The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Son of the living God! The Christ Thou art!”
So spake, by more than mortal wisdom led,
The bold Apostle, when, through flesh and blood
Divinity within the Form august
Of Jesus, shrined in mortal clay, he saw:
And on the “rock” of this confession, high
In Godhead rear'd, and deep in Manhood based,
Emmanuel built His everlasting Church.
But how hath Sin, from out the promise made
To Peter, in apostleship sublime,
But not supreme, beyond his fellows rank'd,
The Keys of power, the Kingdom, and the Laws
Which bind or loose, as papal nods decree,
Derived!—and thus on earth enthroned
A vile dominion, measureless, and vast
As Guile could plan, or cheering Hell applaud.
Admire we then, let gratitude adore
The Power divine, which hurl'd the Popedom down
From that cursed height of blasphemy and crime,
To which, through ages of gigantic skill
By fell gradation, it at length arose;—
Reigning aloft, stern Arbitress of kings
And thrones; dispensing sceptres with a smile,
Or else dissolving Kingdoms by a frown!
For Peter's shadow, and the Roman name
O'er power and policy together ruled:
Then, the high Past a holy magic breathed;
And the rich lustre of a world's regard
Made Rome the palace of Mankind appear,
The true Metropolis of priestly hearts,
A Temple, with apostleship instinct,
The stones all sacred, and Her dust inspired!
Thus magnified, and with mysterious charms
Endow'd, behold, a miracle of pride
Erect! Supremacy, thy Pope survey,
A Breath of sin on Deity's great throne!
Oh, never in the luxury of lies
Hath Self more wanton'd; never in this world
Hath Adulation's most besotted dream
A foul pretence so hideously assumed,
As then, around some ruffian Pope began;
For, palsied Reason to his sceptre bow'd,
And Blasphemy baptised a monster, “God;”
Disgust, be mute! and horror, speechless stand!
'Tis not in language, though each word be fire,
Or, fang'd with truth's most execrating force,
A Pope to paint, when deified by sin.
All right above, beyond all law secured,
In errorless perfection shrined aloft;
Of Peter's royalties sole heir, and king;
Of churches, Judge; of christendom the Lord;
And, such an oracle!—that when his lips
Shall condescend some great response to give,
Virtue is vice, and vice may virtue be,
Or, each be neither, if his nod decide!
Since Truth and Nature are at once transform'd
By him, the world's embodied Fiat, now.
E'en more than this!—to heights of sin beyond
These climbing blasphemies of folly scaled,

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And from the temple of Jehovah took
The crown, and from the Hand Eternal robb'd
The sceptre, till from Godhead's self there seem'd
To pass all glory; and, in pontific shape,
A mock almighty was the Pope adored!

II.—Mystery.

Above, beneath, around, where'er we move
Or live, an atmosphere of myst'ry floats;
For ever baffling with its gloom unpierced
The pride of reason's analytic gaze.
E'en like that Pillar, which, of cloud and fire
Contemper'd, to the pilgrim-church bestow'd
A guidance solemn, through untrodden wilds,
So human knowledge, in this world forlorn
By shade and light alternately prevails,
Too dark for pride, too vivid for despair.
And thus, accordant with our state corrupt,
From truth to truth, the educated soul
Through shades of awe is humbled yet advanced;
While noble ignorance, that knows itself,
Kneels in the shadow of a Mercy-seat
And prays the heart to piety, and love.

Yes! all is myst'ry: from that blaze immense
In which pavilion'd dwells the Vast Unseen,
Down to the insect of minutest frame,
Science is mock'd. Within retreating depths
The Cause uncaused, above all causes throned,
Who can describe? Yet, what religion owns,
Plain reason grants,—that He is perfect One
Pervading all things with His presence whole;
Unfelt, unform'd, unheard and undefined,
All Eye, all Ear, all Spirit, and all Power,
His center, Light, and his circumf'rence, Love:
Yet, what reveals Him, Who all else reveals,—
The Unexplain'd, who yet explaineth all?
What sun to systems, God to truth appears;
But still, apart, impenetrably shrined
In secresy of light, for ever veil'd.

