Ex otio negotium. Or, Martiall his epigrams translated. With sundry poems and fancies, / by R. Fletcher.

A Hue and Cry after the Reformation.

WHen Temples lye like batter'd Quarrs, Rich in their ruin'd Sepulchers, When Saints forsake their painted glass To meet their worship as they pass,

When Altars grow luxurious with the dye Of humane bloud, Is this the floud Of Christianity? When Kings are cup-boarded likc cheese, Sights to be seen for pence a piece, When Dyadems like brokers tyre Are custom'd reliques set to hire When Soverainty and Scepters loose their names Stream'd into words Carv'd out by swords Are these refining flames? When subjects and Religion stir Like Meteors in the Metaphor, When zealous hinting and the yawn Excize our Miniver and Lawn▪ When blue digressions fill the troubled ayre And th' Pulpit's let To every Set That will usurp the chair? Call yee me this the night's farewel When our noon day's as darke as Hell? How can we less than term such lights Ecclesiastick Heteroclites? Bold sons of Adam when in fire you crawle Thus high to bee Perch'd on the tree Remember but the fall. Was it the glory of a King To make him great by suffering?

Was there no way to build God's House But rendring of it infamous? If this be then the merry ghostly trade? To work in gall? Pray take it all Good brother of the blade. Call it no more the Reformation According to the new translation, Why will you wrack the common brain With words of an unwonted strain? As plunder? or a phrase in senses cleft? When things more nigh May well supply And call it down right theft. Here all the School-men and Divines Consent, and swear the naked lines Want no expounding or contest, Or Bellarmine to breake a jest. Since then the Heroes of the pen with mee Nere scrue the sense With difference, We all agree agree.