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

Fifty of the Protestant Ballads

and " The Anti-Ritualistic Directorium, " of Martin F. Tupper ... New; and reprinted

Tupper, Martin Farquhar (1810-1889)

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RULE, BRITANNIA!

TUPPER'S PROTESTANT BALLADS.

A DOZEN BALLADS ABOUT CHURCH ABUSES.

TWENTY-ONE BALLADS,

THE “ANTI-RITUALISTIC DIRECTORIUM.”

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

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RULE, BRITANNIA!

ADAPTED TO THESE TIMES.

I

When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose to quell the pride of Rome,
This was the spirit of the land
Resounding from each freeman's home,—
Rise, Britannia! Britannia, rout these knaves!
Britons never shall be slaves.

II

The Nations, not so blest as thou,
In Papal darkness blindly grope,
But never will thy starry brow
Bow down to idols or the Pope!
Rise, Britannia! Britannia, rout these knaves!
Britons never shall be slaves.

III

Against our weal though traitors try
To aim their foul but feeble stroke,
They'll find the Lion standing by
To guard our glorious British oak!
Rise, Britannia! Britannia, rout these knaves!
Britons never shall be slaves.

TUPPER'S PROTESTANT BALLADS.

THE ONE GOSPEL.

Only believe—O thou that hast wandered
Far from all good in the mazes of sin,
And on thy guilt hast remorsefully pondered,
Ruined without and polluted within,—
Only believe—that thy Maker doth love thee,
Rescuing thee for Himself by His Son,
And in compassion now yearneth above thee,
That with His creature He still may be one.

Only believe: repentance will follow
Close on the faith that is born from above,—
Not a dead faith, false, heartless, and hollow,
But full of life, full of works, full of love;
Only believe! and praising and praying,
Live to His glory who died for thy sin,
Gratefully, earnestly, simply obeying,
Ransomed without, and made holy within.

Only believe: and thus in the sweetness
Of the communion of saints shalt thou dwell,
And for that better world growing in meetness,
Thou shalt be happy, and all will be well:
Only believe! this Gospel allures thee
Though once an enemy, now reconciled;
Blest in the mercies thy Saviour secures thee,
And living gladly with God as His child.

“ANOTHER,—NOT ANOTHER.”

Trust in your priest: the Church is your saviour,—
Not the lay-folk, but the clerical kind,—
And you must serve her with humblest behaviour,
Passively yielding your heart and your mind:
Trnst in the priest! with him is all blessing,
Since he baptized and received you at birth,
Since he has often absolved you confessing,
And evermore been your refuge on earth.

Trust in your priest: eternal salvation
Stands with his favour and hangs on his nod;
Woe to the soul where he hints condemnation,
Happy the heart that reveres him as God:
Trust in the priest; his tangible presence
Be to your conscience the Christ in his stead,
Specially, when he has prisoned God's essence,
At his mere will, in a morsel of bread!

Trust in your priest, and rest on his power;
He will deliver through life,—if he can,—
And at the last, in death's solemn hour,
Choose, if you dare, this salvation by man:
Trust in the priest! this gospel, “another,
Yet not another,” is Satan's chief lie,
Ever through life men's conscience to smother,
And to make sinners despair as they die!

TACTICS.

I

How should an Anglican priest with due cunning
Win his poor parish from England to Rome,
And, while the shame of a renegade shunning,
Secretly ruin each Protestant home?
How can he warp our obstinate people
Catholic unity safely to reach,
Stout though they stand for the old parish steeple,
Shy as they seem of what Romanists teach?

II

Kidnap the children! and shrewdly and slyly
Coax them and lure them to Mother-Church-rule;
And [for dear Rome ever watchful and wily]
Paste them up pictures of saints in the school:
Catch all those little ones, slyly and shrewdly;
But for their parents who make such a rout,
Vulgar old Protestants! snub the sect rudely,—
After a while, they are sure to die out.

III

No cottage-calling; the priest will err greatly
If his high office so low he demeans;
He, the chief celebrant, vested so stately,
Is not the cottager's serf, nor the Queen's!
If some parishioner asks for him meekly,
His condescension may grant such a call,
But as to visiting, monthly or weekly,
Duty so low doesn't suit him at all.

IV

True—for the town take contrary tactics;
There ostentatious humility pays,
There histrionic displays and didactics,
Street-preaching, too, sets a place in a blaze;
Choristers leading, monks trailing behind you,
Thus you can visit the poor and the sick,
And if a proselyte promises, mind you,
Anywhere, anyhow, look him up quick!

V

So through child-stealing, in one generation,
While the old Puritans die at their homes,
Anglican priest! in your fond calculation,
Juvenile England once more shall be Rome's:
Therefore press on with your singing and schooling;
Kidnap the children, ay, down to the least,
And, with your ritual-flowering and fooling,
Lure back this realm to the rule of the priest!

VI

But you won't do it! the children see through it!
Not even them can you cheat as you hope;

As they grow older they'll teach you to rue it,
Packing your reverences off to the Pope:
You may try craft, but old honesty's stronger,
Ay, and impatience is growing apace,
Loathing such tactics and standing no longer
Jesuit parsons, our Church's disgrace!

HIGH AND LOW.

I

A sumptuous temple with arches and aisles,
And steeples and towers, the landmark for miles,
And carvings within and sculptures without,
And gildings and colours around and about,
And dim painted windows and organ-pipes gay,
And priests with their choristers' surpliced array,
And vestments and incense and candles alight,
And banners and crosses bejewelled and bright,
And garlands of flowers to capture the fair,
And thrilling church-music the young to ensnare,
And everyone bowing, with face to the East,
To worship a paten, a cup, and a priest!

II

What service is this? Of the senses forsooth:
Small worshipping here that is spirit and truth;
And, shredding the bulk of the curious away,
There scarce remain any lay people to pray;
Some pensioners haply, some school children too,
Some priest-stricken girls with no better to do,

Some paralysed creatures, the halt and the blind,
And some superstitiously palsied in mind;
One here and one there, very few, far between,
By way of the lay congregation is seen,
Albeit in the chancel by clusters are found
That crowd of robed priests and their acolytes round.

I

A vast crowded hall, where the tremulous air
Is throbbing alternate with praise and with prayer,
All orderly decent, and cheerfully bright,
And plenty of windows for freshness and light,
And a single good preacher the worship to lead,
And his flock on the pastures of Scripture to feed,
And “fervent in spirit as serving the Lord,”
To break bread together and feast at His board,
With no superstition, but reverence due,
And rendering homage both simple and true,
While God's Holy Spirit, the Comforting Dove,
Broods over these thousands in blessing and love.

II

Which of these is Christ's Church? which nearest to Heaven?
This Protestant salt? that Papistical leaven?
This Low Evangelical rescuing souls,
Or yonder high-ritual Priests in their stoles?
With one is Conversion, and penitent prayer
Till sinners with saints hold communion there;
With the other confession, till worldlings get shriven
By man's absolution deceivingly given;

In these, behold Antichrist, swollen with pride,
In that, see the Christ and His mystical Bride;
With High Church, the lies of tyrannical Rome,
With Low Church, the truths of free England at home.

THE ANGLICAN PRIEST: IN THE COUNTRY.

Who empties these benches? Who drives us away?
Who scatters the sheep that would willingly stay?
Who forces the flock for new pastures to search
(And that through the rain) in some chapel or church?
Who does all the harm that he possibly can
To the honour of God, and the welfare of man?
Who hinders Christ's Gospel, too “low” for his aims,
To help—as he hopes—his High Church and her claims?
Who manages—keenly he thinks—to bring back
That old superstition on tyranny's track,
Where weakness is frightened from sin to be shriven
By sinners themselves, “through authority given,”
So making religion a scarecrow at home
By weak imitations of priestcraft in Rome?

O once the true pastor, O once the kind friend,
O once the best guide to that world without end—
Alas, in these days your successor is seen,
A renegade both to his Church and his Queen!
Alas, for the soldiers betray'd by their chief,
Alas, that the shepherd himself is the thief;

Alas, that the layman is helpless to show,
Except by his absence (as most of us know),
How strongly he hates all those Romanist rites,
Crosses, confessionals, incense, and lights;
How wisely he fears that this playing with fire
Is just what the Pope and his Jesuits desire,
To weaken our Protestant feeling at home,
And bind us again to the priestcraft of Rome!

THE ANGLICAN PRIEST: IN THE TOWN.

True,—leaving the village, the lanes, and the downs—
Some Anglicans' benches are filled in the towns.
But why? There are idlers by thousands to go
Anywhere for a sight in each “populous No;”
And music and incense and wax-lights at noon
(Attractive to moths) draw a crowd very soon:
But only the weak or the curious are there
For eye-and-ear tickling, not heart-stirring prayer;
And few are seen twice in the seats so well fill'd
But the paid of the poor, and the bribed of the guild;
And many are shock'd and ashamed, as they find
Our Protestant pastors so Popish in mind,
And all are agreed, as they talk going home,
How like is all this to the priestcraft of Rome!

Yet dream not, you traitors, that England will stand
Much longer your rinderpest over this land,

Or that a few crowds, curiosity led,
Show popular liking—not loathing instead!
We warn you the heart of the nation beats true,
If tolerant, hating intolerance too,—
If liberal, firmly resolved to put down
Jesuit Anglicans, country or town;
We suffer no nunneried prisons for slaves,
Secretly jailored by clerical knaves,
Nor brigands of liberty chaining the mind,
Nor stale superstitions the conscience to bind,
But we stand on this right, self-protection at home,
That we still may be free from the priestcraft of Rome.

RITUALISM.

Folly and vanity; puerile trifling,
Such as all earnest true souls must despise;
Priestcraft all spirituality stifling
By the poor playthings so dear in its eyes;
Playthings? say rather, with subtlest intention,
Poison-drops meant for consumption at home,
Arsenic'd sweetmeats, of Jesuit invention,
Fatal for England, but vital to Rome.

Music? oh yes! for that Siren has powers
Luring the men since Ulysses was wreck'd;
Flowers? most certainly! filch all the flowers,
Winsome for women since Tammuz was deck'd:

Flare up the thuribles! kindle the candles,
Bring forth the vestments, bedizen the priest;
For he creates, dispenses, and handles
God! (so he says), in the Passover feast!

Choristers? drill them to march in procession
Bearded bass-voices, and small treble-boys;
Banners? oh surely! and crosses, confession,
High-coloured groups, and Gregorian noise:
Everything helps where we serve through the senses
Rather than worship in spirit and truth,
Catching alive on the basest pretences
Womanly warmth, and the weakness of youth.

Hymns? your sensational, “modern and olden,”
Praising some virgin, or angel or saint;
And sentimental “Jerusalem the Golden,”
Just such an Eden some Pasha might paint;
With the “dear country,” so little ethereal
Odin is heard in its songs and its feasts;
While even Islam is scarce more material
As to the “Paradise” pleasures of priests!

Organ? yes! toil at your anthems, your chanting;
“Sounds going forth” must evangelize earth;
Not like S. Paul's puritanical ranting
Preaching the Christ and the Spirit's new birth:
Down with the pulpit! and all its old story,
Faith, and forgiveness and life from the dead;
Up with the altar! in candle-light glory,
For the priest's Gospel, a morsel of bread!

Jesuit Pharisees! rare combination
Of the worst vices of Gentile and Jew,
Catholics greet you with repudiation,
Protestants also repudiate you!
Be not high-minded, if crowds of the curious
Watch your weak antics with ignorant eyes,
Everyone sees that the sheepskin is spurious,
Everyone watches the wolf in disguise.

Oh this high treason! you clerical traitors,
Eating the bread of the Church you betray,
Papist adorers, and Protestant-haters,
How shall we deal with such caitiffs to-day?
We truer Churchmen, the lay, loyal-hearted,
Cannot in reason give treason more rope;
England demands from such priests to be parted:
Rome is your home, so—begone to the Pope!

CHURCH DECORATIONS.

O puerility!—but that no boys
Could be such dolts as these actors in stoles;
Sheer imbecility! playing with toys
In the dread presence of God and sick souls:
Subtle priestocracy! scheming to snare
Beauty and youth through the claptraps of sense,
Pious hypocrisy! Jesuits there
Selling the Saviour for Judas's pence.

