Fifty of the Protestant Ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

They dare to declare that the Bible is found
To give as a guide so uncertain a sound,
That any false doctrine for truth may be shown
If proved by the text of that teacher alone;
That none can discern its oracular tropes
Without the assistance of councils and Popes;
That a fallible man must interpret forsooth
What God made so dark by the Spirit of truth;
That even no noble Berean may search
Without that mysterious companion “the Church;”
That nothing is seen of the sense of a text
Till sundry old fathers that sense have perplext;
That heresy only would privately dare
To learn it by grammar, and knowledge, and prayer;
But only tradition is equal to tell
The truth of a text, or a truth at all, well!

II.

Even I will deny what they dare to declare;
Even I, like my forefathers, witness will bear,
That the word of the Lord which He gave to mankind
Is hearing to deafness, and sight to the blind;
That no one who prays as he reads, is so dense
As not to discern its legitimate sense;
That the scheme of salvation is clear to the man
Who loves and obeys it as well as he can;

That purity quickens, impurity kills,
And a man that lives truly finds truth if he wills;
But the proud must be baffled, and not see their way,
And children of night shall be dark in the day!

III.

Oh children of night, Oh darklings at noon,
Oh trimmers (if honest men, Romanists soon)—
O parsons, and laymen of infidel heart,
With Paine or Infallible Pope taking part,—
Ye foes to the Bible, take heed! for the Word
Divideth asunder, a keen cutting sword;
And woe to the soul that is found a foe thus
To the God who hath given the Bible to us,
A guide and a light, and a trumpet of truth,
To the wisdom of age, and the folly of youth;
With sound ever certain, and sense ever clear,
And none left in night—but these infidels here!