Then turn to nature, eloquently touch'd
With living beauty; and in sight and sound
Teeming with all which holy Truth admires:
There, though a shadow of the primal Curse
Dims the soft radiance of a virgin-world,
Traces of Eden, tracks of angel-feet
Still haunt creation with a hallowing charm:
But myst'ry, still, o'er nature's Secret broods,
Beyond philosophy's most daring ken
To master; lock'd in mute reserve it lies.
Since, what is Essence, how formation acts,
Or life and law reciprocally play,—
Can reason here mount explanation's throne?
Nature herself is thine embodied Will
Almighty! There, at last, the mind has gain'd
An ultimatum which unteaches pride;
While Genius, like a second childhood, stands,
And, rapt in wonder, to Religion turns.

And, does not Providence our life invest
With one horizon of perpetual cloud?
But while to man, his planless life appears
A problem made of paradox, and gloom,
Darkness itself may Deity enshrine
When acting mercy, in deep wisdom, there.

But now, within, profound Logician! gaze;
Down thy deep hell of consciousness descend,
Who o'er Jehovah thus presum'st to wave
The treason-banner of rebellious thought.
Thou, to thyself embodied myst'ry art;
And why? Because unfathomably bad,
And thus, by grace unfathomably heal'd!
“Deceitful, vain, and desperately vile
All things above, the heart of man is found;
And who can know it?—I, the Lord alone!”
Thus chants a prophet; and we seem to hear
Round all the regions of created soul
Ring his dread challenge; mute alike remain
Seraph and Angel, and the star-bright Host
Who, nearest to the fountain-source of Mind,
'Mid radiance intellectual, shine and sing:—
To each and all unsearchable abides,
The heart of Nature in the human breast.

Then, turn to grace,—the Trinity express'd
In threefold glory, yet divinely One.
There, all is myst'ry, hung with moral gloom.
Flight after flight, in vain proud Reason takes,
And seeks and soars, and soars, and seeks again,
And more confounded by the search becomes:
Till, all exhausted, like the arkless dove
Back to the shelter of a simple truth
The soul retreats, and learns by faith to live,
And love the more, the less it understands
Of the Great Secret which salvation hides,—
The how, and why, in all of Godhead, there.

And Him, the Paramount of living grace,
The Truth Incarnate, how can words reveal?
Or who by comprehension yearns to grasp
Emmanuel's Person, in our flesh array'd?—
True greatness is to know how small we are,
Who learn divinity by loving God,
And as we love, alone can understand.

III.—Mystery of Iniquity.

And thus, at length, analogy conducts
Our hearts to Thee, the consummation dire
Of myst'ries all by Antichrist sustain'd!
Around it more than twice six hundred years
Have travail'd, in the pride of priestly art;
And now, a very prodigy of mind

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Depraved, of truth corrupt, and power abused,
It moulds, and masters all whom it beguiles.
Compact, complete, symmetrically form'd
To fit all hearts, whate'er the sensual frame,
Or oscillate to each exacting move,
Mental or moral, varied life presents,—
This myst'ry plays the Proteus with mankind.
From character it draws responsive tones;
From all condition wins a pleased support;
In circumstance, the very crisis wields,
And of weak conscience takes advantage vile:
Virtue and vice alike its charm obey;
And, forging chains that with no clanking fall
The ear arrest, or rouse the dormant soul,
The heart it manacles with fettering guile,
And binds it down, deluded to the last.