Flirts of the chancel! ye milliner priests,
Deck'd in your laces and satinbound hems,
Bringing back Bäal's idolatrous feasts,
Bowings and music and flowers and gems,—
Protestant England, while tolerant still
Of conscience-led worship, whatever it be,
Rejects, ay and dreads, both the cunning and skill
Wherewith you would shackle the sons of the free.

Firework devices, and trumpery wreaths,
Magical crosses and colour-bright scrolls;
Each emblem and symbol some pestilence breathes
Against the health-spirit of rational souls;
The pursefuls of money so squandered on flowers,
The time and the toil by fair idlers thus spent,—
With toys could they trifle so many lost hours
If truly of those who believe and repent?

“CATHOLIC.”

Catholic! this one word of crabbed Greek
Hath work'd the world more woe than tongue can speak,
Since Antichrist spelt out that dubious name,
In letters mix'd of martyr-blood and flame!
Catholic; we may gather its intent,
As some of old its nobler teaching meant;
The Creed most true, eternal and sublime,
Held by all saints in every land and time,

And everywhere religiously the same,
In each man's home of every tribe and name—
Thus “universal” is the wiser word,
Of what by all men was received and heard,
And love to all, the Christian's nobler test,
Were the true type of one true creed profest.
But “Catholic” has now the casuist sense
Of Romish pride, and priestcraft, and pretence;
Full of dread thoughts of dungeons and the stake,
Tormenting man for honest conscience' sake—
So, let us change it; as the Jesuit race
Mulct the dear name of Jesus of all grace;
As the high name of Holy Church is found
In the Red Sea of persecution drowned,
So “Catholic” is mingled with the thought
Of horrid deeds by superstition wrought—
And may not in the Protestant's pure church
Be left a mine of doubt for Rome to search;
So, in Revision be it swept indeed
From every rubric, prayer, and text, and creed—
Not to perplex the untaught Christian's mind,
With sense that palters in a double kind.

AARON'S CALF.

When Israel after many days
Thought Moses quenched in Sinai's blaze,
The people murmured—“he is gone,—
We want a guide to lead us on;

We need some present type to show
That God above is here below,
Some tangible corporeal Thing
Round which to worship, march, and sing.”

Then Aaron made that calf of gold,
An Apis—as in Egypt old;
And all the people offered there
Anthems, frankincense, and prayer,
With ritual high and gorgeous dress
And priests and singers numberless.

But Moses from the Mount sublime
Returned at last in God's good time,
And saw that Shame, and stood amazed,
As incense steam'd, and candles blazed,
And fixt on high, as showering grace,
The creature in Jehovah's place!

He saw, and wrath was in his eye,
And lo! the Lord's Avengers nigh
Chastised the people, slew the priests,
Scattered them at their idol feasts,
Broke down their Sin, and ground it up,
And made them drink its Shameful cup.

So perish all thy foes, O Lord;
Who leave the simple Gospel word
For cunning priest-craft's tinsel rites,
And flaring vests and flaming lights,
And idol-worship of the Thing
To which their sensuous praise they bring;

The bread, no bread but Flesh divine,
The wine, real Blood, not really wine;
That great idolatry of old,
Against which martyrdom was bold
Yea to the death, for Jesu's sake,
At bloody Mary's cruel stake;
But which, in kind Victoria's reign,
Our Aarons make their calf again!

NEHUSHTAN.

Good King Hezekiah resolved with a will
The mind and the mercies of God to fulfil,
And cut out idolatry's cankerous taint
To its uttermost fibre, though feeble and faint;
So he sought out the Serpent that Moses had made
(Though wrought by God's mandate, he was not afraid)
The Serpent of brass, whereon it sufficed
To look and to live, as the emblem of Christ!
That Serpent, because of old time to his days
The people to It had burnt incense always,
He brake it, and made it through fire to pass,
And call'd it Nehushtan, a mere “bit of brass.”

Ay,—great was the faith of that pious young prince,
Who, though the meek Moses himself so long since
Had set up this brass for remembrance, and given
That type for the Christ, the Messiah from Heaven,—

Yet scrupled not, feared not, to tear it away
When Israel was led by its worship astray
From God to His emblem, from Christ to the cross,
From Truth to Nehushtan, from gold to the dross,—
But smash'd it to pieces—that image, that sin,
Whereto they burnt incense, salvation to win,—
As from the same temple, in spite of its priests,
Were whipped money-changers, their doves, and their beasts.

So now with the crucifix, symbol indeed
Of Christ and His Christians, of cross and its creed;
Though ancient and full of affectionate thought
Where the Antetype shows through the type as it ought;
And so, with the thanksgiving-feast, bread and wine,
A pledge and a token of Presence Divine,—
If any man teach to those creatures to bow
With music and incense and vestment and vow,
To yearn on a brass in the chancel set up,
To worship a paten, and kneel to a cup,
Here, here is Nehushtan, to us of this day,—
But,—where's Hezekiah to tear it away?

ISAIAH'S IMAGE.

I

He carveth an image, and worshippeth It,
Though hewed from the stock of a tree,
With one bit he roasteth, and with the next bit
Behold, for his god it shall be!

He singeth A ha! I am warm with those chips,
To the residue I will fall down,—
And kiss the dear idol with awe-stricken lips,
My glory, my god, and my crown!

II

He baketh him bread, and he maketh him wine,
And the wheat and the grape are both good;
But lo! he is worshipping something divine
He has chanced to find out in his food —
One part, as an hungred, he ate, and sufficed,
And drank, for his thirst was agape,
But other some parts he had baked was—the Christ!
And the wine was —a god in the grape!

III

Thou feedest on ashes, behold, thou dost bring
A lie—not the truth—in thy hand,—
This tangible visible sensual Thing
As a God thou canst well understand!
But faith in the Saviour as instantly near
In spirit and truth at his feast,
Thou canst not attain to, without (it is clear)
An idol produced by a priest!

IV

O Martyrs! how many by thousands have died,
Have roasted alive at the stake,
Because from your conscience ye nobly denied
The creature for Godhead to take;

Yet here in these Anglican chancels behold,
In spite of their vows to the Lord,
Our traitorous pastors betraying the fold,
To the Image their fathers abhorr'd!

BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST: The Ecumenical.

I

Belshazzar the King and his thousand lords
Held feast in Babylon's glory,
Drank wine, and boasted with blasphemous words,
And—pointed a fearsome story;
They swore and they sang, till the wide halls rang
With cursing,—and chants to their idol,
Cursing the Lord, with chants for the gang
That priested Astarte's bridal!

II

Belshazzar and those his thousand lords
That night were cut in sunder,
Like Agag hewed by their enemies' swords,
To Mede and Persian wonder;
For empty Euphrates so swiftly itself
To Cyrus the City had given,
That Babylon, spite of its pow'r and its pelf,
Seem'd crushed by a millstone from Heaven!

III

And—lo here! a feast in Babylon-Rome
Where a thousand mitres muster

To worship a deified King in his home
And round a Statue cluster;
Immaculate woman! Infallible man!
They praise new idols proudly,—
“Anathematize” truths as they dare and they can,
And worship falsehoods loudly.

IV

But look! for the finger of God on the wall
Writes “numbered, weighed, divided;”
Belshazzar, thy Kingdoms shall suddenly fall,
And thou be a thing derided!
The cup of thy guilt being full to the brim
Then vengeance no longer shall falter,—
Thou rival to Christ,—Usurper of Him,
And set up as God on His altar!

V

Beware! for the peoples are clamouring loud
For reason, religion, and freedom;
Beware! thou art hemm'd by a Philistine crowd,
Amalek, Ammon, and Edom;
They hate thee, and scorn thee,—and terribly now
Their vows of old vengeance are spoken,
Belshazzar, thy crowns shall be torn from thy brow,
Thy sceptres be utterly broken!

SHE!

I.

“The Church! the Church! revere thy mother's voice;
“Stand on her strength, and in her light rejoice;
“To her obediently in love behave,
“Her offspring from the cradle to the grave—
“Forsake her not, in life and death thy friend,
“And she shall be thy succour to the end!”

II.

She? but who is she? tell me where to search
For this most gentle, loving Mother-Church?
Is she still dwelling in an English home,
Or must I seek and find her nearer Rome?
Is she the pronoun for an altar priest,
Already epicene in garb at least,
With laces, satin vestments, and a cheek
Shaven quite close, and most demurely meek?

III.

Yea!—he so meaneth; he is Light and truth,—
He is the she to loose and bind forsooth;
And his obedient flock howe'er they search,
Must own in him Incarnate Mother-Church,
He both the bride and bridegroom in a trope,
He, the Infallible, the village Pope!

OUR CHURCH'S ENEMIES.

Ah! dear old Church of England,—if we should live to see
Thy many foes of many sorts exultant over thee,
The Papist, with the profligate and infidel combined
And, of more right, those nobler men of Non-conformist mind,—

If ever, no one knows how soon, thou may'st be swept away
From every parish of the land,—Alas, that evil day!—
The fault of it, the grievous fault, the cause of so great sin
Is less the bitter foe without, than the false friend within.

Of thine own house some sons are found, some bishops, rectors, deans,
Traitors,—who smoothly work thy fall by Jesuitic means,
Weaning the layman from his church, the pastor from his fold,
And scattering Sheep that have no Shepherds, as was said of old.

True, there be clergy pure and good, some eloquent and wise,
The honour'd servants of their Lord, and precious in His eyes;

But also many tainted with the living lies of Rome,
While more are dull, and dead of heart, and drones within the home.

And loudly do we laymen, ay and sorrowingly, protest
Against the Judas teachers that our Mother-church infest,
The Ritualizing formalist, the Romanizing priest,
The misbeliever with the mark and image of the beast.

True, some of us too of the lay are following those who lead,
As men that cannot think themselves adopt their teacher's creed,
The weak, the vicious, and the vain are easy to be caught,
And humbler ignorance is glad and eager to be taught.

And vestments, flowers, and music, with celibates in stoles,
Are pleasant medicines for sin, and sweet to frailer souls,
And fashion makes all comme-il-faut, and guilt is glad to find
That priestly absolution salves a cankered heart and mind.

And so, poor Church of England, because thy tolerant heart
Hath striven to keep within thee some of those who should depart,

They drown thee with false doctrines, and they drive us from the place
Wherein our fathers worshipped God,—elsewhere to seek His face.

They decorate, they chant and sing, processionize, intone,
Till Common-prayer and Litany we scarce can think our own,
They worship bread and wine, and so to Baal bow the knee,
And make thy better children, Church of England, fear for thee.

O traitors! quickly leave us,—may ye soon depart in peace
To join infallible old Rome, or fallible new Greece;
And may thy truer clergy, Church of England, yet stand strong
Beside thy faithful laity who never wrought thee wrong!

COMPROMISE.

I

This did the mischief! attempting of old
The sheep with the goats (while reforming) to fold;
With Jesuit morals resolved then and there
To hunt with the hounds, and to run with the hare;

To tamper with truths for the sake of sick souls,
And try to squeeze angular sticks in round holes;
With feeble indulgence all faiths to confound,
And make things all smooth for all rivals all round,
That Gallio, Mammon, and Antichrist's self
Might count to the Church for the sake of their pelf.

II

Ay,—that was the fault and the shame and the sin,
The fester without and the canker within;
Reformation left much to be after reformed,
And errors survived though their fortress was stormed;
Our tent was stretched weakly, so long and so wide
It lets in the weather on every side,—
For the Papist quite high, for the Puritan low,
And the ropes and the pegs are all loose in their row,
While winds of false doctrine get under too oft
The flapping old canvas and hoist it aloft.

III

True courage is needed for faithfulness here
To strengthen the stakes, as the storm threatens near;
Our trumpets must blare out a blast fully blown,
Not maunder uncertain in sucking-dove tone;
We Protestants, clergy and laymen, must stand
For truth, light and liberty over the land,
And stamp out those stale superstitions of yore,
The lies that old priestcraft invents evermore,
Confessing, absolving, and doting on man,
With reason and godliness placed under ban!

THE TRUMPET.

I.

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!

A DOZEN BALLADS ABOUT CHURCH ABUSES.

[_]

First published in 1854 in the Daily News.

THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY.

I love the Church,—that noblest band
Of every age and clime,
Whose beauty gladdens every land
And lights the track of Time,—
I love the Church,—those happy ones
Whom God Himself declares
To be His daughters and His sons,
Immortal glory's heirs!

