Songs Compleat, Pleasant and Divertive/Volume 6/Lay by your Pleading

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For other versions of this work, see Law lies a Bleeding.

A Song.


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Lay by your Pleading,
The Law lies a Bleeding,
Burn all your Studies down, and throw away your Reading;
Small Power the World has,
And doth afford us,
Not half so many Privileges as the Sword does;
It fosters our Masters,
It plaisters Disasters,
And makes the Servants quickly greater than their Masters;
It ventures, it enters,
It circles, it Centres,
And sets a Prentice free despite of his Indenters.

This takes up all things,
And sets up small things,
This masters Money, tho’ Money masters all things.
It’s not in Season,
To talk of Reason,
Or count it Loyalty, when the Sword will have it Treason:
This conquers a Crown too,
The Cloak and the Gown too,
This sets up a Presbyter, and this doth pull him down too;
This subtile deceiver,
Turn’d Bonnet into Beaver,
Down drops a Bishop, and up steps a Weaver.

It’s this makes a Lay-man,
To Preach and to Pray Man,
And this made a Lord of him, which was before a Drayman;
For from the dull-pit,
Of Saxbey’s Pulpit,
This brought an holy Iron-monger to the Pulpit:
No Gospel can guide it,
No Law can decide it,
No Church or State can debate it,
’Till the Sword hath Sanctify’d it;
Such pitiful things be,
Happier then Kings be,
This brought in the Heraldry of Thimblesby and Slingsby.

Down goes the Law-trix,
For from this Matrix,
Sprung holy Hewson’s power, and tumbl’d down St Patrick’s.
It batter’d the Gun-kirk,
So it did their Dum-kirk,
That he is fled and gone to the Devil in Dunkirk;
In Scotland this waster,
Did work such disaster,
This brought the Money back for which they sold their Master:
This frighted the Flemming,
And made his so beseeming,
That he doth never think of his lost Lands redeeming.

But he that can tower,
Over him that is lower,
Would be counted but a Fool to give away his Power:
Take books and rent them,
Who can invent them,
When that the sword replys Negatur Argumentur:
The grand College Butlers,
Must vail to the Sutlers,
There’s not a Library like to the Cutlers;
The Blood that is spilt, Sir,
Hath gain’d all the Guilt, Sir;
Thus have you seen me run the Sword up to the Hilt, Sir.