nvective, from which, indeed, Parker never recovered.

Accused by Parker of aiming to degrade the clerical character, Marvell
declares his veneration for that holy vocation, and that he reflected
even on the failings of the men, from whom so much is expected, with
indulgent reverence:--

"Their virtues are to be celebrated with all encouragement; and if
their vices be not notoriously palpable, let the eye, as it defends
its organ, so conceal the object by connivance." But there are cases
when even to write satirically against a clergyman may be not only
excusable, but necessary:--"The man who gets into the church by the
belfry or the window, ought never to be borne in the pulpit; and so
the man who illustrates his own corrupt doctrines with as ill a
conversation, and adorns the lasciviousness of his life with an equal
petulancy of style and language."--In such a concurrence of
misdemeanors, what is to be done? The example and the consequence so
pernicious! which could not be, "if our great pastors but exercise the
wisdom of common shepherds, by parting with one to stop the infection
of the whole flock, when his rottenness grows notorious. Or if our
clergy would but use the instinct of other creatures, and chastise the
blown deer out of their herd, such mischiefs might easily be
remedied. In this case it is that I think a clergyman is laid open to
the pen of any one that knows how to manage it; and that every person
who has either wit, learning, or sobriety, is licensed, if debauched,
to curb him; if erroneous, to catechise him; and if foul-mouthed and
biting, to muzzle him. Such an one would never have come into the
church, but to take sanctuary; rather wheresoever men shall find the
footing of so wanton a satyr out of his own bounds, the neighbourhood
ought, notwithstanding all his pretended capering divinity, to hunt
him through the woods, with hounds and horse, home to his harbour."

And he frames an ingenious apology for the freedom of his humour, in
this attack on the morals and person of his adversary:--

"To write against him (says Marvell) is the odiousest task that ever I
undertook, and has looked to me all the while like the cruelty of a
living dissection; which, however it may tend to public instruction,
and though I have picked out the noxious creature to be anatomised,
yet doth scarce excuse the offensiveness of the scent and fouling of
my fingers: therefore, I will here break off abruptly, leaving many