'Tis strange how fome men's tempers suit,
Like bawd and brandy, with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand fast,
Only to have them claw'd and canvast.
That keep their confciences in cafes,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases,

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Ne'er to be us'd but when they 're bent
To play a fit for argument.

Make true and false, unjust and just,
Of no use but to be discust;

Dispute and fet a paradox,

Like a strait boot, upon the stocks,
And stretch it more unmercifully,

Than Helmont, Montaigne, White or Tully.
So th' ancient Stoics in the porch,

With fierce difpute maintain'd their church,
Beat out their brains in fight and study,
To prove that virtue is a body,
That bonum is an animal,

Made good with stout polemic brawl :
In which fome hundreds on the place
Were flain outright, and many a face
Retrench'd of nose, and eyes, and beard,
To maintain what their sect averr'd.

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