One Pisgah peep at modern Durham
To far more lordly thoughts would stir 'em.
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That England's Church, tho' out of date,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.
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