Mercurius verax, or, The prisoners prognostications for the year 1675 wherein are prophesied several truths of very great moment yet to come to pass, which he that contradicts let him have a care he does not find them true by experience / by the author of the first Montelion and Satyr against hypocrites.

January's Observations.

THE Weather is very cold, and Chari∣ty far more cold. The womens Bene∣volence flows all into the convention Channel. Their husbands bosomes hard fro∣zen like the weather, not to be thaw'd by all the steams of Plum-broth and Plum-Pye that make such mists in their Kitchins; On∣ly the Cellar man, in hope to be pai'd at one time or other, and partly out of the Le∣cherie they have in cozening and cheating with false measures and nasty Tobacco, is at length contented to let his dear Euridices, his Beer and his Brandy take a little air out of his Infernal regions. But the hot strum∣pets leave such violent claps behind them in the Pockets of the poor Prisoners, that no Aqua fortis cats so violently into a fob as they do. Only the Cellar man has one Re∣cipe to stop the violence of the Gonorrhea, by crying in a Lion-like tone, I'le trust no more. Yet men that are pickt up in the Holydayes have not so much reason to complain; for though they fare not so well as they might abroad, yet they are sure to be kept from surfeiting where they are, surely 'tis a hard case that such Enormities are winkt at, that

where poor men ought to have most, best and cheapest, there they have the worst, least and dearest of all things. Now the reason is such that all the seven wise men of Grece could not have given the like; because the Master Keeper lets his Cellar at a Rack rent, because he himself has paid so dear for the Custody of his Den: A strange kind of Chymistrie, however it came to be allowed of, that a man should be permitted to pur∣chase an Iron-barr'd Limbeck, to act con∣trary to nature, while he makes it his busi∣ness all his life to extract something out of nothing, and having reduced men to no∣thing out of the Caput mortuum of their pe∣risht Estates, to make himself somthing: who could have thought A Jailor had been such a Caldean Magician before?