John Phillips

“ Who having money, though they have no wit,
They weare gold-chains, and here in green pews sit.
There sit True-blew the honest Parish-masters,
With Sattin Caps, and Ruffs, and Demi-casters,
And faith that’s all; for they have no rich fansies,
No Poets are, nor Authors of Romances. ”

“ Hum hum hum.
Hum hum hum hum Mary, hum hum hum hum,
Anon forsooth.
Pray remember to rise betimes to morrow morning, you know you have a great many cloathes to sope, hum hum, hum hum, hum hum, &c.
Behold the zeal of the people.
But Sunday now good night, and now good morrow,
To thee oh Covenant Wednesday full of sorrow,
Alas! my Lady Anne wont now be merry,
She’s up betimes and gone to Alderman-bury,
Truly ’twas a sad day, for every sinner
Did feast a supper then, and not at dinner;
Nor men not women wash their face to day,
Put on their cloathes, and pisse, and so away ”

“ So I doe hope, for so our Brother said;
O what a heavenly piece of work he made!
But I am ign’rant, and my memory short,
I shall forget, were I to be hang’d for’t.
Then quoth the Priest, The cheere that here we see,
Is but an Emblem of Mortality.
The Oxe is strong, and glories in his strength,
Yet him the Butcher knocks down, and at length
We eate him up. A Turkie’s very gay,
Like worldly people clad in fine array ”

“ There is no evidence, however, that Presbyterianism as a particular nonconformist sect stirred Phillips to any special antagonism.
In any case, it seems impossible to represent A Satyr Against Hypocrites seriously as a document of which John Milton would have approved. If he could have tolerated the violation of the Scriptures and the punning obscenity of his nephew’s introduction of the Prophet Habakkuk into the poem, he might have felt a personal offense in the use of such material for an attack upon the church in which he was to register his espousal of the pure-minded Katharine Woodcock. ”

“ How doe you then she cry’d? I’me glad ’tis up:
Ah sick, sick, sick; cryes one, oh for a cup
Of my mint water that’s at home.
As patt as might be, then the Parson cry’d,
’Tis good; one holds her head, let’t come let’t come. ”

“ But while they doe their strict injunctions preach,
Deny in actions what their words doe teach.
O what will men not dare, if thus they dare
Be impudent with Heaven, and play with Prayer!
Yet if they can no better teach than thus,
Would they would onely teach themselves, not us:
So while they still on empty out-sides dwell,
They may perhaps be choakt with husk and shell:
While those, who can their follies well refute,
By a true knowledge, doe obtaine the fruit. FINIS.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
First Year (1946-47)
Numbers 1-6 out of print. ”

“ Nor was it mutton-broth, nor veal-broth neither,
But sure some homely stuff crum’d with brown-bread,
And thus was Daniel, good Daniel fed.
Truly, this was but homely fare you’l say,
Would he have been so content?
Yet Daniel, good Daniel was content that day:
And though there could be thought on nothing cheaper,
Yet fed as well on’t as he had been a reaper.
3 Use.
Better eat any thing than not at all,
Fasting, Beloved, why? ’tis prejudiciall
To the weak Saints, Beloved ’tis a sin,
Several Reasons. ”

“ If Phillips did not publish it in open recalcitrance, he published it with less confidence in his uncle’s sympathy than in his blindness and in the decent reluctance of friends to disclose the extent of a young man’s departure from the paths of good instruction.
The republication of A Satyr Against Hypocrites as The Religion of the Hypocritical Presbyterians, in 1661, was no more than an attempt to attract new interest with a title which would appeal to the post-Restoration tendency to condemn the strongest of the Puritan sects. ”

“ University of California, Los Angeles
The society exists to make available inexpensive reprints (usually facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century works. The editorial policy of the Society continues unchanged. As in the past, the editors welcome suggestions concerning publications. All income of the Society is devoted to defraying cost of publication and mailing. ”

“ But as for me, tis more than I doe need,
To be charitable both in word and deed;
For as to us, the holy Scriptures say,
but
The Deacons must receive, the Lay-men pay.
Why Heathen folks that doe in Taverns stray,
Will never let their friends the reckning pay.
And therefore poure your charity into the bason,
Brethren and Sisters eke, your coats have lace on.
Why Brethren in the Lord, what need you care
For six pence? we’ll one houre enhance our ware. ”

“ On the other hand, the church specifically identified as the scene of the weekday service was St. Mary’s Aldermanbury, and its minister was the Reverend Edmund Calamy, whose inclinations were Presbyterian and whose personally conducted fastday services were notoriously popular. Although Calamy’s custom of preaching from the desk rather than from the pulpit makes it unlikely that he was the minister satirized in the early part of the poem, he would normally have been identified as the object of Phillips’ most severe and scandalous attack ”

“ Neither the unpublished dedication nor the poem itself contains a clear indication of the purpose or the direction of the satire. In pleading her case for John Phillips’ authorship of the anonymous life of Milton, Miss Helen Derbyshire (The Early Lives of Milton [London, 1932] , pp. xxii-xxv) has taken issue with the common statement that it marked Phillips’ departure from his uncle’s teachings and has described it as a satire against the Presbyterians from an Independent position with which Milton might well have sympathized. ”

“ The incongruity between the new title and the old poem, though, seems to have been more evident to the author than to later readers; for in the 1671 edition he introduced a satire on the ceremony of infant baptism which nullified the allusion to the “Ducking-pond” by making the Sunday congregation, at least, clearly Presbyterian. ”

“ Why? my Beloved, these words great force doe carry.
Au! ’tis a waundrous emphaticall speech,
Some men Beloved, as if th’ had lead i’ their breech,
Doe walk, and some (as snails) doe creep as fast:
Truly, my Brethren, these men doe not make haste. ”

“ Which once set downe, there at the little hole
Immediately in whips the Parsons soule.
He saw his Stomacks anchor, and believ’d
That now his belly should not be deceiv’d.
How he leanes ore the cheere toward his first mover!
While his hot zeale doth make his mouth run over. ”

“ Thomas Tyers: A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson ( [1785] ) . Introduction by Gerald Dennis Meyer.
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