And, for the Clergy,—many good
There are, and many true,
A missionary multitude
To whom all love is due;
And honour to their sacred state,
And thousand hearty thanks
For all of wise, and pure, and great
In those well-ordered ranks.

But,—who can honour, love, or praise
Your common worldly priest,
Who calls himself “The Church” always,
Or “heads it up” at least?
Oh slander! that such Jesuit stuff
In manners mind and heart,
Should ever have been thought enough
To act “The Church's” part!

I love not parsons full of pride,
The pompous and the dull,
—Your stately drone, with shovel wide,
And nothing in his skull;
I love not hard fee-hungering men,
In mind and motive dead,
Who only do God service when
It yields a piece of bread;

I love not priests of double mind,
The hypocrites in heart,—
Smooth-tongued,—disloyally inclined,
Who play Loyola's part;
Nor rectors, who preserve their game;
Nor some who cant, and cheat;
Nor some, that heathen morals shame
In pure Religion's seat!

But where, instead of shams and arts,
Or old Stagnation's plan,
You strive to heal the broken hearts
And help the good of Man,

I love you, Ministers of Heaven!
Without reproach or taints
Of selfish craft or popish leaven,
Our Church's servant-saints!

ST. SIMON AND ST. JUDE.

Advertisement.

“Surrey.—A sporting neighbourhood:
Advowson to be sold:
Eight hundred souls: the shooting good:
Incumbent sick and old:
Thousand a-year and surplice-fees:
(A curate gets all done:)
By order of the assignees:
At Garraway's: at one!”

There! heathen tribes, and pagan priests,
A new idea for you,
To sell your rights in Baal's feasts
At Garraway's, at two!
Fat livings are the things to sell;
For cures of souls who cares?
At auctions, thoughts of heav'n or hell
Are nobody's affairs.

Talk of men's bodies bought and sold,
And whipt by vile Legrees!
In London souls are sold for gold,
And curst, if buyers please!
Whole parishes, bound foot and hand,
By auction to be had,
At the best bidder's mercy stand,
However base or bad!

O why—we laymen justly ask,
Have we no vote nor voice
In setting to our teacher's task
His Christian pupil's choice?
Some dunce, or heretic, or worse,
May vex us fifty years,
Has he but money in his purse
To buy the flock he shears.

What mean ye, Bishops, by the sin
Of suffering such a shame
To rot, like leprosy, within
Our Church's heart and name?
Be stirring—is there not a cause?
Consider what I say—
No longer let our honest laws
Be quibbled quite away:

Or, if you will not check this ill,
But leave poor Mother-Church
Deserted of her champions still,
A leper in the lurch—

Take, take “St. Simon and St. Jude”
As patrons of your flag—
Simon the wicked, not the good,
And Jude, who bore the bag!

OUR CHURCH'S DANGER.

Honest shepherd, wisely earnest
In thy ministry of love,
Who with holy fervour yearnest
Souls to win for worlds above,—
Thee I praise, discreet and fervent,
Thee, wherever thou art found,
Man's dear friend, and God's dear servant,
Shedding blessedness around.

But—for yonder thousand others,
Lo! the herd of callous men,
Persecuting us lay-brothers
Ruthlessly by tongue and pen;
Dozy readers, drowsy teachers,
How much have not you to fear
When on such unfaithful preachers
Judgment frowns for dulness here!

What occasions, what positions,
Hireling parsons fling away!
Crown'd with God's and Man's commissions,
All they care for is the pay:

Crowded round by fellow-sinners
Hungering to be taught and fed,
Soul-destroyers, not soul-winners,
Lo! they give us stones for bread.

Deans and Chapters, trust-betraying,
Pirates of the Church at home,—
Histrionic Vicars, playing
Loose with Luther, fast with Rome,—
Rectors, surplice-fee devouring,
Bishops, greedy over-much,—
What a storm of wrath is louring
O'er the Church, for sake of such!

Woe! dumb dogs, that love to slumber,
Woe! ye service-humming drones,
That our Church and State encumber
Fatally with dead men's bones,—
Woe! though conscience may be harden'd
Here to lust of things below,
Guilt like yours must flame unpardon'd
Terribly in worlds of woe!

Church of England, Christian Mother!
Rich in children good and true,—
Prelacy and worldlings smother
Half thy truth and goodness too;
Heed a layman's honest boldness,
Warning half-prophetic now,
Lordships, priestcraft, fees, and coldness,
These must have an end—or Thou!

THE SURPLICE-FEE.

Away with it! this arrant shame
Is cank'ring all within
Our “Poor Man's Church”—Heav'n help the name!
By mercenary sin;
Away with it! by tithe, and rate,
And glebe, and pious stealth,
Goodsooth, our parsons from the state
Win quite their share of wealth.

Richly endowed in funds and land
The Nation's Church should be,
Then, like a royal conduit, stand
With streams of mercy free:
And nobly layman-zeal has giv'n
Unstinted means to these,
Who, harpies at the feast of heav'n,
Claim—further surplice-fees!

When some poor ploughman's babe is brought
To Jesu's font of love,—
Or his weak wife, with pious thought,
Would praise the Lord above,—
When the young couple's frugal care
Has scraped enough to wed,—
Or their old grandsire's hoary hair
Must lie down with the dead,—

O shame! a fee for everything!
Your rector will refuse
To read one prayer, unless you bring
His reverence his dues!
He taxes marriage, duties, death,—
Like Hophni, claims his slice,—
In spite of what the Scripture saith,
“No money, and no price.”

How dare you thus abuse the gift,
And do our Church despite,
By stealing pence from poor men's thrift
For every Christian rite?
How dare you—rich in all but grace—
So closely shear your flocks,
And on the Gospel highway place
So many stumbling-blocks?

What else, then, were ye call'd to do,
And paid with house and land,
But, at your folds, as shepherds true,
By night and day to stand;
Freely to give religion's aid
To all that need and seek,
And, not to think your livings made
For service—once a-week!

ANOTHER SURPLICE-FEE.

I grant you, friend, if unendow'd
You toil among the dying crowd,
Unbeneficed, unpaid,
It were a good and righteous thing
To take the freewill offering,
Without a thought of trade.

But hearken; where a parish priest
For shepherding his flock at least
Is paid, and kept, and clad,
To claim a surplus surplice-fee
For every time he bends his knee,
It really is too bad!

I know a rector, rich and mean,
Who, call'd to close a dying scene,
With Eucharist and prayer,
Claim'd, out of Poverty's hard gains,
A full five shillings for his pains
In being summon'd there!

Nobly denied, the rector's threat
Forced the poor folks some help to get;
Straight to the squire they went;
And—let his reverence rue the day
He tried (to those who would not pay)
To sell—the Sacrament!

Again: a pauper went and died
Out of the parish,—just outside,—
In Hospital, indeed:
Her minister made no small stir
For two-pounds-two for burying her
With ex-parochial greed!

Yet more; a couple come to wed,
With two halfcrowns in hand, instead
Of greedy custom's three;
Our parson sends the lovers back,
And they, poor frugal souls, alack!
Have done without the fee!

What outrages on right and sense!—
Religion, morals, spurn'd for pence;
And that, when every one,
Bishops, and priests, and deacons too,
Are nobly paid for all they do,
And—much they leave undone!

OUR CHURCH.

Mistake me not, my friends—or foes—
I love our Mother well;
Only, my zeal breaks out in blows
To sweep the Temple clean of those
Who came to buy and sell.

I love her precious Forms of Pray'r—
Not spoilt by vulgar men;
Her Liturgies, with pious care
Cull'd from the wisest everywhere,
The purest everywhen.

I love her Service, pure and plain;
—But hold it shameful—quite,
That flaunting Fashion, rich and vain,
Gives tattered Patience so much pain,
Or scares it out of sight.

I love her Doctrines, held and taught
In no non-natural sense;
Her tolerant mind, with mercy fraught,
Her just respect for private thought,
Her piety intense.

I love her Orders, save the ranks
We compromised with Rome;
For these are due but little thanks:
Deans, Chapters,—would they all were blanks,
Or hunted out of home!

I love her System; all the land
Laid out by parish-plot:
But for the scheme, by Mammon plann'd,
Of half a dozen in one hand,
In truth, I like it not,

I love her Clergy,—where, indeed,
She has a faithful staff;
But, oh! it makes the bosom bleed
To see how few their people feed
With anything but chaff!

I love her Laymen, good and true;
And, though I'm one myself,
Will boast that, but for such as you,
A Romanising priestly crew
Had sold Our Church for pelf.

THE CURATE.

Devoted, modest, pure, and kind,
And bountiful on means too small,
A gentleman in heart and mind,
With Christian courtesies to all,
Forth on his mission every day
To combat wrong and comfort right,
The humble Curate goes his way
And makes his track a stream of light.

To give the contrite conscience ease,
To battle sin, and sloth, and care,
He mounts the garret of disease,
And treads the cellar of despair;
No matter—day and night the same—
His joy and glory are to go
And banish, in his Master's name,
The parasites of guilt and woe.

Ah! would that, when Advancement's hour
Makes him a Rector or a Dean,
As strong in faith and grace's power
This reverend man may then be seen!
Beware, O tempted soul, beware
Lest worldliness o'ercloud the mind,
And as you climb the Church's stair
You leave your excellence behind.

Too many have I seen, bereft
Of gifts and graces as they rise,
Till to a bishop little 's left
Of what is Worth beyond the skies:
The deadening influence of wealth,
And dignities, and fines, and fees,
Degrade from spiritual health,
Our curates into—such as these.

Take warning, brother! put aside
The world's ambition and its lust;
Go on in good: He will provide
For those who work, and pray, and trust:
Provide—not mitre, stall, nor rank,
(Such riches make too many poor)—
But, means enough,—with grace to thank
Your Master that he gives no more.

Take warning, too, ye mere church drones
That eat the honey of our hive,
Leaving the curate skin and bones,
While you like fat Jeshurun thrive,—

The time is come, when none may shirk
His duties, waxing rich by stealth;
Responsible and earnest work
Alone shall have our Church's wealth.

PAUL'S BISHOP.

Desirous of that holy state,
Though martyrdom were sure,—
Just, holy, sober, temperate,
Unblameable, and pure,
Not giv'n to wine, nor lucre's love,
No brawler, patient, good,
His Church's guide to bliss above,
The ancient Bishop stood.

He wore no mitre, fill'd no throne,
Nor dared be call'd My Lord,
The Gospel was his praise alone,
His joy to preach the Word:
All seasons were alike to him
For teaching, prayer, or praise;
Like Heav'n's unslumbering Cherubim
He served the Lord always!

Not for mere learning, void of grace,
Nor tutoring some young duke,
Nor through hot canvass in high place,
His bishopric he took;

His Christian children's strictest search
No blemish could detect,—
And so they chose him for the Church—
Their Bishop, God's elect!

His priests and deacons, brethren dear,
His home accounted theirs,
And full it was of hearty cheer,
But no palatial airs;
Of gentle mien, and temper sweet,
And kind in word and deed,
He humbly wash'd the poor saints' feet
And fed the souls in need.

No striker,—controversial brawls
Were all to him unknown;
His politics were simply Paul's,
The Altar and the Throne;
Electioneering pamphleteers,
And bold debating men,
Or smooth-tongued speakers for the Peers,
Were never bishops then.

And for the works that crown'd a life
With such high post of praise,
They were not points of party strife,
Nor editing Greek plays,—
Paul's Bishop was a man of peace,
Who loved Jerusalem,
Cared for his flock,—but not their fleece,
And sought not theirs,—but them!

THE DESK AND THE PULPIT.

How truly should a priest rejoice
When call'd to lead with heart and voice
A willing people's pray'r!
How blest the privilege would seem
Of winning Grace's brightest beam
On Christian worship there!

Yet, in the desk, how undevout
Your average parson blunders out
The service dully droned;
Those living liturgies fall dead
On heart and ear, when idly read,
Or stupidly intoned!

O Desk! what eloquence were thine,
In beauteous pray'r, and psalm divine,
And Scripture's sterling sense!
O Desk! what cold and common lips
Too often act as an eclipse
Of all that eloquence!

Then, as to sermons: what a chance
For Christian knighthood's gospel-lance
To drive the devil back!
With waiting penitents all round
To rally at your trumpet-sound
And follow in your track!

