Chapter Nine.
Too abstruse for Blanche.
“Hear the just law, the judgment of the skies!
He that hates truth shall be the dupe of lies;
And he that will be cheated to the last,
Delusions strong as Hell shall bind him fast.”
Cowper.
“I did conceive, Mistress Blanche,” said Mr Tremayne one morning, as the party rose from the breakfast-table, “that you would with a good will see the picture of Clare’s grandsire, the which hangeth in my study-chamber?”
“Oh ay, an’ it like you,” responded Blanche eagerly.
Clare had seen the portrait, but not Blanche. Mr Tremayne led the way to his study, allowed her to examine the likeness at her leisure, and answered all her questions about John Avery. Entrapped Blanche did not realise that he was catching her with the same sort of guile which Saint Paul used towards the Corinthians. (2 Corinthians 12, 16) Mrs Tremayne came in, and sat down quietly with her work, before the inspection was over. When her curiosity was at length satisfied, Blanche thanked Mr Tremayne, and would have left the room with a courtesy: but such was by no means the intention of her pastor.
“I have heard, say, Mistress Blanche,” said he quietly, “that your mind hath been somewhat unsettled touching the difference, or the lack of difference, betwixt us and the Papists. If so be, pray you sit down, and give us leave to talk the same over.”
Blanche felt caught at last. It must be Sir Thomas, of course, who had told the Rector, for there was no one else who could have done it. And it may be added, though Blanche did not know it, that her father had specially begged Mr Tremayne to examine into the matter, and to set Blanche right on any points whereon she might have gone wrong.
Thus brought to a stand and forced to action, it was Blanche’s nature to behave after the manner of a mule in the same predicament, and to affect stronger contrary convictions than she really felt. It was true, she said rather bluntly: she did think there was very little, if any, difference between many doctrines held by the rival Churches.
“There is all the difference that is betwixt Heaven and earth,” answered Mr Tremayne. “Nay, I had well-nigh said, betwixt Heaven and Hell: for I do believe the Devil to have been the perverter of truth with those corruptions that are in Papistry. But I pray you, of your gentleness, to tell me of one matter wherein, as you account, no difference lieth?”
With what power of intellect she had—which was not much—Blanche mentally ran over the list, and selected the item on which she thought Mr Tremayne would find least to say.
“It seemeth me you be too rude (harsh, severe) to charge the Papists with idolatry,” she said. “They be no more idolaters than we.”
“No be they? How so, I pray you?”
“Why, the images in their churches be but for the teaching of such as cannot read, nor do they any worship unto the image, but only unto him that is signified thereby. Moreover, they pray not unto the saints, as you would have it; they do but ask the saints’ prayers for them. Surely I may ask my father to pray for me, and you would not say that I prayed unto him!”
“I pray you, pull bridle there, Mistress Blanche,” said Mr Tremayne, smiling; “for you have raised already four weighty points, the which may not be expounded in a moment. I take them, an’ it like you, not justly in your order, but rather in the order wherein they do affect each other. And first, under your good pleasure,—what is prayer?”
Blanche was about to reply at once, when it struck her that the question involved more than she supposed. She would have answered,—“Why, saying my prayers:” but the idea came to her, Was that prayer? And she felt instinctively that, necessarily, it was not. She thought a moment, and then answered slowly;—
“I would say that it is to ask somewhat with full desire to obtain the same.”
“Is that all?” replied Mr Tremayne.
Blanche thought so.
“Methinks there is more therein than so. For it implieth, beyond this, full belief that he whom you shall ask,—firstly, can hear you; secondly, is able to grant you; thirdly, is willing to grant you.”
“Surely the saints be willing to pray for us!”
“How know you they can hear us?”
Blanche thought, and thought, and could find no reason for supposing it.
“Again, how know you they can grant us?”
“But they pray!”
“They praise, and they hold communion: I know not whether they offer petitions or no.”
Blanche sat meditating.
“You see, therefore, there is no certainty on the first and most weighty of all these points. We know not that any saint can hear us. But pass that—grant, for our talk’s sake, that they have knowledge of what passeth on earth, and can hear when we do speak to them. How then? Here is Saint Mary, our Lord’s mother, sitting in Heaven; and upon earth there be petitions a-coming up unto her, at one time, from Loretto in Italy, and from Nuremburg in Germany, and from Seville in Spain, and from Bruges in Flanders, and from Paris in France, and from Bideford in Devon, and from Kirkham in Lancashire. Mistress Blanche, if she can hear and make distinction betwixt all these at the self-same moment, then is she no woman like to you. Your brain should be mazed with the din, and spent with the labour. Invocation declareth omnipotency. And there is none almighty save One,—that is, God.”
“But,” urged Blanche, “the body may be one whither, and the spirit another. And Saint Mary is a spirit.”
“Truly so. Yet the spirit can scantly be in ten places at one time—how much less a thousand?”
Blanche was silent.
“The next thing, I take it, is that they pray not unto the saints, but do ask the saints only to pray for them. If the saints hear them not, the one is as futile as the other. But I deny that they do not pray unto the saints.”
Mr Tremayne went to his bookcase, and came back with a volume in his hand.
