University of Virginia Library

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
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.