“A myst'ry” was this antichristian spell
In wisdom by prophetic Paul foretold;
Nor aught which infidels have dared, or done
The Lord of souls to crucify again,
Like this imposture hath mankind seduced.
There, falsehood in its open vileness reign'd;
Conspicuous, mark'd, and branded as the bad,
The heart may shun it, and securely keep
Both principle and purity awake.
But here, false Darkness, with a face of Light
Deceptively upon its victim smiles;
And, by the aspect of an angel's love,
Ruins the spirit with a demon's guile.
Here lies the danger, lurks the full deceit,—
Pretension, high as heaven's meridian truth,
Performance, low as hell's absorbing lie!
Religion thus, with suicidal hand
Herself destroys; and into death transmutes
A living zeal, which, else, for God and souls
Like inspiration might the world employ:—
Dilates a precept, or a truth contracts,
Can mould a doctrine, or a creed erect;
And round salvation such a dimness cast
That Christ is hidden, and the Church alone
In sacramental mist at length adored.

But yet, how stern, how lofty, how refined,
Thy vast professions, Romanistic creed!
Not Purity itself, is pure as Thou
In strictness, and severity of aim.
From the mix'd world, monastically free,
Our spirit thou would'st fain entice; and cast
Its powers in moulds of superhuman faith;
And thus, from foul entanglements of flesh
The mind deliver, till, to earthless heights
Of dazzling purity at length arrived,
That consummation of the church is reach'd,—
Meekness and martyrdom, in one combined!

The Devil is the parodist of God;
And priestly colours are the paint employ'd
To tinge his counterfeits of Truth divine
With holy semblance; and that flaming zeal
For saintliness, apostate Rome affects,
For Him has wrought satanically well.
Pollution's self on Purity's clear throne
In veil'd enchantment thus hath ruled, and reign'd,
Deceiving others, and itself deceived.
The Roman myst'ry is a mask of lies,
While yet thy countenance, celestial Truth!
It borrows; Mercy is the mild pretence,
Justice her theme, and love for God the law,
And zeal for Christ the Church's ardent soul
That makes Her all that miracle she is!—
Satan himself can thus religious seem,
And poison Virtue with her very smile.

Gospel and Grace in this dread system die,
And Love and Light to cruel darkness turn,
Shade upon shade, impenetrably deep,
Investing Godhead with a vile array
Of terrors, forged by sacerdotal guile,
And summon'd forth as guilt, or gain demands.
Where is The Father, in that fiction dread,
That ghastly Something, for a God believed,
Which Popery to the harrow'd Mind presents?
Or, when the ague of a guilty heart
Rages in secret, what paternal voice
From God in Christ subdues it into tears?
Then, not direct through Son and Spirit looks
A soul repentant, from the pleading eye
Of faith, on God reveal'd; but damning frowns,
Blacker than Sinai's legal night of death
To daunt the sinner, are at once evoked,
Hiding the cross with intercepting gloom:
Infinite Cruelty thus God becomes;
His throne all blackness, and His heart begirt
With stern-eyed Saints, who awe the spirit down
Till first their mediatorship is moved,
And God, persuaded by their prayer, relents!
As if by impulse an Almighty moved,
Nor in Himself His own great motive was.

IV.—Sacramental God.

But, see the climax of corrupted truth,
An Incarnation, parodied by priests!
Robed for a melodrame of mutter'd spells
Lo, where the sacerdotal Juggler stands,
Beneath whose touch the sacramental Host
To Body, Blood, Divinity, and Soul
Itself transforms, created into Christ!
Emmanuel there, consummate and complete,
Again must bleed, in Calvary revived!
Oh, horrible, and heartless mock of all
Of God in glory, or of man in grace,
That He, whose Person is the Sum and Soul

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Of what in time Eternity shall act
High o'er the senses, or mere reason's grasp,—
Is now in sacramental bread contain'd
While the blest wafer turns embodied God.

And Thou, O Spirit! who alone canst rule
The hearts where pantheistic darkness reigns,
Or carnal gods, by dreaming passion shaped,
Debauch the conscience till its light goes out,

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With what an aping Liturgy of lies
Hath Romish parody presumed to mock
The might, and glory of Thy work august!
And dared, for living waters freshly drawn
From the deep fountains of eternity
And truth, Herself to substitute, and lift
Her canons vile to revelation's throne.