And yet, what have we?—first, the text,
By various readings well perplext;
Then, talk about the Jews;
Then, stale didactics dull and dry;
Then, something Romish, pretty high;
Then, some “peculiar views;”

Then on the rock he strikes his rod,
Morally weak,—and “now to God”—
Wakes up his flock unfed:
Ah! but it wrings the heart to see
How many souls should quickened be
Whom sermons leave stone-dead!

O Pulpit! what a golden hour
Fullfledged with grace's hallowing power
From you my soul should cheer!
O Pulpit! something very wrong
Makes twenty minutes much too long
Whene'er I go to hear!

CATHOLIC SECTARIES.

Are we a sect, good Anglicans?
Or wedded to the Church?
Strict justice must forbid the banns,
If honestly we search:

For every parish has its fence,
Lest foreign goods encroach,
To warn the Christian teachers thence
Who might its sinners poach.

Your rector has a jealous wrath
At any brother's zeal,
If missionaries cross his path
On them he sets his heel;
And though some parishes than ours
Are better off, I hope,
He claims inquisitorial powers,
And plays the petty pope.

Then, for town pulpits; does not each
A separate people train,
Where some good pastor strives to teach,
And does not strive in vain?
'Tis well: but if with larger heart
You hear some other too,
You're held to play the truant's part,
Forsaking your own—pew!

Again; one diocese maintains
Just what the next abjures;
Paul bursts asunder Peter's chains,
And Peter Paul ignores!
No wonder, my good Anglican,
But just what we expect,
If all goes wrong for God and man
Where every see 's a sect!

Yet worse,—and worst: our brethren dear
Across the waters wide
By law are excommunicate here,
And wholesale flung aside!
Though English, Protestant, and pure
And apostolic sons,
Our bishops bolt each pulpit door
Against—such foreign ones!

Is this the brotherhood of men,
Christ's body, one and all?
O blame not mine indignant pen
If sometimes dipp'd in gall!
I love the Church, my Saviour's Bride,
And long her hands to see
From bonds of avarice and pride,
And narrow priestcraft, free!

THE LABOURER AND HIS HIRE.

In other trades,—if trade this be,
Exertion wins the highest fee,
And none achieve success
Who will not well keep up the ball
With constant effort, lest it fall,
Or make the winnings less.

The lawyer, if he fails in skill,
The doctor, if his nostrums kill,

The merchant, if he sleeps,
The tutor, if a dunce himself,
All drones, in fact, get short of pelf,
And labour only reaps.

But, where Stagnation rules the hour,
And sloth established sits in power,
All energies are dead,—
Our simple people dozing sit,
And never heed how little wit
Is in their parson's head!

Then, at our Church's partial feast
Hard-working Labour gets the least,
And silken Ease the most;
The curates hardly earn their board,
While rectors, canons, and My Lord,
Are kept at Crœsus cost!

Yet those “inferiors” do the work;
The curate slaves where rectors shirk,
A noble soul is he,—
He buries, visits, preaches, prays,
Does all,—then to his rector pays
For each the surplice-fee!

But lo! that noble soul himself,
When safe soon after on the shelf,
A living fat and sure,
Forgets, alas! his working zeal,
And how for others he could feel,
While self was insecure.

And more: belike, in pride of place,
He half presumes that gifts and grace
Through him alone are shed;
And yet, by rubrics made most wise,
Will neither bury, nor baptize
The sponsorless, or dead!

Why don't we, as Dissenters do,
Breed up our priests with prudence due,
And pick best men with skill?
Nor lightly let the family-fool,
Early made profligate at school,
Each family-living fill?

Why can't we, from America's plan,
Of serving God and blessing man,
Take a broad hint to-day?
The labourer there gets ample hire,
But laymen righteously require
The labour for the pay!

BALLAD EXCULPATORY.

I sketch'd from nature, when I drew
Those dull and worldly men,—
But fear I hurt some faithful few
By side-strokes of my pen;

Dear souls, I would not by one word
Make any good man grieve,
Who truly seeks to serve his Lord,
And human woes relieve.

Ye holy watchmen of the night,
How should I make you sad,
By whom in loveliness and light
My spirit is made glad?
Only for slumberers, “dumb dogs,”
The “hireling-shepherd” crew,
Whose mere dead-weight Religion clogs,
My wrath is,—not for you.

Ay, Felix Neff, and Oberlin;
Ay, Wesley, Martyn, Hill;
Noble antagonists of Sin,
Your mantle 's on us still!
For many a minister of truth,
In England's holy pale,
Leads on, like you, our gallant youth
Up Elah's tented vale!

And what if Truth's Ithuriel spear
Has startled into form
Some toads that vex the public ear,
And raised a righteous storm?
Rejoic'd, I own some Abdiels left,
Rejoic'd, I've done my best
To shame the many grace-bereft,
And stir up all the rest!

Then dream not that my verse defames
The Mother-Church I serve;
Her enemies my spirit blames,
And smites with all its nerve:
A Churchman, with a liberal heart
For men of other minds,
I choose to battle, for my part,
Abuses of all kinds.

O think not, friends, by ostrich blinks,
And salves, and soft excuse,
When evil in the nostril stinks
To hide up each abuse:
Rather, with firm and wholesome hand,
Probe every poison'd sore,
That heal'd and strong, our Church may stand
In beauty evermore!

If from within not quickly purged
By gentle hands devout,
A fatal clearing will be urged
By envious force without;
Too long have hireling shepherds schemed
Their own, not others', good;
Too long the Poor-man's Church has seemed
The rich man's livelihood.

Souls starve; while many a rector sleeps,
And bishops swell in state;
O'er all the Church stagnation creeps,
And zeal is out of date;

And pious founders' rents and fees,
For needy merit meant,
Are shared by reverend trustees,
And by archdeacons spent!

Ah! goodly Church, well found, well mann'd,
How sad it were to think
That captain's, mate's, and pilot's hand,
Are like the ship to sink!
All hands to help her! overboard
The recreant Jonas fling,—
And to the haven safely moor'd
Our goodly bark we'll bring!

TWENTY-ONE BALLADS,

Originally published in the Rock.

I. THE CHURCHMAN'S PASTOR.

My true friend, my wise friend,
Remembered of old years,
To comfort and advise, friend,
In sorrows and in fears;
So patient and so ready
To hear as well as teach,
And ever staunch and steady
To practise as to preach,—

Alas, how very few, friend,
Among the modern race,
In faithfulness like you, friend,
Are ministers of grace,—
Their Master's mind fulfilling,
In doing all He saith,
And like Apostles willing
To serve Him to the death!

The folly and the pride, friend,
Of sacerdotal strife,
You spurned it all aside, friend,
In pulpit as in life;
You never drove us blindly
To sacraments alone,
But led our footsteps kindly
To Christ upon His throne!

I loved to go to church, friend,
For no sham ritual there,
But after God to search, friend,
In spiritual prayer;
From Paul, and not some “Father”
(Unless he witnessed thus),
My pastor used to gather
The food he found for us.

And in no drowsy drone, friend,
You dared to preach or pray,
But with a trumpet's tone, friend,
Proclaim'd the Gospel day;
And roused us by your teaching
So earnest and so clear,
For Glory to be reaching
Through Christian duty here!

Now rarely to be found, friend,
Are Abdiel souls like thee;
Anglicans may abound, friend,
But angels few there be:

The churchman seeks his pastor,
But scarcely can he find
The model of his Master
In life, and heart, and mind.

They want us to confess, friend,
To them, and not to God;
And think to ban or bless, friend,
By their weak staff or rod:
But never will we palter
With priests and all their dross;
We have no priest nor altar,
But Jesus and His cross!

Religion's rule for us, friend,
Is still the Bible plan;
No Roman scheming thus, friend,
With lying lures of man;
True Presence in the Spirit,
But not of flesh and blood,
And Christ, not human merit,
To make us just with God!

Protestant Pastors! each “Friend”
Your flocks would gladly hail;
If you but live and preach, friend,
Sincerely, without fail;
Not traitorously striving
To bring false doctrines in,
Nor step by step contriving
The way for Rome to win,

But guarding from that foe, friend,
The sheep within your fold,
And letting all men know, friend,
The gospel-truths of old,—
So will the treasons perish
That Oxford brings from Rome,
So shall our people cherish
Their pastor-friends at home.

II. OUR PROTEST.

It is time to be stirring and helping the Right,
By bearing my Protestant part in the fight,
It is time to do all that an Englishman can
By honestly taking my side like a man!

No slinking from resolute principles now,
I'll openly bear the true badge on my brow;
No shirking from duties with feeble excuse,
I'll dare them, in spite of contempt and abuse;

Unfurl the good flag to the breezes—true blue,
And swear to stand by it as “faithful and true,”
Denouncing the trimmers in Church as in State,
And loving all truths, as all treasons we hate.

With tolerant spirit, at liberty's claim,
With liberal hand, in humanity's name,

We grant, as we ask, equal rights, as we ought,
Free press and free worship, free speech and free thought!

But now is Intolerance making its stand
To bring back the Pope to this Protestant land,
And here that illiberal pestilent scheme,
Old Priestcraft, revives its papistical dream;

By lusts of the eye and the ear and the nose,
By music and incense, and pride in fine clothes,
Meek doves in their manner, sly serpents within,
Ridiculous, too, were it not for their sin,—

These Anglican priests, with vain-glorious device,
Are plotting their innocent flocks to entice
From Protestant truth, our birthright at home,
To the lies and the thraldoms of Catholic Rome!

O shame on that judge! for his quibbles of law,
Dissecting a hair and dividing a straw,
And forcing our plain Common Prayer-book to speak
Exactly what Papists and Jesuits seek:

Lit candles at noon-day! fit symbol, forsooth,
Of the glory of Christ and the radiance of truth;
Mixed chalice? O no!—mixed chalice? O yes—
If done in the vestry—(where lay folk confess!)—

Incense, so pleasant, poetical, sweet;
Well, we scarce can allow what is really most meet!

And,—so for more childish idolatries, too —
Not childish!—for children, if silly, are true,—

But, false in all oaths to your Church and your Queen,
The flocks you should pasture you starve and you wean,
Preaching and teaching, by tongue and by pen,
Not the Gospel of God, but traditions of men!

I, then, with the thousands who think in my rhymes,
Denounce those false priests in these perilous times,
As spawn of the Serpent, ambitiously vain,
Such as England has crushed, and will crush yet again!

III. THE PROTESTANT CHURCH.

O Mother Church of England, where should thy children search
For any wiser teacher, any purer, better Church,
More liberal or more gentle, more free to think and speak,
And quit of all the idols of the Latin and the Greek!

From infancy, with first thy water-symbol on the brow,
Through youth, when faith and reason well confirmed the sponsor's vow,
Through all the years of Sabbaths, with their preachings and their pray'rs,
And consolations of all kinds, through life in all its cares,—

Thy fostering love hath helped us in each path of peace or strife,
And still shall cheer us bravely on adown the vale of life,
As frequently our pastor-friend, a shepherd, not a priest,
Shall feed us with the simple food of Christ's memorial feast!

Yet hast thou somewhat now of blame, some spots are on the sun,
Scores of thy clergy are thy shame, and treacherous deeds have done,
Thy very Colleges have lifted into Learning's seat
The Rationalistic infidel, the Ritualistic cheat!

They do their worst to wean us, but we love our Mother still,
And stand by her for life or death, through good report or ill;
The laity of England still are Protestant at heart,
And, spite of all that priests may plot, will take their Church's part.

Her Liturgies we love, and by her Articles we hold,
Worthy in no non-natural sense to have been cast in gold;
Her honest pastors well we praise, true preachers of the Word,
Her bishops and her ministers, good servants to The Lord.

O Mother! they have done thee wrong, these superstitious ones,
Who claim their heritage through Rome as thus the true Church-sons;
Our root is Christ; while Moses and the Twelve and honest Paul
These, in the volume of the Book, to us are all in all.

No chain of fathers need we, to endorse what Jesus saith,
No councils want we to define our Bible-builded faith;
Anthority is nought with us except on Scripture strength,
And every doctrine must be tried by simple texts at length.

Thy sister Church of Scotland, as pure and true as thou,
In these fierce days of sifting standeth strong and faithful now,
Protesting against Popish wiles, and winning souls to heaven,
And proof alike against the pagan and the papal leaven:

That Beast, with those two Lamb-like horns to guard his dragon tongue,
Working his wonders and deceits the world of men among,

Whom we eschew, and will not bear his mark on heart or hand,
The blain of unbelief, or the scarlet woman's brand!

