 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
212
PROTESTING TRUTH.
Protestant saints, is it the truth, indeed,That cold negations merely, or in chief,
Make up the sorry texture of your creed—
A torn and flimsy robe of non-belief?
No! freely as your fathers would ye bleed,
Positive witnesses for truth and good;
Worshipping God, instead of stone and wood,
Pleading all merit solely in His Son,
Spurning each other fabulous help and aid,
And mediation—for there is but One!
Moreover, this: none ever stoutly stood
Against the False, but that his temper'd blade,
Pruning that bitter shoot, strengthen'd the bud,
The bud of Truth, whose bloom shall never fade.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |