All right, here goes; first, my memory was at fault in several ways, in that I thought I'd read about an earlier version of the lines in question in James Kinsley's three-volume edition of Burns's Poems and Songs (with a Critical Apparatus), and that these lines dated from the 1740s. As far as I can see from the one-volume edition I have, Kinsley doesn't include the verse (though I think, in the full three-volume edition, there is a section of pieces "ascribed to Burns" by various earlier editors). Secondly, I'd thought the earlier version was from the 1740s, and that it was a riposte to a Day of Thanksgiving for the defeat of the legitimate House of Stuart on Drumossie Moor in 1746. Apologies made, here's the information:


First, the words seem to have been first published by Allan Cunningham in his "Works of Robert Burns", 1834. In the second edition, 1835, page 335, No. LVII, he entitles it:
"Lines written on a pane of glass, on the occasion of a National Thanksgiving for a Naval Victory" (without any further information; now, AC is a notoriously unreliable source - I think it was FB Snyder who referred to his "inventive mendacity" - but there's something in the precision of "naval victory" which gives an impression of authenticity, and AC did know a good deal of "traditional" lore about Burns from conversations with contemporaries. On the other hand, it may be just a guess; were there any victories in the 1780s and 1790s other than naval ones?). Cunningham's version is:

"Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men, and gie God thanks!
For shame! gie o'er, proceed no further ---
God won't accept your thanks for murther."


In two later editions, those of Robert Chambers (revised by William Wallace), and of Henley and Henderson, both published for the Centenary of 1896, though of course Dr Chambers' edition was earlier, the words are substantially the same as Cunningham's, except for the third line. I give the version in H&H, Volume II, p.255:

Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men, and give God thanks?
Desist for shame! Proceed no further:
God won't accept your thanks for Murther.

(Ch/W has just a comma in line one, not an exclamation-mark; in line two, there is not a comma; in line three, Ch/W has "Desist, for shame!", everything else being the same)

Now, in Ch/W, Volume IV, p317, there is a footnote: "Adapted from lines 'on the Thanksgiving Day for Perth and Preston, 17th June 1716 (Maidment's Scottish Pasquils, 1868). The victory Burns celebrated was doubtless Howe's, off Ushant, 1st June 1794."


H&H agree with the proposed identification of the victory as Ushant in 1794, and in their notes, Vol II p442, give more detail:

"The thing itself is artlessly adapted either from a pasquinade on Thanksgiving Day after the Ryehouse Plot, 1683; or from its derivative, 'Four lines Put into the Basin of the Tron Church on the Thanksgiving Day for Perth and Preston, 17th June 1716' (in Maidment's Scotish Pasquils, 1868)

'Did ever men play such pranks
As for murder to give thanks:
Hold, damned preachers; goe no furder,
God accepts not thanks for murder'"


So there's a rude, unpolished version of the thought and indeed the rhymes; it might, incidentally, be worthwhile checking whether Burns ever uses the words "prank" or "pranks" elsewhere. While the origin is not his, the thoughts are characteristic. In one of his later verses, he's a humorous pacifist; part of it goes,

"The Deities that I adore
Are Social Peace and Plenty-
I'm better pleased to MAKE one more
Than be the Death of Twenty".

Finally, one of the best pieces of Eighteenth-Century Irony I know is his response to a request for a toast regarding the War against Revolutionary France:
"May our success in the present war be equal to the justice of our cause".
As he put it himself in a letter about the incident - a certain Captain Dods took exception to the wording, knowing Burns's politics but not recognising the skilful ambiguity - there is nothing in the form of words used to which even the most perfervid patriot could legitimately take exception. Of course, the implication is pretty clear. I only hope someone, amidst all the carefully structured commercialisation of the current Scottish celebrations of the 250th anniversary of RB's birth, has both the knowledge and the courage to use this toast; as so often, Burns's words are as relevant now as they were two centuries ago.