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

Be wise as serpents,—but in doves' disguise;
Be deep and dark,—in light all peril lies;
Hide all your aims, and compass all your ends
By specious silence, making mammon-friends,
And work our Scheme in every secret way,
For Catholicity some happy day!
Let the old people scold, protesting still;
They must die out, and if you wait they will;
But—snare the young; entice them to our side
For unity with Rome, whate'er betide;
Catch them unfledged, secure the parish school,
Infect the children,—that's the golden rule!
Win them and warp them, ever seeming kind,
And set your springe to trap each truant mind;
Encourage Sunday cricket after church,
And let them leave the sermon in the lurch.

Catechize publicly; your vulgar boy
Spouts to the congregation with pert joy,
Glad, as your mouthpiece to denounce for schism
Those heretics who shirk their catechism,
And quick to shout that “Korah and his crew
Mean the Dissenters,” and Low-churchmen too.
Catch every mother, as you can, with tea;

105

The father—ah, a hopeless case is he!
Let him die out,—protesting as he dies,
“I hates them priests, and all their Popish lies.”

Bait your churchyard: you may catch converts there;
An epitaph can finish—with a pray'r;
And, where, “Physicians was in vain,” instead
Carve out some intercession—for the dead!
A touch of this would quicken all you teach;
For so, defunct parishioners will preach
Beneath stone crosses,—[be it understood
Your fees for stone are sixfold those for wood]—
And crowns of everlastings now and then
May please the women; while, to scare the men,
That Dives-text of purgatorial fire
Will hint what you and holy church require!

Yes,—purgatory; no one preaches h-ll,—
The word's exploded, which is quite as well,—
“Hay, stubble, gold,” of course you know the text,
Work it, and follow with Indulgence next:
Great things may come of fires engendering fears,
And money buying off a term of years,
And, by your power as priest, who knows? escape,
And prayers of saints to help in every scrape!
Saints?—living saints? as Baxter might describe?
No!—dead Italians of the Jesuit tribe.

Your vestments; let stale antiquaries quote
That “Surplice” means “a sheepskin overcoat;”

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Chasuble, “Casula, a little roof,”
The Cope or Capa, Cape, “a waterproof;”
Let them profanely prove our holy dress
A Tuscan peasant's, neither more nor less:
Yet see that these be consecrated quite,
Bedizened, incensed, jewelled, made a sight;
And change from red to green, from green to blue,
As rubrics do not say you may not do!
And utterly renounce (pernicious vest,
Wherein vile Luther and his like were drest,)
The bands, the gown, of Puritanic black;
And wear a braided cross upon your back.

For hymns: each Anglican should still contrive
Through pious frauds to help our Scheme to thrive,
With holy Roman doctrine leavening well
The common doggrel he can steal and sell.
Range for all tastes your calculated rhymes;
Be all things to all men, and for all times:
Get in, for gilding every Popish pill,
As much of low-church twaddle as you will;
But now and then, let Mary's praise be heard,
And Saints and Angels have their cunning word;
Mingle your oil and water, flint and steel,
The lowest Newton with the highest Neale,
And in poetic slipslop keenly mix
With low-church Cross your high-church Crucifix;
Tune up yourself as priest above the flock,
And sing St. Peter as the living rock!