In one of his last completed poems, the 1527 Replication against Certain Young Scholars late Abjured, John Skelton claims for himself Davidic authority for the divine frenzy that urges him to argue against the misplaced motivation of the ‘frenetykes’, ‘lunatykes’, ‘sysmatykes’, ‘heretykes’ who have opposed him, citing Psalm 74.5: ‘dixi inique agentibus nolite inique agere et impiis nolite exaltare cornu’[‘I said to the wicked: Do not act wickedly: and to the sinners: Lift not up the horn’]. By preaching openly throughout East Anglia, Hertfordshire and London, the Lutherans Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur had lifted up the horn of heresy. Skelton felt impelled to reply, but in so doing found himself defending not only clerical orthodoxy and sound learning, but also his own calling as a poet. Skelton is defending himself against two main charges. The first invokes the assertion that poetry is not suitable for the treatment of high matters:

1. Ye saye that poetry

2. Maye nat flye so hye

3. In theology,

4. Nor analogy,

5. Nor philology,

6. Nor philosophy,

7. To answere or reply

8. Agaynst suche heresy. (11. 306–13)

The second is the older, ultimately Platonic, charge that poets are liars:

1. Why have ye than disdayne

2. At poetes, and complayne

3. Howe poetes do but fayne? (ll. 351–53)

Skelton's first line of defence is the argument from authority. He invokes St Jerome, ‘that doctour glorious’ (l. 319), whose Epistle 53 (Ad Paulinum: De studio Scripturarum), often prefixed to the Vulgate Bible and to the Glossa ordinaria in manuscript and in print, praises the poetry of David as comparable to that of the great classical lyric poets.