When thus the life-blood of religion's drain'd
By this fell vampire, what for man is left
But the mere carcass of a ritual show,
A mindless worship, meaningless as false,
Where man is God, and God to man transform'd?

Thou dread Almighty! may we dare repeat
With deep-toned echo, that mysterious Cry
Apocalyptic martyrs lift above,
And chant, “How long shall Grace Eternal be
By juggling Rome dishonour'd, and traduced?
How long shall falsehood wear the saintly dress
Of truth celestial, while the Cross is veil'd,
And He, whose merit is creation's shield,
The church's light, and providence's law,
High o'er His Throne, behold anointed dust
And sainted villains, canonised and cowl'd,
Ascend beyond Him, in their plea for grace!”
'Tis thus, the laurels from the brow of Christ
Are taken, and around the head enwreathed
Of Antichrist, for twice six hundred years,—
That aping monster, who travesties God
And in the glory of his darkness seems
A mimic Satan, on Messiah's throne!

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V.—Moral Root.

But, whence this power, which paralyses men
To dull machines, for priestly hands to work,
That from the Cross all crucifixion takes,
And shuts the fountain in Emmanuel's side,
Whence gush'd atonement for the World's great sin,
Till Christ with closèd wounds remains,
Shorn of those beams, which round His ransom play,
And form a Merit fit for man to plead,
Ample as Justice, Law, and God require?
Whence the dread magic, which so mocks the world,
Soothing pale conscience with Iscariot's kiss?
Look in thy heart! there, reader! there it lies.
As fits the die within the forming mould
So false religion for thy heart is framed.

Thy fountains, Nature! are the fatal spring
Whence Popery all her canker'd life-blood drains,
And drains for ever—for they ever flow!
A moral cast from our corrupted soul
Designing Rome hath taken; and contrived
A feign'd religion, that, with fitting art,
Infernally for each expression finds
Some flatt'ring counterpart, or creed, or charm.
'Tis Man's religion from the root of sin,

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By passion foster'd, and by pride increased,
Deep-grounded, in the under-soil intense
Where guilty nature feels the goading pang,
As conscience prompts, or keen compunction wakes.
Hence, creeds are moulded; hence, all gods are made;
While reason, bribed to superstition, bows,
As sin and penance take relieving turns;
Till man himself his own atonement dreams,
And draws salvation out of sighs, and tears.

And thus, not Mind, whate'er its lofty range
Along the pathless Infinite of thought,
A shielding bulwark round the man can raise,
Safely to keep one Romish error out.
For oft, religion is but God disguised;
And when its nature from the name is torn
Mere sounds and shades for sense and substance act;
And cheated man a human mock adores.
But God is love, by his Own love inspired,
As seen the sun, by His own ray reveal'd.

Then, vain those pæans which we loudly ring,
As though the great millennium of the mind
Were coming; or, a mental noon began,
Too searching for the Man of Sin to face.
Philosophy the sting of Death renews
And back the vict'ry to the grave restores.
Whatever prospect soaring mind attain
No good it masters, till in God it rest,
Where peace and pardon, law and love combine,
And Christ and conscience can together dwell.
And why? because some creed embrace we must;
From heaven or hell religion must be drawn.
For deep within, prognostications lurk
Of tongueless dread; and boding terrors strike
Their hidden chill; and throbs immortal stir,
Like pulses of eternity, our souls;
While moods are felt, when flames of wrath to come
Prelude damnation, such as Guilt foretells,
Till the grave opens through the banquet's glare
And time's last thunders their rehearsal ring.
Though sin confront it, yet will Conscience speak,
Till sear'd, and branded into senseless nought.
Shrined in the centre of our being, dwells
That voiceless Umpire, on his moral throne
Erect, and pure; whose archetype is God,
In the stern radiance of severest law
Reflected there, for legislative might.
Here, Right and Wrong their true award receive;
And Past and Present for acquittal stand,
Or, condemnation from the bar receive;
Here Man, the ruin, in his ashes keeps
Some righteous embers, which a priest can rake,
Or quench, or quicken, as the crisis needs.

