Why undergraduates should be kept away from Victorian religious fiction?

Here I am, reading The Irish Convert; or Popish Intolerance Illustrated (1839; expanded 1849), which is about as you'd expect, and I'm already a little bemused by the opening chapter, which spends an awful lot of time being quotations stitched together.  Already, my mind slowly wanders to the "F" I would likely hand the author if this were a freshman comp paper (which, thank goodness, it isn't).  Soon, though, I reach an epigraph.  At first, I think the author might have committed written it himself, which is always a bad plan (OK, unless you're George Eliot or Walter Scott):

The sull'n recluse, with crucifixes hung,

And spells, and rosaries, and wooden saints,

Said mass, and did most grievous penance vile;

And then retired that he might fabricate

All lying wonders, by the' untaught received

For revelations new.

(35)

But then, my curiosity kicks in, and I start Googling about.  Lo! Here it is.  Er, sort of:

Unprofitable seem'd, and unapproved,

That day, the sullen, self-vindictive life

Of the recluse: with crucifixes hung,

And spells, and rosaries, and wooden saints,

Like one of reason reft, he journey'd forth,

In show of miserable poverty,

And chose to beg, as if to live on sweat

Of other men, had promised great reward:

On his own flesh inflicted cruel wounds,

With naked foot embraced the ice, by the hour

Said mass, and did most grievous penance vile:

And then retired to drink the filthy cup

Of secret wickedness, and fabricate

All lying wonders, by the untaught received

For revelations new. Deluded wretch!

Did he not know, that the most Holy One

Required a cheerful life and holy heart?

Now, I could be wrong, but the epigraph seems not quite exact.  Moreover, it's from Robert Pollok's The Course of Time (1827), which has now fallen off the radar, but was then still an extremely popular and regularly-reprinted poem.   Lesson of the day: it's perfectly OK to mangle quotations beyond recognition, without ellipses dots, in service of your pet cause! Or something. 

Granted, that's not the lesson I'm supposed to be taking away from this novel...