But, Ireland! thou art marked withal; thou worshippest the Beast,
Thou art infected with the plagues that grow of Pope and priest;
And though our Church hath dwelt with thee for thrice a hundred years,
Thou hast not loved or honoured her, but dealt her shame and sneers!

Yes, Ireland! lo, the father's guilt upon the children falls,
The rust of centuries in thee have mouldered Zion's walls,
For sloth and too much luxury (though some were Abdiels found)
Have undermined thy bulwarks, and may hurl them to the ground!

Alas! the foe is at thy gates, and traitors hide within,
And Providence is just to punish negligence as sin;
Thy golden days are past; but not the preaching of the Cross;
Religion still shall gladden thee, the gainer for thy loss!

And though that crafty wolf of Rome, as cruel as of old,
By thine own treacherous shepherds now is welcomed to the fold,
It shall not rend thee as thou fearest, nor as it may hope,
For every Protestant is sworn to guard thee from the Pope!

IV. TRAPS.

“Ad Clerum.”

Be honest, be open, be frank like a man,
But don't lie in wait to deceive;
Your sneaking and sly Jesuitical plan
Is a web that the devil might weave:
By little and little—ay, that is your scheme—
You hope to corrupt us at home,
From Protestant truth to your Catholic dream,
From the pure Church of England to Rome!

Yet you were ordained our national guides,
For pastors and teachers and friends,
But now on the battlefield meanly change sides,
To compass our enemies' ends:

Of the Church Universal most truly are we,
But Catholics?—not as you mean,
For in thought and in speech we will live and die free,
Not serving the Pope—but the Queen.

We honour the conscience, good faith we admire,
No Papist—if true—we despise;
Full freedom of worship we grant and require,
Right liberty heartily prize;
But the double-faced trimmer and double-tongued cheat
We stoutly denounce and condemn;
For the wages they take and the bread that they eat,
Are stolen, not worked for, by them!

Their duty was plainly to preach the Lord Christ,
The crucified Saviour of souls,
And not to shame Him by the pranks of the priest
With his trumpery candles and stoles;
The gospel, and not its mere scaffold the church,
The mind of the Lord, not their own,
His honour, not theirs, they were bidden to search,
And seek it and serve it alone!

But now, you entrap us by this and by that,
With music and incense and flowers,
And think to steal on with the craft of a cat
To corrupt this religiom of ours;
By vestments of Baal, and bows to the East,
And man's absolution forsooth,
You change for a tinselly chancel and priest
God's worship of spirit and truth!

And thus you “entice silly women”—the text
Is suitable, “having a form,”—
And hope (but you can't) to allure the men next
To shelter your heads from the storm;
For England won't stand it! our millions abjure
The priestcraft you scheme to bring back,
As we wot well of old that no rights are secure
With a tyrannous Church on the track.

And though no one persecutes (pray have no fear),
Our tolerance still has its bound,
And soon you'll be stirring a hurricane here,
Your old “knavish tricks” to confound;
Great England is patient—but Protestant too—
So try not her patience too far,
For if you force England tow'rd Rome as you do,
She'll pack you to Rome as you are!

V. A NEW REFORMATION.

“Ad Populum.”

Sooner or later—and sooner is best—
To rescue the Church of this nation,
Up and down through the land from the East to the West,
We must fight for a new Reformation;

To baffle her treacherous clerical sons,
Who strive to be luring her Romeward,
And win back those silly degenerate ones
To return like the prodigal homeward.

By a touch here and there we must purge out small faults
From her liturgies, well nigh perfection,
And cure a few phrases that priesthood exalts,
Provoking indignant rejection;
Absolution by man, just a once on the whole,
And sham Apostolic succession,
And magical sacraments, giving the soul
Atonement for every transgression!

Our sacraments—all superstition apart
And waiving their exaggeration—
We honour them both, when received in the heart,
As helpers of grace and salvation;
But water and words are not Spirit and Faith,
Nor signs of more force than resemblance,
Nor is there a miracle worked when He saith,
This bread is My body's remembrance.

And priests?—we have none but the Saviour above,
King and Priest and full justification,
Whose gospel His many evangelists love
And preach in their wise ministration;
But, priests for a sacrifice? these we renounce
As Pagan, unchristian, Judaic,
And all sacerdotal effront'ry denounce
As harmful to cleric and laic!

Then, as to succession? Apostles were men
Who taught by the tongue in past ages,
But now we can teach by the press and the pen,
And in chief by the Book and its pages;
Succession? in spirit, but scarcely by touch;
Their doctrine is over all nations,
But often through Christians who, though they love much,
Have no theologic gradations.

We want reformation of matters in doubt,—
That the Prayer-book be not held “a jewel”
By Romanist-Anglicans creeping about,
And heaping our wrath with new fuel;
A jewel it may be, but not as they mean
By help of some rubrical mentors,
Not even by making a Pope of the Queen,
Nor worse, by ignoring Dissenters!

We want Reformation to bring these all in,
Wesleyans, and Baptists, and Brothers,
Independents, and all who wage war against sin,
And who preach Paul's pure creed, “not another's;”
For we fear and we feel, there must soon be here seen
A fierce and distinct separation,
When High Church and Low Church, the Pope and the Queen,
Contend for this new Reformation!

VI. ENGLAND'S UPRISING.

Ye parish priests of England,
The good, the pure, the true!
These angry rhymes in these fierce times
Are never flung at you;
They only hit the traitorous band
That shames your reverend ranks,
For heart and hand with you we stand
To stop their Popish pranks,
So, clergymen of England,
We claim your hearty thanks!

For, Jesuit priests in England,
Iscariots of our home,
Now scheme and strive to lure or drive
Their English flocks to Rome;
And lest our Mother Church and State,
Through some such Judas crew,
Meet evil fate from their sly hate,
We stand up straight with you,
O clergymen of England,
The faithful found and true.

Thus, lay and priests of England,
We millions far and wide
Rising in might to help the right,
Will fight on the same side;

And though false priests, and bishops too,
Trouble us sore and long,
Now, as of yore, from shore to shore
We both will stand up strong,
Clergy and lay for England,
That England take no wrong!

Yes, free and generous England,
Thy children, clerk and lay,
Together stand, a brother band,
For ever and a day;
Resolved that Cardinal and Pope
Shall not again be brought
To wreck in hate our Church and State,
As Bloody Mary wrought:
For we will rise for England,
To save her as we ought.

VII. THE SMITHFIELD MARTYRS.

Look back; three hundred years ago!—
Where now these markets stand,
With horns of plenty ranged in row,
From all our happy land—
That threefold century ago,
How changed the horrid scene,
With martyr faggots all aglow,
Beneath the Bloody Queen!

Alive—those Popish murderers burnt
(To please the Church forsooth!)
A host of saints whose lives had learnt
The way of peace and truth;
Alive—they chained them to the stake,
And, blazing where they stood,
They hunted heaven-ward, for Christ's sake,
The guiltless and the good!

Rogers and Philpot, honoured names,
And Bradford “by God's grace,”
And sweet Ann Askew, in the flames
Bathing her beauteous face,
And children, cripples, palsied age,
And mothers great with child,
Won here, through persecuting rage,
Their kingdoms undefiled!

Why died those noble martyrs thus?
To expiate what dread crime?
And how their witnessing to us
Thence to the end of time?
What did those tortured bodies teach
Before they could expire?
And how doth each still fiercely preach
As with a tongue of fire?

They died for Truth; their crime was Faith;
Their witness, still to give
Themselves for Christ: as Jesus saith,
“To lose your lives, and live!”

Rather they worship with the dead
As living in the Lord,
Than make their God a piece of bread
Created by man's word!

They died because their faith denied
Absolvings from a priest;
Because their murderers' creed belied
Their Lord's memorial feast;
Because to them mere bread and wine
Were not real flesh and blood,
But served as the substantial sign
Of spiritual good;

They died because they loved their Lord,
Protesting in His name,
And walked with Him for their reward
In Shadrach's belt of flame;
They died because they set their seals
To Truth, rejecting lies;
Therefore Elijah's chariot-wheels
Have whirl'd them to the skies!

And are there now no Jesuits nigh
The faithful flock to snare?
No soul-destroying fires to fly,
No martyrdoms to share?
Alas! our shepherds—some, not all—
Are traitors to their sheep,
Beckoning the Roman wolf to fall
On England half-asleep!

But she shall waken! and expel
From Freedom's island home
The Judas-pastors who would sell
Our liberties to Rome;
Those who are plotting, scarce in vain,
To work their Pope's desires,
And willingly would light again
The cruel Smithfield fires!

VIII. MARTYR RELICS.

“The crime for which almost all the Protestants were condemned was their refusal to acknowledge the Real Presence.”— Hume's History of England.

In a day when the letter-bags everywhere yield
Their pleasures and interests every day,
Scattering loves over city and field,
Or dropping reverses and fears by the way—
At Smithfield it chanced that, for popular use,
They planted a pillar-box just a year back,
On a stained-looking spot with the paving-stones loose,
And the soil underneath it all burnt red and black.

Why is this? did the Great Fire of London stretch here?
Well—hardly; for Smithfield was open and fresh;
And—what are these bones and old chains lying here?
Those masses of charcoal, and—is it?—burnt flesh?

Too truly, too fearfully—this is the place
Where Christians, whom stepmother Church wouldn't shrive,
Men, women, yea children—to priestcraft's disgrace,
To its deep detestation, were roasted alive!

Yes, yes—at a time when that priestcraft again
Is lifting its head as a basilisk near,
By wonderful Providence, never in vain,
These bones have uprisen for witnessing here;
They witness of Rome still as “always the same,”
Made drunk with the blood of the saints evermore,
And eager as ever for faggot and flame,
To-day—if to-day she was strong as of yore!

They witness the peril that lurks in each priest,
If his craft were a pestilence over the land,
And bid us beware of the mark of the Beast,
And wipe it away from the forehead and hand;
They witness the truths my own ancestors held
In Hesse and Augsburg, three centuries back;
So, conscience, with hearty goodwill is compell'd
To hold them in honour that never should lack!

For I come from the stock of confessors myself,
Of a Protestant house before Luther was born,
Who were martyrs from power, from place, and from pelf,
For religion, from homes in old Germany torn;

And near the dark days when good Latimer bled,
My fathers escaped to their Sarnian home,
Or further away to America fled,
To hide from the rage of idolatrous Rome.

It is therefore I claim as a brother, though weak,
That justice be done to these martyrs of truth,
And honours long due be no longer to seek
For Taylor the aged, or Hunter the youth,
For Cardmaker, Hawkes, and Rose Allen's sweet sake,
And the child-bearing mother in Guernsey aflame,
And her sudden-born babe burnt close to her stake,
Baptized in the fire without water or name!

I claim, then, for such, as their champion this day,
Unworthy, but come of a stock they well love,
All praise to all martyrs, who never would pray
To wafers and wine, but to Jesus above!
No relics we save; let the dust lie adust;
But honour and love to great memories be given,
With a Church of Remembrance for good men and just,
Who won through the furnace their entrance to heaven?

IX. TAUGHT BY THE FOE.

Too truly they charged us: I speak as a friend,
Good Protestant pastors and laymen at home;
For somewhat against us, some matters to mend,
Gave this badoccasion to perverts of Rome;

Those Anglican traitors would never have dared
To jeer at their poor Mother Church as they do,
If the tracks for their treason had not been prepared
By the sins of us lay, and, some pastors! of you.

Too many of both, like the virgins of old,
Were slumbering and sleeping—though half of them wise;
So shepherds and sheep were surprised in their fold
By the bark of the wolf, to awake and arise:
And still may there not be some dulness, some sloth,
To be charged, honest pastors, on us, or on you,
If vext congregations seem too little loth
To change dim old lamps for the bright and the new?

Forgive: let a layman in faithfulness speak;
There had grown of old times many slovenly ways;
Damp churches, bad readers, and prayers once a-week,
And sermons no mortal could venture to praise;
And pews with their harpies, and beadles so grim,
And covetous clerks and those base surplice fees,
And charity children all screaming the hymn,
And the poor never seen where the rich loll'd at ease!

