The Golden Legend by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College.

SCHOLASTIC. / There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield, / Hung up as a challenge to all the field! / One hundred and twenty-five propositions, / Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue / Against all disputants, old and young. / Let us see if doctors or dialecticians / Will dare to dispute my definitions, / Or attack any one of my learned theses. / Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases. / I think I have proved, by profound researches, / The error of all those doctrines so vicious / Of the old Areopagite Dionysius, / That are making such terrible work in the churches, / By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East, / And done into Latin by that Scottish beast, / Johannes Duns Scotus, who dares to maintain, / In the face of the truth, the error infernal, / That the universe is and must be eternal; / At first laying down, as a fact fundamental, / That nothing with God can be accidental; / Then asserting that God before the creation / Could not have existed, because it is plain / That, had He existed, He would have created; / Which is begging the question that should be debated, / And moveth me less to anger than laughter. / All nature, he holds, is a respiration / Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter / Will inhale it into his bosom again, / So that nothing but God alone will remain. / And therein he contradicteth himself; / For he opens the whole discussion by stating, / That God can only exist in creating. / That question I think I have laid on the shelf!