When darkly flatter'd, and when deeply read,
Our hearts become but platforms, where a Priest
Can play the drama of his Church, at will,
And shift the scenes with most consummate guile.
Some charm which echoes our exacting taste,
Some lust respondent to the varied will,
Some lie, to oscillate with pleasing sway
And skill'd vibration, as the mood requires,
Some gulling fiend to take angelic form,
And o'er the pathway which to hell conducts
Weave a rich carpet of seductive woof,—
Let these be organised, or well applied,
And man's religion in their magic proves
How wondrously such adaptation works!
Garb'd in a shroud of theologic guise
Behold the Arch-fiend, with undreaded power
His priesthood guiding; and, with ritual spells
To sooth or sadden, flatter, charm or chain
All which in Man of dust or devil acts,
Gild moral ruin with redemption's smile!
Thus, like a puppet, many-wired and weak,
Our handled nature to each sacred pull
Of Popery moves, with most responsive play.

Art thou a Student, from the pristine wells
Of learning, pleased and proud with classic thirst
To drink rich draughts of undiluted Mind?
Or, is thine ear by intellectual taste
To harmonies of ancient thought attuned?
See! the hoar'd Fathers in their hallow'd shrines,
And pale Philosophy, in pensive state,
Ready to bathe thee in some mental calm,
And soothe thy terrors with ascetic trance.
Or, (to the chariot of the senses chain'd)
Do glare and grandeur, and attractive sheens,
And Pomps, and Festivals, and painted Lies
With false and fatal eloquence, appeal
To the base passion of thine earthly will?
Lo! the drunk Sense with reasonless delight
May find a Ball-room spiritually gay,
A ritual opera, by Rome arranged,
Where the blood dances, where emotion reels
While soft damnation, musical and sweet,
Charms faith to feeling, and each feeling, blind!

VI.—Religious Instinct.

But, most to that religiously-depraved
Self-righteous dream of ever-prompting Pride,—
From earth to heaven to win or work its way,
Adapting Popery, with mimetic art

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Her necromance of ritual pomp applies.
A finite Self to infinite transform'd,
Some Trentine god by moral fiction shaped,
Is all that Passion's creed impure desires;
And lo! in Rome the heart's vile canons meet
Their very echo! grace and sin conjoin'd,
An outward form for inner-life prepared,
A dead religion where no God remains,—
Here is thy Charm, thou sorceress of souls!
Self-gain'd salvation forms thy secret force:
Hence liturgies, to please corruption plann'd;
Hence creeds, to flatter hope, or bribe a fear,
And all the pantomime of bows, and beads.
Thus perfect in pure falsity, Thou seem'st
By the Great Liar of the world inspired,
To set the Adam of the sensual mind
In motion; feeling, so that nothing's felt,
And working, so that nothing's truly wrought
As Law proclaims, or holy love demands.
Yet, nature, pleased with self-atonement, dares
Blindly to merit what mere Grace bestows,
And parts with all things, sin alone except!

And thus, machines, by blind devotion turn'd
For rites external, Rome's deluded slaves
Become; automatons for priestly guile,
Moving, or motionless, as that inspires;
For, each false yearning of self-righteous will
In Popery some pleasing vent can find.
Devout fanatics, passionately wed
To forms, where sense o'er spirit domineers,
May there a sanctimonious refuge gain,
From seeming prayer, to suit a prayerless heart,
Down to the beads dull Superstition counts.
Rome loves the Crucifix, but hates the Cross!
And thus, whatever gull'd Emotion longs
Upon her shrine of selfishness to lay,
Her human gospel cunningly applies;
Cheating the soul with skeletons of truth.
No taste, but here a subtle pleasure finds;
No sentiment, but what some echo meets;
Nor fancy, which no fellowship can find.
There, Painting, with its poetry of hues,
And Music, with its poetry of sound,
And temples, with their poetry of stone,
All, all compose a theologic cheat
That charms the spirit from its saviour-God.

