English Roses :: :: University of Virginia Library

I have always been partial to blessed St. Peter,
And accustomed to take off my hat
When I entered a Church with his presence completer,
After wiping my shoes on the mat.
For I feel he was human, and most in the trial
When he yielded to weakness and fell;
And I too should have uttered his faithless denial
Were I tempted, and cursed quite as well.
And his mortal infirmities draw him yet nearer
To my foibles, and render us kin;
And I humbly confess that my fellows are dearer,
Who resemble me likewise in sin.

So it happened one day when his prudence was sleeping
And the evening uncommonly late,
I secured his permission a moment for peeping
Just inside the celestial gate.
I had sworn to my hatred of cocks and such vermin
With vulgarity's notes at all hours,
And I said I was sure he would rightly determine

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In my favour the use of his powers.
'Twas the least of offences, the lightest concession
To my earthliness, thus to unbar;
And on me (not on him) would devolve the transgression,
If he left the great portal ajar.

As I gazed through the crevice at mysteries boundless,
With set eyes and an angular chin;
Lo, a “Brother” from Plymouth came creeping up soundless,
And before Peter knew it was in.
Then, believe me, the wretch with his Bible propounded
Which he bore like a bayonet's point,
With all learning and logic and reason confounded
Put authority's nose out of joint.
There was discord at once in the beautiful heavens,
And a shadow swept over the sky;
For the angels were wildly at sixes and sevens,
With their harps and their haloes awry.

First he button-holed Paul on the score of election,
And made nonsense of faith and the facts;
Till the worthy Apostle deplored Resurrection,
And resolved a new course of the “Acts.”
Then he went for poor James in a fury fanatical,
And maintained that mere works were no ground;
While he dubbed his Epistle as clearly schismatical,
And the teaching absured and unsound.
Till he showed that the authors brow-beaten and smitten,
Who had lacked his superior aid,
Never wrote what their ignorance thought they had written
And said nothing of what they had said.

But the doctrine of John was not his or Exclusive,
He observed, when he cornered the Saint;
And his language at last was so coarse and abusive,
The Evangelist almost turned faint.

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As for even Apollos, he doubted his greatness
In the scriptures and asked for a proof;
If he gave us the “Hebrews” so void of sedateness,
With a style like a buffalo's hoof.
Till in utter despair that most erudite person,
Wisely deeming a pitfall was set
And forewarned by the fate of the Musty Macpherson,
Cried the case was not settled as yet.

And then Timothy fled in a horrible panic,
Though he knew Holy Writ very well;
For he had a suspicion of treason Satanic,
And perceived a peculiar smell.
Not the odour, alas, of a Christian piety—
But a reek of a rabider hue,
Pettifogging, and cavil of sheer contrariety
To whatever was ancient and true.
For a glance at that visage, so furtive and foxy,
Was enough to intimidate all;
While the “Brother” in Heaven bewailed orthodoxy,
And lamented the Deity's fall.

He was noisy and rough and profoundly religious,
And despoiling the Bible he spared
Not a tome or a text in his frenzy litigious,
And denied what at first he declared.
He was querulous too as the feeble Andromache
And not slack in hysterical fears,
While he watered the soil of each barren logomachy
With a feminine tribute of tears.
He was mixed in his views of the Fathers' theology,
And to saints and historians rude;
He looked down with contempt on our Newman's “Apology,”
And his fingers he snapped at dear Jude.

But as Peter protested and thought of the apple,
Yet one more out of Plymouth popt in;
Who was fresh from his strife with both Church and the Chapel,
And with carping grown mangy and thin.

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But then he was Inclusive, and so with a sputter
They suggested a cold in the head,
The Exclusive slipt off, for he wanted no butter
Of that kind to turn bitter his bread.
And the second arrival, detecting a “Brother”
Who was built on a narrower base,
And the rank Nonconformity smell of the other,
Made his exit at once and gave chase.