Resolved that when we Spiritual Lords
Whose income just enough affords
To keep our Spiritual Lordships cosey,
Are told by Antiquarians prosy
How ancient Bishops cut up theirs,
Giving the poor the largest shares—
Our answer is, in one short word,
We think it pious but absurd.
Those good men made the world their debtor,
But we, the Church reformed, know better;
And taking all that all can pay,
Balance the account the other way.
Resolved our thanks profoundly due are
To last month's Quarterly Reviewer,
Who proves by arguments so clear
(One sees how much he holds per year)
That England's Church, tho' out of date,
Must still be left to lie in state,
As dead, as rotten and as grand as
The mummy of King Osymandyas,
All pickled snug—the brains drawn out—
With costly cerements swathed about,—
And "Touch me not," those words terrific,
Scrawled o'er her in good hieroglyphic.
[1] One of the questions propounded to the Puritans in 1573 was—"Whether the Book of Service was good and godly, every tittle grounded on the Holy Scripture?" On which an honest Dissenter remarks—"Surely they had a wonderful opinion of their Service Book that there was not a tittle amiss, in it."
[2] "They," the Bishops, "know that the primitive Church had no such Bishops. If the fourth part of the bishopric remained unto the Bishop, it were sufficient."—On the Commandments, p. 72.
[3] "Since the Prelates were made Lords and Nobles, the plough standeth, there is no work done, the people starve."—Lat. Serm.
[4] "Of whom have come all these glorious titles, styles, and pomps into the Church. But I would that I, and all my brethren, the Bishops, would leave all our styles, and write the styles of our offices," etc.—Life of Cranmer, by Strype, Appendix.
SIR ANDREW'S DREAM.
"nec tu sperne piis venientia somnia portis: cum pia venerunt somnia, pondus liubent." PROPERT. lib. iv. eleg. 7.
As snug, on a Sunday eve, of late,
In his easy chair Sir Andrew sate,
Being much too pious, as every one knows,
To do aught, of a Sunday eve, but doze,
He dreamt a dream, dear, holy man,
And I'll tell you his dream as well as I can.
He found himself, to his great amaze,
In Charles the First's high Tory days,
And just at the time that gravest of Courts
Had publisht its Book of Sunday Sports.[1]
Sunday Sports! what a thing for the ear
Of Andrew even in sleep to hear!—
It chanced to be too a Sabbath day
When the people from church were coming away;
And Andrew with horror heard this song.
As the smiling sinners flockt along;—
"Long life to the Bishops, hurrah! hurrah!
"For a week of work and a Sunday of play
"Make the poor man's life run merry away."