8. A Fox In The Pulpit
A Fox in the Pulpit "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines."—Song of Solomon 2:15.
"O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts"—Ezekiel 13:4. A short letter which appeared in "The Rock," April 18th, is well worth preserving in connection with the above texts. It is to be feared that the writer might have pointed to not a few Nonconformist pulpits and might have made the same remark concerning their occupants,"Duty requires that they should be taken out and kept out ":—" A Fox in the Pulpit.—Sir, a singular circumstance took place at Hever, in Kent, on Saturday last. A fox, hard pressed by the huntsmen, leaped the churchyard wall and disappeared. The hounds and huntsmen were searching and wondering, when an old woman came out from a back door of the church which happened to be open, with the exclamation, ' Here he is, in the pulpit'; and, sure enough, poor Reynard had slipped in at the open door and sought sanctuary, curled up in a corner of the pulpit. Of course, he was soon ejected. To my friend, who had witnessed the scene and described it very vividly, I observed that it reminded one of certain sly foxes in the Church of England, who get into our pulpits and think they are safe there. Duty requires that they should be taken out and kept out.—I am, &c, W. J. B." This is written by a Church of England man, and published in a sound Church paper, and so it is no violation of charity to repeat it, especially as we quite agree with every word of it. We wish that all the Popish foxes could be ejected from the National Establishment, for they do more mischief than tongue can tell.
The fox that steals the lamb so tender, Can never be the fold's defender, He's but a base and sly pretender.
The difficulty seems to be to get these foxes out and keep them out. Once in the pulpit, they know how to hold their position; you may dig out a fox, but you cannot dislodge a Romanizing priest. Acts of Parliament altogether fail, because such things are meant for men, and foxes dexterously evade them. Reynard's imitators have many knavish tricks, and know how to twist and turn, and so they escape statutes and laws, and still pursue their evil business. In the reforming times a popular caricature represented a priest as a fox preaching to an assembly of geese from the text," How earnestly I long for. you all in my bowels." The drawing would not be out of date if it were published to-day. How silly must the geese be who yield themselves heart and soul to such foxes! Yet there are flocks of them.