Just returning from my weekly wrangle.
We always seem to get stuck on Free Will vs. Predestination  – which is fun
but only leads to further speculation on things too high for our puny minds .

Samuel Butler knew such wranglings. I am sure he didn’t fall squarely on either side of the debate, but was offering some Anglican satire of the whole thing in his great work Hudibras which remains one of my all-time favorite poems. You can read excerpts from it here at Connect/Hook. If you like what you find you can tackle the whole thing at this site. I want first to post some of Butler’s lines I find especially relevant before I share with all loyal connectees a theologically thuggish pearl of rare poetic splendor: “Reformed Gangstas” by His Sheer Brilliance King Neb,  elect YouTube artist, which is posted after the poetry. First you may read these immortal words which while truthful, are also refreshingly politically incorrect. Nothing like 17th century wit to tell it like it is.

In lines 217 – 236 of Hudibras, Butler speaks of militant Presbyterians who were:

Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipp’d God for spite.
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for.
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow:
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin:
Rather than fail, they will defy
That which they love most tenderly;
Quarrel with minc’d-pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
Th’ apostles of this fierce religion,
Like MAHOMET’S, were ass and pidgeon,
To whom our knight, by fast instinct
Of wit and temper, was so linkt,
As if hypocrisy and nonsense
Had got th’advowson of his conscience.

IMAGE CREDIT: http://www.art-wallpaper.com/