gosple.

In the 4th Book, treating wholly of the Eucharist, I have trodden with all the tenderness I could between the Extreams of Popish Superstition, and Phanatic Inde­cency and Slovenliness. I love no empty Signs, nor am I ambitious to devour my Maker. A Socinian would scarce tempt me to esteem the Lord's Supper an Instituti­on of no weight, an unholy things; nor could all the Sophistry of a Hind let loose, and giving goodly Words, perswade me to adore the Consecrated Elements, as if they were transubstantiated into God.

The Matter of the Book is serious and grave, but full of Breaks and Repetitions, which were not always to be avoided, and made it the harder to find out Lemma 's to every Chapter, which might be pertinent: the Stile is ve­ry mean, and therefore less capable of Ornament; To dress our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount with Virgil's Flights, or Ovid's Fancy, would be, not to beautify, but profane it. Sacred Truth may evaporate with the [Page x]Violence of a hot Brain; and too much Light may strike a Man quite blind; yet humble as the Original is I have sometimes adventur'd to soar a little, but never out of Sight. To compensate for the meanness of the Stile, I have drest it out in the greater Variety of Numbers, and have tuned them to the Judicious Ear, so as nothing in them may sound harsh or ungratefully; and instead of the Original Chapters, I have put a Text of Scripture, generally pretty apposite, in the head of every Division It may now perhaps supersede the Common English Prose Translation; but I'm not for discarding even Sternhold and Hopkins for a worse Version of David 's Psalms, nor that Prose for tedious and ill-sounding Rhimes. The 3d Book, being all Dialogue, I have given all fit­ting Variety to, without resolving it into Stanza's. In short, by the Smoothness of the Verse, the general Correctness of the English, and that pious Air which runs thro' the whole, some I hope may be drawn to admire Divine Poetry, and to court a native Loveliness more than a flaunting adulterated Beauty.

The Employ was a happy Diversion of those Melan­cholic Thoughts which else might have affected one too much, who had met with no extraordinary good Usage from the World. In it I endeavour'd as much as possible to make the Author's Sentiments, so far as justifiable, my own; and the Peruser may read my Heart and the Original Composer's together. And indeed whoever would Translate or Paraphrase an Author well, must try to work up himself to the same temper he was in when he wrote the Original. A narrow Soul can't exhibit the Excellencies of Homer or Virgil in another Language; nor will David 's Harp sound well in any Hand, but where the same Spirit, who influenced [Page xi]that sweet Singer of Israel, has in some measure possest the Heart, and harmoniz'd the Life and Conversation.

I expect the Criticks should spend their Verdicts upon the Performance. As for the Subject it's too much out of the road of the Witty Tribe; they'l let it alone for the same reason, for which Aretine spoke no evil of God. But they'l carp at an Epithet, or nibble at a Phrase; and look upon it as very Affrontive that a little Theologue should pretend acquaintance with the Muses, that he should presume to censure the Brethren of Parnassus, or divert Poetry from the Service of lewd Mistresses, from Burlesquing the most Divine Truths, from pro­fane Rants, and blasphemous Flights, from the Sla­very of an obscene Stage, and gratifying a corrupted Populace. To all this He must plead Guilty: He owns he loves and reverences that Holy Religion which they scoff at, and ridicule; and here, as a late Author expres­ses it, Is a Field of Satyr open'd to Him: But he had rather spend his Time in composing Hymns to the Glory of his Maker, than Satyrs upon an Atheistical Crew; not that he fears their Returns, but he thinks every Minute mispent which is laid out upon them.

I pretend not yet that I have made a compleat Poem of the Christian Pattern; perhaps even the great Cor­neille fail'd in that, tho some say his Paraphrase on our Author was his Masterpiece. I dream not of having ho­nour'd my Country, exalted my Mother Tongue, that I have wrong'd my Author less than others have done, that my Faults are neither gross nor fre­quent, and all that. Those who are us'd to admire themselves, can't forbear it when they have one Foot in the Grave; but the old Hound deserves the Cudgel who thinks he can pinch as close when his Teeth [Page xii]are out, as he could in his more vigorous Years. If a good Christian, as well as a good Critick, shews me my Error, I'll correct it; Criticism should aim only at mending what's amiss. The true Critick distinguishes of the Stiles of Authors, gives us an Au­thentick Text, and the true Import of Words in particular Writers; shews the difference between spu­rious and genuine Pieces, that Relation there is between Mens Writings, and the Laws and Usages of the Countries or Places they write in or about: He tries to fix the Aera's of great Revolutions, and of particu­lar, if considerable, Events, and endeavours to shew the Cryptick Sense of the most learned or obscure Authors. The Critick who employs himself thus, deserves not the Character of ill Nature, he only helps to set things in their true Light; where he shews any Man his Mis­takes, he gives him an opportunity of rectifying 'um, that he may look out into the World with the Eulogies of some reasonable Creature beside himself, He lets the World see how much they are oft impos'd on by Names and Noise, and how justly they may complain,