All this was all wrong; and the foe seem'd a friend,
Who made us consider such negligent ways;
But happily since there is well nigh an end
Of laches like this in these quick latter days;

Thus all the more need (those outworks repaired)
For keeping true ward on the citadel tower,
Lest, so by the foe's seeming friendliness snared,
We yield up the faith in this perilous hour.

Gay robes of idolatrous sign and device,
Sly symbols of doctrine our fathers denied,
And every small trap that is set to entice
Our parsons and people on Popery's side,—
All these we denounce; while reforming the wrong
We cling to the right with all zeal as before,
Resolved to keep Protestant England as strong
For God, and man's freedom, as ever of yore!

Thus taught by the foe to cleanse each little blot,
While steadfastly every great truth we retain,
With order and decency noways forgot,
Our worship shall still be seen simple and plain;
In spirit our musical psalms shall be sweet,
Our services warm with religion's pure light,
And all that is fervent and comely shall meet
In Protestant Liturgies ordered aright!

X. LUKEWARMNESS.

There is more yet against us,—if one may speak out
Frankly and faithfully, fearless of man,—
For human infirmities hover about
To set what we will hard against what we can;

As thus;—that we Protestants, ever too prone
To fight single-handed with falsehood and wrong,
Forget that each twig is but weakness alone,
Whereas the whole faggoted bundle were strong.

Our foes are united, a phalanx compact,
Papists and infidels, equal in hate,
Acute and agreed on each treacherous act
That helps to dissever the Church from the State;
Well knowing, ill hoping, that through this free land,
If Protestant faith be disarmed of defence,
The Throne too must fall, and old Popery stand
Tyrant of England not many days hence!

O! can it be truth that the Protestant's Name
Is quite out of fashion, unpopular now,
Since sundry false brethren have spotted with shame
The fillet which martyrdom wore on its brow?
O pastors! O people! awake and arise!
Be zealous for England's Religion and Laws,
Rememb'ring, unless all her history lies,
That—Liberty stands with the Protestant Cause!

For we, disunited through treachery's sin,
May possibly fall as Jerusalem fell,
Where the foeman without and the false-man within
Combined for her ruin too weakly, too well!
Alas for those traitors, our Church's choice sons,
Her Rome-stricken clergy, her priest-bitten lay,—
Alas! they have welcomed, degenerate ones,
Both sorrow and shame to their country to-day!

And this is our sin! that so slowly we rise,
Gallios caring for none of these things,—
With an island-contempt in the heart and the eyes,
The tolerant scorn that from indolence springs;
But the curse upon Meroz, who help'd not the Lord
When the sword of the mighty flash'd fierce against Him,
May bitterly—justly—in judgment be pour'd
On zeal grown so cold, on a lamp shown so dim!

That omen be absent! Let each of us now
Live stoutly for truths wherein martyrs have died,—
Let “union and zeal” be the Protestant vow,
The motto for all upon Liberty's side;
As in days long-ago of the red rose or white,
With conscience and duty together we'll stand
For the Crown and the Creed of our fathers to fight,
And rescue from traitors this Protestant land!

XI. FAITHFULNESS.

How great are their mercies to whom it is given
To fight on the side of their Lord,
To strive against hell with the Sabaoth of heaven,
And stand for God's truth in His word!

Too many have faithlessly started aside,
Ay, some of the good and the great
With papists and infidels sadly allied
To wreck both the Church and the State;

Too few are found faithful in these latter days
When love of the truth is grown cold,
And fashion and folly forsake for new ways
The true ones, because they are old;

Yes, true ones, and old; though the new ones now claim
Antiquity truth and the rest,
In the night mediæval like shadows they came
To darken this Church of the West:

From monks and from friars their doctrines they drew,
But not from the Church in its prime,
And so Reformation went back to renew
The Scriptural truths of old time.

Against creature-worship, and pray'rs for the dead,
And priestcraft, and paganized rites,
And Rome for the Christian's infallible head,
A Protestant faithfully fights;

Against superstition, and Satan's own plan
The souls of the worldly to win,
Confession pour'd out, not to God, but to man,
With priestly absolving from sin,—

Against a closed Bible, against the sly scheme
For darkness extinguishing light
Through Catholic Unity's tyrannous dream,
A Protestant ever will fight.

He fights, and shall conquer; the banner he waves,
With Constantine's motto deviced,
Is the Cross that gives freedom to sinners and slaves,
The Gospel of God and His Christ!

XII. PROTESTANTISM.

Puritanic, narrow-minded,
Lost in low sectarian ways,
With dull prejudices blinded,
Protestant! is this your praise?
So they charge us, so they tell us,
So their envious tongues would blight
(Of our noble freedoms jealous)
England's name of living light.

Pure,—so be it; walking purely
On the straight and narrow track,
In good works and faith securely,
Forwards! never creeping back:
Honest-hearted, and frank-spoken,
Scorning cheats, and shams and lies,
Protestant! are these a token
Of a spirit to despise?—

Liberty in faith and reason,
Freedom's right to think and speak,
Courage, in and out of season,
From the strong to save the weak,—

Conscience honoured, judging all things,
By the Word of God all ways,
Keeping truth in great and small things,
Protestant! be this your praise.

Every superstitious error
It is yours to sweep aside,
Every form of pagan terror
Shaped by priestcraft in its pride;
Every kind of persecution
Yours to hate, as British born,
Every human absolution,
As a Christian, yours to scorn.

While your zeal for soul-salvation
Points to Christ upon the Cross,
Sacerdotal mediation
You denounce as utter dross;
While you tolerate opinion
You will keep, as best you can,
Rome's intolerant dominion
From the soul and mind of man.

So, for narrowness, large-minded,
For sectarian, wide and free,
Full of light, instead of blinded,
Bold to speak, as clear to see,—
Protestant, in honest gladness,
Proudly will you claim a name
Which the Papist in his madness
Wrung from martyrdom aflame!

XIII. POPERY.

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!

XIV. THE IRISH CHURCH.

Cut it down to the root,
For it cumbereth the ground!
It beareth wild fruit,
Its heart is unsound,—
The leaf, look! doth wither,
The grapes yield no wine,—
Stern woodman, speed hither,
And hew down this vine.

Ah, God! is all true
The accuser hath said?
Is judgment so due,
And mercy so fled?

Hath grace quite departed
From branch and from root?
Is all hollow-hearted
And barren of fruit?

Alas! we have err'd
In thousands of ways,
Neglecting Thy word,
Forgetting Thy praise;
We grieve for transgression,
And ask at Thy throne,
In humble confession,
Forgiveness alone!

Yet, Lord! is it just
What the enemy saith?
Are we false to our trust?
Are we foes to Thy faith?
Have none of us striven,
By night and by day,
To win souls to Heaven
And teach them Thy way?

All missions elsewhere
That heathendom bless,
Would you crush the work there
For its feeble success?
Though millions benighted,
Now hold such in scorn,
They may yet be requited
By millions unborn

Is it duty, forsooth
(If a failure were shown),
To measure all truth
By successes alone?
So might we disparage
(Where merits are blank)
The thraldom of marriage,
The heirdom of rank!

Our grapes—were all wild?
Our leaf—is all sear?
Hath mammon defiled
All comeliness here?
Many lifetimes of labour—
Have these been quite vain,
That God and our neighbour
Condemn us again?

Not so! We are bold
In help from above,
That the Lord will behold
This vine in His love,—
Will prune it and dress it,
To bring forth more fruit,
And spare it and bless it,
And stablish its root!

So the boar from the wood
Shall not break down its hedge,
Nor the foes of all good,
Though banded in pledge;

The Saviour, returning,
Around us shall reign,
And change all our mourning
To gladness again!

XV. CHURCH AND STATE.

The State and the Church, like husband and wife,
For better or worse are wedded for life,—
Divorced they both fall, as united both stand,
The light and defence of this Protestant land.

True it is, that the Church hath Christ for her Head,
And needs neither husband nor lord in His stead,—
True it is, that the State neither teaches nor guides
But only gives out what the Master provides.

Yet God hath ordained good governments here,
To be served in His love, and obeyed in His fear;
And the chief of the State is His steward for the day
Till the Lord from His journey return far away.

So England, acknowledging God in His Word,
Beholds in her Queen the good steward of her Lord,
Her earthly defender of heavenly faith,
To work the Lord's will, and enforce what He saith.

And chiefly the Throne is sworn to withstand
Papistical lies in this Protestant land;
For the title that Englishmen give to their Kings,
From Protestant faith in intensity springs.

Then, woe to the Crown if the Church should decay,
And woe to the Church with her champion away!
Together they fall, as together they stand,
The Creed and the Crown of this Protestant land.

XVI. TO CERTAIN HIERARCHS.

O Vine! that the Husbandman planted,
And hedged well around with His grace,
And summers and seasons hath granted,
That thou shouldst be strong in thy place;
O Vine! the marauders have rent thee,
And torn off thy boughs and thy root,—
But can it then tamely content thee
That robbers should ravage thy fruit?

Where, where are this vineyard's defenders,
Its champions for God and the good,
To rout all its rooters and renders
Wild boars and wild beasts of the wood?

Where are some, so well paid for a courage
They seem little eager to show,
Content with a prudent demurrage
To ward off the shock of the foe?

Ye Bishops! in dignified greatness
Laying hands on more Bishops forsooth,
So careful by lordly sedateness
To compromise nothing but Truth,—
We look to your bench for some vigour,
Some strength in this Protestant strait,
But lo! what a pitiful figure
You cut both in Church and in State!

We laymen cry out for true leaders,
Not clerical slaves to routine
With orthodox hate of seceders
And love of the churchy machine,
Who live to stir nothing and no man,
So peace do but last for your day,
And heed of each lion-like foeman,
As it were but an ass in the way!

Ah! know but yourselves as men know you,
Slumbering and dumb in the dark,
With infidels eager to show you
Their lies of the Flood and the Ark,
With Jesuits plotting and waiting
To seize both your folds and their flocks,
And Popery heartily hating
The heretic Church that it mocks!

Then think you by politic shrewdness
In fencing both early and late,
To carte aside infidel lewdness,
And tierce with papistical hate?
No! faithfulness honestly spoken,
And earnestness heartily shown,—
Herein were the Bishops' true token,
For Christ and His Zion to own!

Oh! stand in the front of this battle,
And round you we laymen will crowd,
Unscared though the thunder-cloud rattle,
Unbent though the mountains be bow'd;
But should the Church leaders so fail us,
And leave us to conquer alone,
Lay England, if Rome shall assail us,
Will rescue the Church and the Throne!

XVII. TO SOME INCUMBENTS.

Well; let the foe smite us with blame as before;
No doubt there is much to bewail and amend,—
And precious as balm shall be blame if it cure,
The frown of that foe is the smile of a friend;

For all are but men,—and perfection is found
Nowhere on earth where the meddler is man,
But everywhere follies and failings abound
And we all must fall short, let us strive as we can.

They charge then,—that paltry ambitions are strong
In desk and in pulpit as well as elsewhere,
That eloquent helpers not often last long
Incumbents' parochial glories to share;
That rector and curate keep separate spheres
With the rich and the poor, with greatest and least,
While brotherly kindness too seldom endears
The bargain and sale between deacon and priest.

If thus for a possible few they speak sooth,
Oh, fling all such littleness frankly aside!
Our pastors are equals for God and His truth,
Priests, deacons, and bishops, all pledged against pride:
So, let no good curate, whose toil day and night
Though earnest and pious is nearly unpaid,
Be snubbed by his rector and kept out of sight
As a serf of the Church, and inferior in grade!

We stand not on ranks; the true servant of Christ,
With orders from heaven far more than of earth,
Is higher in calling than prelate or priest
Though deacon—or lay—by his heavenly birth;

But we take outer orders and forms and degrees
As governments, helps, and convenience of men,
Which God will ignore if His Sov'reignty please,
And pour His free grace through the press or the pen.

Mere office is little; the temple well served,
Good character sanctifies station and place,
And Protestants never have wavered nor swerved
From claiming that works must bear witness to grace;
Our bishops, when faithful, are bishops indeed,
Old Winchester! Durham! we hail you with joy;
But mere consecration of vest or of creed
Cannot help to save souls, but may help to destroy.

This is not, it may be, the Catholic sense
Which councils and fathers and schoolmen would own,
But the rational faith and conviction intense
A Protestant gains from the Scriptures alone;
We trust not in men; whether fathers, or sons,—
They are fallible all, in a Council, or out;
And the Church, not of earthly, but heavenly ones,
Is built of all churches within—and without.