VII.—Sorcery.

But thou! Imagination's martyr'd fool,
Whose faith is fancy, in religion's dress,
Whose shining virtues are but gilded vice
Seen by the Bible's heart-exploring beam,
For thee the cup of Antichrist is drugg'd
With rapt intoxication's master-spells!
Anthems, which seem to roll from Angel-harps,
And silver chants, that Seraphim might sing;
Paintings, where Beauty's virgin grace
Divinely-mortal, exquisitely smiles;
And sights superb, processions' vast array,
Or cloisters pale, where Pensiveness may roam,
Or perfumed incense, with its spiral clouds
Floating to heaven, before the vested priests,
Whose robes with sacramental meaning wave;
All these, with Churches, where religion stamps
The very stones with symbolising force,
And painted windows, by their colours, preach
Sermons which strike imagination dumb,
Or, melt it in soft martyrdom of sighs,—
Here is the weaving of those spells which bind
Millions to darkness, in the chains of Rome!
Whose mock religion The Almighty veils,
And each fine essence out of saving truth
Evaporates, in Forms which stifle faith,
And from the heart its vital heaven exclude:
For, what is holiness but heaven below?
Or heaven itself, but holiness above?

But, in some crisis of mysterious gloom
When frowns almighty round the heart of guilt
Darker than death-shades, dismal as profound,
Hover and hang, the buried past revives
Till dead Hours quicken in their secret graves,
The Infinite a voicely fear becomes,
And all of God to all in man appeals
For vengeance! Horeb is on fire again,
In thunder preaching its horrific curse.
Now, seems a Sinai in the soul of man!
Erected there by that instinctive law
Which Nature's creed must canonize, and own:
And oft, beneath its altitudes of gloom
Pale terrors, and alarm'd compunctions fall,
By strong enforcement, at its awful base;
Till the bow'd spirit trembles into tears,
While thunder-peals of God-proclaiming truth
Preach to our guilt th' uncompromising Law
Which conscience echoes with responsive groan.
Then doubts, which make a Golgotha of mind,
Madden the sinner with a fest'ring sway:
The wind was sown,—the whirlwind hence is reap'd;
The seed was darkness—and the fruit is death!
And where, now pleasure's silken trance is o'er
And fear'd eternity with curses rings,
Shall the torn spirit some true refuge find?
Oh, fell imposture! priestly Fiction comes;
And all its juggl'ry of cheating lies,
Indulgence vain, and penances most vile
Which keep the sinner from the saving Cross,
Again renews; the soul with opium drugs;
Infernal laud'num blinded Conscience drinks,
Till thus, from terror into torpor soothed,
Her sunken witness in stagnation dies;
And the torn Heart, by self-atonement heal'd,
Back to its smiles of sinful peace returns

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To drink from pleasure draughts of death once more,
Like a mad infant to its mother's breast,
Though pale, and poison'd by some murd'rous hand.

Here is thy venom, here thy spring of strength,
Thou master-spell of Satan's master-piece!
With all the finish of a fiend contrived
To soothe the conscience, when a rack begins;
To keep the penance and a priest in play;
To hold the sinner, but let loose the sin,
And by Confession to absorb the Cross.
Thus, papal lies to nature's roots descend;
They fix, they fasten in the moral soil
Their foul adjustment. Man is papal born,
And false religion must be papal too;
And his exacting nature nicely fit
In heart, in conscience, and uncertain will.
For sin, when loved, for punishment, when fear'd,
Consummate Rome hath thus for both prepared
A recipé, that 'tween the two can act:
A sop for Conscience—when it pleads with dread,
And sin for Passion—when that dread is o'er:
And thus, beneath the burning eye of Heaven,
No parody of truth like this, deceives;
No spell, by genius of satanic might
Forged in the secrecy of mystic lies,
No miracle of dread imposture, works
Perdition with so masterly success
As when God's will, travestied and transform'd,
To Man becomes religion; and from heaven
Beguiles him, while it seems to guide him There.