In the frontispiece
of the old Beldam diurnal, like the contents of the chapter, sitteth the
House of Commons judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You may call them
the kingdom's anatomy before the weekly calendar; for such is a diurnal,
the day of the month with what weather in the commonwealth. It is taken
for the pulse of the body politic, and the empiric divines of the
assembly, those spiritual dragooners, thumb it accordingly. Indeed it is
a pretty synopsis, and those grave rabbis (though in the point of
Divinity) trade in no larger authors. The country-carrier, when he buys
it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it
casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from
an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from
a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments.
It begins usually with an Ordinance, which is a law still born, dropped
before quickened by the royal assent. 'Tis one of the parliament's
bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a
Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.
Thus their militia, like its patron Mars, is the issue only of the
mother, without the concourse of royal Jupiter: yet law it is, if they
vote it, in defiance to their fundamentals; like the old sexton, who
swore his clock went true, whatever the sun said to the contrary.
The next ingredient of a diurnal is plots, horrible plots, which with
wonderful sagacity it hunts dry-Coot, while they are yet in their
causes, before _materia prima_ can put on her smock.
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