Careful Words

chapel (n.)

God never had a church but there, men say,

The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles.

I doubted of this saw, till on a day

I westward spied great Edinburgh's Saint Gyles.

William Drummond (1585-1649): Posthumous Poems.

  No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by.

George Herbert (1593-1632): Jacula Prudentum.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,

The Devil always builds a chapel there;

And 't will be found, upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation.

Daniel Defoe (1663-1731): The True-Born Englishman. Part i. Line 1.

  For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

Martin Luther (1483-1546): Table-Talk. lxvii.