Caught napping

Third Edition.
LONDON: G. J. PALMER, 32, LITTLE QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
1866.
CAUGHT NAPPING.
HOW I FOUND MYSELF IN THE CATACOMBS.
I am an Anglican of the Anglicans, I mean that I am τετράγωνος a Perfect Man, with four angles impinging upon my neighbours and producing among them many a sore. Whithersoever I go, into whatsoever society, I take my angles with me. They do much damage, but they establish the principle of Anglicanism.
My object in writing these lines is to announce a very remarkable phenomenon which occurred the other day, and which may prove of interest to the Psychologist.
I was sitting in my study before the fire reading the Guardian , which is the 40th article of my creed, with my feet upon the mantle-piece, and my spectacles upon my nose. Whilst perusing with the utmost profit and gratification the letters of Messrs. Marriott and Milton on the Ritual question, an indescribable obfuscation stole over my faculties. My chin, which, on principle, I keep well elevated, sank upon my bosom, which is boney. My eyes began to close, an Æolean note issued at intervals from my nostrils. The Guardian slipped from my fingers, and to my obscured fancy appeared to slide away into utter vacuity. The ranges of books upon my shelves seemed to undergo changes. The library of Anglo-Catholic theology began to dance, whilst the library of the Fathers retired into vacuum—but not the same vacuum into which the Guardian had slipped, one totally distinct.
These facts will prove my abnormal condition.
What Anglican, waking or dreaming would picture Sancroft and Andrews, Bull and Cosin, capering in a reel? I record my impressions circumstantially, as they led to a very extraordinary phase in my existence, for which I am totally unable to account. That I dreamt what follows is simply impossible; the phenomena of dreams depend entirely upon the existence of imaginative faculties, but these are entirely deficient in Anglican skulls. What I relate must therefore be regarded as fact ; I am unable to account for the fact, but it is not required of man to understand or to intellectually grasp, in order to believe, certain facts which come to him on high authority. The human mind is finite, &c.... (A long passage follows apparently extracted from a sermon on the limits of reason, and its relation to faith, preached by our correspondent before a rustic congregation. We omit the passage as of interest only to the composer of the sermon.) Suffice it to say, that somehow, in an inappreciable moment of time I lost the thread of time, and only caught it again after the lapse of ages. How this was effected is to me inexplicable, I can only illustrate it by the analogy of a man ascending a slippery height and sliding back from the summit, to check himself in his rearward career by catching a shrub near the bottom. Space and time are related, our appreciations of each are parallel. I checked myself with a jerk after the lapse of a thousand and odd years in the midst of the times of persecution.