XVIII. PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

We are bound to prove all things and hold fast the good,
And dare not live credulous fools if we would,

For reason without and the conscience within
Condemn a blind faith for both folly and sin.

The merit and duty of rational man
Command him to master all truth as he can,
Earnestly, humbly to seek it and find,
With the love of his heart and the light of his mind;

With his heart and his mind,—both lit from Above
By the Spirit of light and the Spirit of love,
In patience and prayer, with humilities felt,
And the eye that hath wept and the knee that hath knelt.

The Word which was written that men might believe,
Heedfully will such a Christian receive;
But, as to traditions of men, with all care
His wisdom must weigh what perchance is a snare:

Not scorning opinions, but hearing them all,
For self and for pride he will fear lest he fall,
And willingly learns of the world or the Church,
For every good help in his Scriptural search.

No rational Protestant ever was seen
A priestworked automaton mindless machine,—
Still less will he dare to denounce or despise
The truths ever held by the good and the wise.

Yes! just private judgment, our duty and right,
Must be led by man's teaching and lit by God's light,
Undazzled by glitter the fanatic needs,
Undimmed by the dark of heretical creeds.

But you, ye blind guides, who boast that ye see,
And think to make slaves where the Lord has made free,
Who shut up the Bible on priestly pretence
That none but yourselves can decipher the sense,—

Infallible teachers! you need, in good sooth,
Infallible hearers as well for all truth;
Or the dogmas you preach will be warped in the ear
Of ignorant sinners who fallibly hear;

Thus, we that are laymen—and fallible each,
But jealous for truths that infallibles teach,—
Resolve, as enjoined by our Master and Lord,
To judge what we hear by the weight of His word.

XIX. CORRIGENDA.

Must it come to a battle? Shall Christians contend
With swords and with staves for the faith we defend?
Will they force it upon us, that all through this land
The freemen must fight who for Liberty stand?

Our fathers when erst for Religion they stood,
At the Great Reformation for God and the good,
In the much that they won left us somewhat to win,
When we strive for the truth against Satan and sin;

And so there were some things which compromise dealt,
Which ignorance fancied, and prejudice felt,
That clung to the Prayer-book like burrs on the hand,
To sow Popish weeds on this Protestant Land.

These taints in the Liturgy, subtle but few,
We claim to cut out, as reforming anew,—
The priestcraft, the Presence, the hold here and there
Your Romanists claim in our plain Common Prayer.

They strive by these drag-lines to pull the ship back,
But we break away—Forward, ho!—on the track,—
No mid-channel towings to hamper it thus,
But the Fair-Haven gale of the Gospel for us!

A new Reformation; if peacefully won,
Thank God for all kindliness under the sun!
If fiercely fought out between false men and true,
Thank God that the many must conquer the few!

For, laymen by millions are Liberty's hope,
While a few petty priests are the slaves of the Pope,—
And Protestant England resolves that her home
Evermore shall be free from the thraldoms of Rome.

Evermore shall be free! for the Protestant heart
Will sooner with life than with liberty part;
And Englishmen claim their religion to be
The faith of the Bible, as pure and as free!

XX. PEACE OR WAR.

By all means—Law and Quiet—
Be these our modern praise!
No Lord George Gordon riot,
No “light of other days,”
Such light as bonfires flaring
With sacrilegious fires,
Or mobs our matrons scaring,
As once they scared our sires!

Yes; though the parish tyrant
Provokes the fist that strikes,
By sacerdotal high rant
And daring what he likes
Against our English feelings
Of honesty at home,
By superstitious stealings
Of trumpery from Rome,—

Yet we would make no Edom
Of his chancel or his pelf,
But all we want is freedom
From the thraldom of himself;
We give him leave to leave us
Right peacefully in time,
Before the rabble grieve us
By—Heaven avert it!—crime.

For Britain frowns and hectors
In honest wrath to know
So many budding rectors
Perverted to the foe,
And vows she will not stand it,
To see the parish priest
A semi-papal bandit
Of the Babylonish Beast!

Shall that Italian Ferret
Usurp this Lion-throne
Which Protestants inherit
Through their pure faith alone?
Shall Popery and its vermin
(As bad old times have seen)
Again infest the ermine
Of England and her Queen?

No! those old times have taught us
The strength that in us lies,—
For our own hands have wrought us
The freedom that we prize;
Our hands upheld by Heaven,
Have conquered in the fight,
And quell'd the papal leaven
By force of truth and right.

So, yet once more if treason
To that pure faith of ours
Wakes up with bitter reason
An angry people's powers

As with the white and red-rose
That tore our weal in twain.
Shall rage, as if the dead rose,
Red civil war again!

Or, if some scheme less frightful
Be managed to divide
The wrongful from the rightful
Without that bloody tide,
At least our torn division
Of church, and creed, and crown,
Must earn the world's derison,
And drag our glory down!

These Romanizing traitors
Are forcing to a fight
The lovers and the haters
Of liberty and light;
And beckon on war's demon
To scare sweet peace at home,
By threats that England's fremen
Shall wear the chains of Rome!

So, their's the guilt, not our's,
If revolution dire,
That now in thunder lours,
Should wrap this land in fre;
No peace can be for Zion
If Jezebel come here,—
No rest for Judah's lion
With Rabshakeh so near!

XXI. PRIEST AND LAY.

They have dared to malign the dear martyrs of Jesus,
Their patience to mock, and their pangs to disclaim,
To sneer at the tortures that shock us and freeze us,—
The rack with its throes, and the stake with its flame!
They smoothly excuse those Dominican devils
Whom orthodox Rome set apart for such crimes,
And gladly would mix in the murderous revels
Achieved by such Catholic zeal in old times.

They say that the stupefied fanatics felt not,
That obstinate infidels chose their own course,
That heretics who contumaciously knelt not
Must clearly be dragged to the altar by force;
They vow that the State, not the Church, was the slayer,
A barbarous people, and not the meek priest,—
The age was in fault, not the preacher and pray-er,
The laymen, but clericals? not in the least.

And yet, were the laity leaders and preachers?
Or a strong church in the pride of high place?
Were the weak flocks or their tyrannous teachers
Zealots in crime, God and man to disgrace?
Not the dull laymen, but scholarly churchmen,
These were the burners for bigotry's sake;
Search out all history, Protestants, search, men!
You'll still find the priest at the root of the stake.

Who taught the world to be piously cruel,
With horrors that none but a monk could contrive?
What but grim priestcraft invented the fuel
To burn soul and body together alive?
Seed of the True Church! Blood of the martyrs!
Strangely you conquered the priest in the saint,
When to high heaven your flaming avatars
Rose to the glory no fancy can paint!

Ay; all ye Druids, ye Brahmins, ye Pagans,
And African Obis, and priests of all creeds,
From Mary's the Blest, to Astarte's and Dagon's,
Through priestcraft in chief poor humanity bleeds:
And more; when a day of redemption has brightened,
It never was priest bade the dayspring to burst,—
France, Italy, Spain! if your fetters are lightened,
They fall to the layman,—the last is the first!

THE “ANTI-RITUALISTIC DIRECTORIUM.”

[_]

Originally published in 1868.

PROLOGUE.

Protestant England! that hast ever stood
God's champion-nation for the true and good,
Blest, till of late (it needs not long to search)
With His best boon, a pure and pious Church,
Alas! that priestcraft, subtle as of yore,
Corrodes thy heart, a maggot at the core;
Alas! that many among thy clergy still
Are bribed by Rome to serve her with a will,
And, while their gathered flocks seek pastures fair,
Feed them with gauds and shams instead of pray'r,
Lure them to drink sweet poison with their food,
And give them evil when they come for good!

O wives, O sisters,—see ye be not snared
By tinsel traps for silly souls prepared;
O youths, with tender consciences of sin,—
O men of harder shells, but soft within,—
O fashionable fribbles, gaping wide
For any novelty the fates provide,—

Take heed of venomed influences there,
The charmer charmeth cunningly,—beware!
I know how snakelike round weak hearts and minds
This chain of superstitious priestcraft winds;
I see how well confession suits your scheme,
How drugged with monkshood is your deadly dream,—
To sin and shrive as often as you can,
And rest absolved, O lie of lies,—by man!
I feel how music, poetry, and fear
Are work'd by priests to win Rome perverts here;
I note the fools who flock about those priests,
And serve their mummeries in fasts and feasts:
Incense, and monotone, and gaudy vest,
And dim religious light, and all the rest
Are schemed as soporifics to the mind
To lull men off asleep, deaf, dumb, and blind,
That priests may mould the laymen with due skill,
And twist them like lay figures to their will!

Judge now how basely with unhallowed zeal
These traitors plot against the public weal;
From their own books I pick each poisoned hint
And take their tactics from themselves in print.

“DIRECTORIUM ANGLICANUM.”

Secret instructions to our Anglican Clergy.

I. CAUTION: MUSIC: PAINTING: FLOWERS: EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE: THRALDOM.

Wisely, and warily: not too much haste;
But bait your traps to catch the people's taste.

By music, first, attract their ears and hearts,
Bass, tenor, alto, set and sung in parts;
What matter, though no spirit's praise be there?
Chaunting is only modulated air;
The crowd will come to listen, not to pray,—
So drill your choristers by night and day.

Next, painting: decorate these paltry fanes,
By base churchwardens whitewashed with such pains;
Gilding and colours, reds and greens and blues,
And windows, staining daylight to all hues,
Corona, carvings—(idols by-and-by)—
These be your second aim, to please the eye;
What tho' such sights distract the soul from prayer?
The crowd will come, at any rate to stare.

Then flowers—O yes! we win the women thus
How charmingly young sisters flock to us!
And with what zeal their wreaths and texts are set,
Where curates are strict celibates—as yet;

100

So every festal season hung in flowers
Shall make dull churches smile like Paphian bowers,
And, if religion look forgotten so,
What matter? crowds will come, to see the show.

But chiefest this, the point of all, shrewd priest;
Make a dread mystery that simple feast
Which early Christians knew for bread and wine
Tasted in memory of their Lord divine,
—Unconsecrated,—He gave thanks, and brake,
And bade them take it for His own dear sake.
Bread?—it is flesh!—not wine, it is the Blood!
The priest's bare word creates a Present God!
Not reverence only, superstitious care
Must watch and worship every morsel there;
Incense and vestments, noon-day flaring lights,
And early papal—earlier pagan—rites,
Preach up all these; and bid the people press
For absolution, will they but confess;
And make them sure this wafer with this cup
Washes all guilt away and wipes it up;
Provided only, creeping to their priest,
(Who gives them God-in-sacrifice for feast,)
They humbly tell him all the sins they've done,
And he is willing to forgive each one!

So, English clergy!—(not to be too long,
And not intending all, for that were wrong,)—
Acutely step by step advancing thus,
And luring the lay-folk to lean on us,

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We shall, O glorious! soon set England free
From—civil and religious liberty!
Her Hanoverian throne shall no more bind
Protestant errors on the British mind;
Her people shall not dare to learn or teach
Except as Holy Church is pleased to preach;
And all our morals, all our light, at home
Shall rival light and morals as in Rome,—
While England's present peace and future hope
Must cling,—O praise!—to our “Lord God the Pope!”

II. THE PRIEST: BACKTURNING: INTONING: PREACHING: PROCESSIONS: THE MASS: THE ALTAR: TRANSUBSTANTIATION: MARIAN MARTYRS: ANOTHER REFORMATION.

The priest is God on earth,—a present god
To bind and loose, to be both staff and rod:
Treat the lay folk then with supreme disdain,
And thereby make your godship pretty plain;
In every gesture take the scornful tack,
And on the congregation turn your back,
While to yourself, as no concern of theirs,
With rapid drone you gabble through the prayers.

Worship—(as did of old each Baal-priest,
So saith Ezekiel)—ever toward the East:

102

'Tis true, the Jewish Sanctum stood due West,
But Bel and Babylon and Rome know best;
And altar-worship is ensured beside;
And the lay-folk insulted and defied!

So, with the sermon; a defiant tone;
No mercy,—saving through the priest alone,
Who flings his transubstantiated crumbs
For mean lay dogs to gather where he comes,
This be your message; ‘gospel message?’ No!
The very word's dissentery and low.

