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

O subtle and shrewd is the Antichrist plan
For luring this world from The Lord,
For snaring the soul of the natural man,
And quenching the light of the Word!

There are gauds for the foolish, in chaunts and in tints;
There are mystical saws for the wise;
For the sensual, confession with pardons and hints,
For the ignorant, miracle-lies:

For the pious much prayer, for the penitent pain,
For the formalist, gesture and phrase,
For the worldling, free license again and again
To shrive and to sin in all ways;

For sheer superstition, a priest that can save,
For guilt, absolution off-hand,
Authority, dull common minds to enslave,
Decision, the weak to command:

All strong concentrations of power and of plan,
With spies, and unscrupulous tricks
To trap or to scare or inveigle the man
In a birdlime that stuns as it sticks:

Ay, stuns as it sticks; for your birdlime is made
Of misletoe, holly, and yew,
And priestcraft, in Popery's poisonous shade,
Entraps as the gamekeepers do:

By force and by craft, by allurements and sloth,
By promising peace out of strife,
Through Belial and Mammon, as partners with both,
They drain the poor soul of its life.

And so to the rescue, in Liberty's name!
The numbed and entangled we clear
From error's foul slime and confessional shame,
To truth and repentance sincere:

Now as ever of old, with The Christ we must stand
To wrestle this antichrist down,
And fight for the faith of this Protestant land,
Upholding the Cross and the Crown!