Which, notwithstanding the New Version of that great Poet, I'd render thus,

Some Gentlemen perhaps, who, by the Religion they profess, claim kindred with Heathens, Jews, and Ma­hometans [Page xiii] (for it's good to be of the strongest side) may think I have gone out of my way (that's the Word) under the last Head to meet with them. I must confess I have some Obligations to them, which in due time, God willing, I shall very faithfully discharge. I can't wonder that those who have call'd my Mother Whore, should fix a malicious Character upon Me. They are a Generation formidable, not for their reasoning Facul­ty, but for their Jesuitism and Impudence. They deal with the Defenders of Truth as Aethiopian Apes with their Enemy the Lion; they fling all the Sand and Dust they can rake together into his Mouth and Eyes, and then run away grinning, and hope to escape in a Cloud of their own Raising. They shelter their Sawciness under the Pretence of a fine new Discovery; they have found ( doubtless after much Fasting and Prayer, as Fa­ther Laelius of old) that there are Nominal and Real Trinitarians (and who would regard them who are so divided among themselves?) as if those who assert the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to be real distinct Persons or Subsistences in the same Divine Nature, and those who assert, That every particular Person has his own peculiar Mode of Subsistence in that Divine Nature, did not both believe a real Tri­nity. Or, as if They were not to be credited in their most solemn Asseverations, when these Night-Birds, declareing their Agreement with the Church of England ( that superannuated Beldam, that Empire of King Oberon, as they sometimes very respectfully call Her) expect to be believed; tho to believe them a Man must crack more Flashoods and notorious Contradictions than all those Mysteries amount to, which they have pre­tended to break their Teeth upon. Indeed if they'd [Page xiv]own once that the Father in and by Himself is infi­nite, Eternal, Incomprehensible, &c. that the Son is in and by Himself, Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensi­ble, &c. and that the Holy Ghost is in and by Himself, Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible, &c. they will agree in that Point with the Church of England; and the Ar­gument deducible from those Concessions, to prove that the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and yet that there is and can be but one God, will amount to a Demonstration.

They tell us indeed that their Writings look like fair well-furnish'd Houses, where every thing is plain and regular; but they may remember the famous Manchegan Hero, who was as eminent for Chivalry as they are for Divinity, took the beggarly Vent for a stately Castle, bare Walls and Sluttishness for noble Furniture, and a pair of Stroling Drabs for beautiful Damsels and Illustrious Princesses. Again, they find nothing but dark and obscure in the clearest Vindications of Eter­nal Truth, but it's because they are always blind at Home, and their Eyes are in the ends of the Earth. Indeed if Religion wanted Buffoons or Merry Andrews, the Gentlemen might be of some use to Her: For, for a rude or Impertinent Jest, a modish Droll, a blasphe­mous Flirt, or a long Declamation in praise of their own Elixirs, Orvietans, or Pouders of Pimperlim­pimp, they'd outdo most of our riding Quacks, or Ger­man Jugglers; but for sound Reason, Chrysippus his Dog outveyed'um; and Balaam 's Ass might much better than They, have superseded the necessity of Divine Re­velation. Answers to them are to the less purpose, be­cause they murder us so with their repeated Crambe's, their wretched Quel (que) Chose shall be set again a hun­dred [Page xv]times upon the same Table, only made a little poi­nant with the Sauce of a new Scoff, or the Haut-goût of a Jeer; and Nothing, not the Eternal Deity himself, can escape the ridicule, when these Saints of a new Stamp take Pen in hand, to assert the Reasonableness of Christianity, to examine Scripture accurately, to ex­plode Mystery, and to blaspheme the Holy and Un­divided Trinity.

It's hard to think they can have any Reverence for true Religion, who write only for the Diversion of those who have none. And we know what great De­signs their late celebrated Champion had; Scripture appear'd to him a meer Heap of Contradictions: and to be reveng'd on those who would not swallow Christianity without Mysteries, he piously resolv'd to set up Mahu­metism in opposition to it; and doubtless he knew very well, that neither Scripture, nor the Churches anti­ent Confessions of Faith, contain'd half so many Ar­guments for the Unitarian Divinity as the Alcoran. Mysteries in Religion are very offensive to some weak Eyes. Men of no Religion may perhaps be thought fit­test to write the History of it, they must needs be im­partial because they have no Interest in the Subject they treat of: but for Men of loose Lives to decry what they call Priest-craft, for Men of very ordina­ry Intellectuals to explode Mysteries, and for those of no Principles to take upon 'um to refine and vin­dicate Christianity, is a Demonstration that Chris­tianity is the best Religion, Mysteries truly useful in it, and the Christian Priesthood the noblest, tho, the most invidious, Employment in the World. Priest­craft is grown a Cant-word, us'd by thoughtless Ani­mals, who seldom know their own meaning in't. Some­thing [Page xvi]they'r angry at: They cant sleep quietly in their Vices; they can't live peaceably like Heathens in a Christian Country; they can't devour the Patrimony of the Church without opposition, nor set up Athe­ism without the danger of a Reprimand from some ill-bred Blackcoat. In short, Religion's against them, and therefore they are resolv'd to be against it. This should render it the more valuable to sober Men; it should make them study by Practical Holiness, as well as weighty Arguments, to crush the Heads of Athe­ism and Heresy; to embrace kindly whatever promotes that Holiness, and even to hug THE CHRISTIAN PATTERN, how meanly soever Paraphras'd, while it strives in the softest way, to impress the sacred Image of our blessed Master on the Hearts of the greatest Priests or Bishops, or of the humblest private Chris­tians.