Then, manage, every week advancing higher,
Some small procession with your village quire;
And cross and bow upon the Latin plan,
And be as “histrionic” as you can,
And work up all the petty pomp you may,
For Celebrating High Mass, every day!

The table, where, as Puritans profess,
A humble supper, neither more nor less,
Religiously commemorates their Lord,
Drinking His spirit, feeding on His word,
And instituted by that Lord to prove
(Unsacrificed as yet) His living love,—
That table is an Altar! and that food
Not bread and wine, but human flesh and blood!
This be your teaching,—and there follows straight
The worship of the Host you consecrate,
Wafer and wine adored and set on high,
And—the shrewd priest well glorified thereby!

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Those “Marian Martyrs,”—blest be Mary's name
Who piously consigned them to the flame!—
They held such heresies; and would not kneel
Before the fragments of a holy meal;
Therefore the generous Gardiner burnt alive
Latimer, Cranmer, and their hornet hive,—
And, all for Mother-church and mercy's sake,
Bonner committed Ridley to the stake,—
And, served them right; so now shall Oxford swear,
And stone from stone their vile Memorial tear!

Yes, Anglicans,—true Catholics once more,
By Luther too long poisoned heretofore,
No longer Protestants, but free to hope
For pardon—after penance—from the Pope,
Keen English priests, who cunningly devise
How to bring back what laymen still call lies,
Scheming to break strong Britons to your rule,
Who hate your Jesuitic high-church school,
Listen, shrewd priests!—if only you'll go on
Winning such triumphs as your zeal hath won,—
No doubt, again shall Reformation stand
And sweep the stalls and stables of this land,
No doubt, you may contrive to rend in twain
The Nation's church, and leave it,—to our gain,—
No doubt, your Roman tastes may find in Rome
More genial cures than those you lose at home,
No doubt, some bishops and more priests must search
For sees and livings from some other church
Than England, in her watch-tower on the waves,
Has fixed for freemen, not for popish slaves!

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III. DOVES AND SERPENTS: THE SCHOOL: THE CATECHISM: THE CHURCHYARD: PURGATORY: VESTMENTS: HYMNAL

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;”

106

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!

107

IV. APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION: SACRAMENTS: SCRIPTURE NAMES AND THINGS: CUNNING SERMONS: A WORD TO BISHOPS.

Claim for yourself, with most dogmatic force,
Direct Succession from the Twelve, of course;
In spirit? No! but by material touch,—
Whereat those simple Twelve would marvel much.

Then preach your “system;”—to the twain of yore
(Exaggerate them both) add sundry more;
The Sacraments? “two generally,”—true,
But, other five particularly too!
Orders,—vicegerency of God at least;
Marriage,—made valid only through the priest;
Penance,—not penitence—the word defiles—
But licking crosses on the chancel-tiles;
Next, Confirmation, as the door of heaven;
And Extreme Unction, filling up the seven;
These teach and preach: if any doubt your plan,
Refuse your absolution to that man,
And terrify the wretch's dying hour
With all the rancour of your priestly power!

Use Scripture terms: but shear them of such sense
As Anglicans must hate with hate intense.
“Regeneration?”—Certainly! make sure
That every babe's baptized, and so—secure:

108

Let methodists in pious zeal profess
Some Higher Spirit needed there to bless,—
You only need a priest, a name, a phrase,
A drop of water, and—all's safe, always!
So,—“Be converted:” by all means!—but then
“Become like little children,”—not like men;
Give up your wills to God, that is, your priest,
But dare not judge nor reason in the least;
Obey the Church; obedience is the bliss;
“Conversion?”—O, by all means,—such as this!

So, too, at times, all gainsaying to confuse,
Surprise your people with your low-church views,
Urge them to private prayer, Berean search,
But not one word, just then, about the Church:
The like, if brother parsons come to hear,
Or best a bishop, or some bigwig near,
Treat them with pious gospel for the nonce,
And make your hearers think you sound for once:
Wonderful gains are got by cheating thus
Protestant blockheads to believe in Us;
Such honest fools are taken in this gin,
They judge us by themselves, and so we win.

Well, English Bishops!—(not Archbishops too,
For happily we're safe in both of You,—
And, happier still, are safer in The Throne,
By Protestant Ascendancy our own,—
And, happiest yet, are safest in that Book
To which for all our liberties we look)—

109

Good English Bishops,—most at least are good,—
Must not such Jesuitism be withstood?
Should we not now, we laymen, on you call
To prove your faithfulness, and help us all?
For, if you fail us, congregations must
From such weak hands reclaim their sacred trust:
And as, three hundred years ago, our sires
Rescued the brand of truth from Smithfield fires,
Their sons now hold it forth; and bid you stand
Between the dead and living of this Land:
Purge out our plague-spots; prudently revise
Two or three words that taint our liturgies;
And leave no reason why The Common Prayer
Should seem unprotestant in some things there:
Drive from a thousand livings, as you may,
Those traitor priests who teach their flocks to stray;
And find us honest shepherds,—unlike those
Whom England hates and fears as Popish foes:
Thus only, are you safe upon your sees,
Thus only, are you proved not drones, but bees,
Thus only, English laymen still can own
Your bishoprics as props around The Throne,
Thus only, Bishops, can you consecrate
To God's true glory England's Church and State!

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V. HIGH CHURCH AND LOW CHURCH EPISCOPACY: SISTERHOODS: MONKS: CHURCH MILLINERY.

A few more hints; and hints are all you need,
There's quite a forest in a pinch of seed.

If your own Bishop is a safe shrewd man,
And helps our Scheme subtly as he can,
Praise him aloud! Episcopacy there
Is God's Apostle in St. Egbert's chair;
Profess obedience blindly to his nod;
His English office is the voice of God!
Your Bishop's mandate?—need no further search
For more authority to rule the Church;
Your Bishop? 'tis the office, not the man;
Who dares dispute his word, who works our plan?

But, if your Bishop, like an honest fool,
Presumes against our Scheme to rise and rule,
Denounce him, disobey him, and declare
Such bishoprics all castles in the air!
English Episcopacy! worthless, vain,—
There's no apostle here, that's pretty plain!
Apostle? what! can England boast of one,
Since she [with Peter!] call'd Rome Babylon?
Your English Bishop? drag him to church-law
And prove him then and there a man of straw
Obey his mandate? Nonsense! he's the man,
(A fig for office!)—who won't work our plan!

111

Encourage sisterhoods: a deal is done
By dressing up young beauty like a nun,
Or hiding some old spinster's scraggy shape
In flowing robes of cambric and of crape:
She spies, neglected soul! this lingering chance
Of realizing her long life's romance,—
A husband now at last may yet be found
In some stale priest, on consecrated ground!

Encourage monkery: rich feeble heirs
Should be relieved of all their worldly cares,
And taught it a church-privilege indeed
To feel from miserable mammon freed!
While, glorious compensation for such dross,
They swing an incense-pot, or lift a cross,
And though their younger brothers starve at home,
Give all they have to England's Church—of Rome!

Look to Church millinery; womenkind
Are filled with needlework in heart and mind;
Their thoughts fly stitching to their fingers' ends
And needlework will broider them your friends.
Then use those fingers to ensnare those hearts;
Church-decoration special zeal imparts:
Antimacassars, slippers, braces, these
Have had their little day, and fail to please,—
So now with altar-cloths and cushioned seats
Her dear young priest each fair adorer greets,
Making—as fanatics unkindly prove,—
Religion's self the stalking-horse of Love!

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VI. GUILDS: MORALS: ENGLAND'S RESOLVE.

Join some sly Guild: St. Anything will suit,
St. Sarah Pattens, or St. Jeemes le-Boot,
Martyr, or Virgin, just to tie up tight
Your sworn Society in Riband might:
Secret conspiracy is all your aim;
So, take your oaths, and make your little game;
Together undermining England's soil,
Much mischief may be done by such shrewd toil,
Much to make Protestants—a gain indeed!
Renounce their Hanoverian queen and creed,
Much to dismember and to dissipate
Their odious union of the church and state:
Then, as inquisitors of old could kill
In secret conclave, you may work your will,
Unitedly destroying any man
Whose sturdy patriotism hates your plan;
Pulling him down, as jackals hunt by night
The lion whom by day they fear to fight!
Ay, ay; the Jesuit and Freemason too
Should thus be mingled craftily in you,
That spider's web enmeshing all the land
By—Well! “the wicked joining hand in hand!”

Your morals: No you mustn't be found out
In things lay fools may make a fuss about:
True; there are many, pure in words and ways,
Of whom it were unjust to hint dispraise;

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Ascetic through continual service, still
With Martha's toil a Mary's part they fill:
But, in mere Form, excessive and of course,
Abides—(let Oxford testify its force)
An evil hardening process for the soul
Warping young natures from clean self-control:
And, so much washing argues so much dirt,
And absolution's cheap, without much hurt,
And your confessional is handy,—Yes,
One may as well have something to confess!
And there's Perpetual Celebration too,
Perpetual license to begin anew!
So, keep things quiet, or you stir up strife;
But to force piety on private life
Is just to drag religion from its perch,—
That eagle is a fixture of the church,
Not to be suffered out of doors to roam
With methodists who dare to pray at home,
Nor to be desecrated in the least
Save by continual service, with a priest;
So, chancel work perfunctorily achieved,
Leave your religion there, and feel relieved,
Playing at fast and loose, when out of church,
And leaving morals slightly in the lurch!

All said and done,—how long will English sense
Endure these treasons, and not drive them hence?
How long shall stale old tyrannies be found
Rising again, like phantoms from the ground,

114

And not be crushed and banished as of yore
By sons of those who routed them before?—
We will not stand it!—Let Belgravians hope
For thraldom, and the blessing of the Pope;
Let fashionables to confession crowd,
And absolution purify the proud;
But England's Mighty People, true and just,
Is mad against such flagrant breach of trust
As many priests, ay, bishops, in church pay
Dare to commit, and think unchecked they may!
Not so!—They leave us,—or they leave behind
Their Romish lies that poison heart and mind;
And, if they still sow treason here at home,
Off with them,—by and in the mass—to Rome!

115

EPILOGUE.

Must this go on?—shall sneaking monks and nuns
Entice our daughters and entrap our sons,—
With open front Rome's hierarchs proclaim
Titular sees illegally by name,—
And in deep guile these Anglicans be found
Breathing out pestilence on all around,
Till laymen cease to take their clergy's parts,
Suspecting them for papists in their hearts?—

No!—we can tolerate, in these free days,
All sorts of sects in all their whims and ways;
At clerical absurdities can wink,
And watch time's stream to see those bubbles sink:
But, when false doctrine wholesale taints our guides,
Whom England's Church for Englishmen provides,
We tell them,—We will never tamely stand
To let their treason Romanize the Land,—
We warn them, Englishmen will not endure
To find the papist in the parish-cure,—
We dare them to “steal on,”—as Pusey hints,
As Hamilton enjoins, and Bennett prints!

For so,—they rue it: England's heart and mind
(Good pulp within, but with a bitter rind)
Though some few fools of fashion may “go o'er,”
Is protestant and wholesome to the core:

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They rue it; for they lose their British home,
Going, like Caradoc, in chains to Rome!

And, dream not my indignant rhymes condemn
All priests and deacons,—or a tithe of them;
Not so!—not all, nor many, nor the most;
Belials are fewest in our Abdiel host!
—Not so! a myriad, more or fewer, teach
Wisely and well, where thousands falsehood preach:
Yet, must the true and faithful men speak out,
Or all may perish in one common rout:
For, well we judge that England's Church and Throne
Protestant, stand together, not alone;
So that, if this go on,—chairs, livings, sees
Shall soon stand vacant,—as the People please;
That by a Second Reformation thus,
We quite expurgate Popery from us,
And help our good great Queen to nominate
Protestant Churchmen to protect Her State!

THE END.

117

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

WITH ADDITIONAL STANZAS.

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall!
Strengthen her high estate
Evermore good and great,
And from all Popish hate
God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour,
Long may she reign!
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause,
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen.

May she our Church secure
Protestant plain and pure,
As it hath been;
So shall our State still be
Freest among the free,
Shouting from sea to sea
God save the Queen.

For on whatever shore
Henceforth as heretofore
Our flag is seen,
There shall this psalm be sung
By every heart and tongue,
Rich and poor, old and young,
God save the Queen!