“Listen here, I pray you—‘Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, and after Him mine only hope, pray for me, and guard me during this night’—‘Give me power to fight against thine enemies’—‘Great God, who by the resurrection of Thy Son Jesus Christ hast rejoiced the world, we pray Thee, grant that by His blessed mother the Virgin Mary we may obtain the bliss of eternal life’—‘Make mine heart to burn with love for Jesus Christ,—make me to feel the death of Jesus Christ in mine heart,—cause to be given unto us the joys of Paradise—O Jesu! O Mary! cause me to be truly troubled for my sins.’ These, Mistress Blanche, be from the book that is the Common Prayer of the Papistical Church: and all these words be spoken unto Mary. As you well see, I cast no doubt, they do ascribe unto her divinity. For none can effectually work upon man’s heart—save the Holy Ghost only. None other can cause his heart to be ‘truly troubled for sin;’ none other can make his heart to burn. Now what think you of this, Mistress Blanche? Is it praying unto the saints, or no?”
What Blanche thought, she did not say; but if it could be guessed from the expression of her face, she was both shocked and astonished.
“Now come we to the third point: to wit, that images be as pictures for the teaching of such as have no learning. Methinks, Mistress Blanche, that God is like to be wiser than all men. There must needs have been many Israelites in the wilderness that had no learning: yet His command unto them, as unto us, is, ‘Ye shall not make unto you any graven image.’ I take it that the small good that might thereby be done (supposing any such to be) should be utterly overborne of the companying evil. Moreover, when you do learn the vulgar, you would, I hope, learn them that which is true. Is it true, I pray you, that Mary was borne into Heaven of angels, like as Christ did Himself ascend?—or that being thus carried thither, she was crowned of God, as a queen? Dear maid, we have the Master’s word touching all such, pourtrayments. ‘The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire.—Thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.’” (Deuteronomy twelve, verses 25, 26.)
“O Mr Tremayne!” said Blanche, with a horrified look. “You would surely ne’er call a picture or an image of our Lord’s own mother a thing accursed?”
“But I would, my maid,” he answered very gravely, “that instant moment that there should be given thereunto the honour and worship and glory that be only due to Him. ‘My glory will I not give to another, neither My praise to graven images.’ Nay, I would call an image of Christ Himself a thing accursed, if it stood in His place in the hearts of men. Mark you, King Hezekiah utterly destroyed the serpent of brass that was God’s own appointed likeness of Christ, that moment that the children of Israel did begin to burn incense unto it, thereby making it an idol.”
“But in the Papistical Church they be no idols, Master Tremayne!” interposed Blanche eagerly. “Therein lieth the difference betwixt Popery and Paganism.”
“What should you say, Mistress Blanche, if you wist that therein lieth no difference betwixt Popery and Paganism? The old Pagans were wont to say the same thing. (Note 1.) They should have laughed in your face if you had charged them with worshipping wood and stone, and have answered that they worshipped only the thing signified. So much is it thus, that amongst some Pagan nations, they do hold that their god cometh down in his proper person into the image for a season (like as the Papists into the wafer of the sacrament), and when they account him gone, they cast the image away as no more worth. Yet hark you how God Himself accounteth of this their worship. ‘He maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto IT, and worshippeth IT, and prayeth unto IT, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god.’ And list also how He expoundeth the same:—‘A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?’ (Isaiah 44, verses 17, 20.) There should be little idolatry in this world if there were no deceived hearts.”
Blanche twisted her handkerchief about, in the manner of a person who is determined not to be convinced, yet can find nothing to say in answer.
“Tell me, Mistress Blanche,—for I think too well of your good sense to doubt the same,—you cannot believe that Christ Himself is in a piece of bread?”
In her inmost heart she certainly believed no such thing. But it would never do to retreat from her position. In Blanche’s eyes, disgrace lay not in being mistaken, but in being shown the mistake.
“Wherefore may it not be so?” she murmured. “’Tis matter of faith, in like manner as is our Lord’s resurrection.”
“In like manner? I cry you mercy. You believe the resurrection on the witness of them that knew it—that saw the sepulchre void; that saw Christ, and spake with Him, and did eat and drink with Him, and knew Him to be the very same Jesus that had died. You can bear no witness either way, for you were not there. But in this matter of the bread, here are you; and you see it for yourself not to be as you be told. Your eyes tell you that they behold bread; your hands tell you that they handle bread; your tongue tells you that it tasteth bread. The witness of your senses is in question: and these three do agree that the matter is bread only.”
“The senses may be deceived, I reckon?”
“The senses may be deceived; and, as meseemeth, after two fashions: firstly, when the senses themselves be not in full healthfulness and vigour. Thus, if a man have some malady in his eyes, that he know himself to see things mistakenly, from the relation of other around him, then may he doubt what his eyes see with regard to this matter. Secondly, a man must not lean on his senses touching matters that come not within the discerning of sense. Now in regard to this bread, the Papists do overreach themselves. Did they but tell us that the change made was mystical and of faith,—not within the discernment of sense—we might then find it harder work to deal withal, and we must seek unto the Word of God only, and not unto our sense in any wise. But they go farther: they tell us the change is such, that there is no more the substance of bread left at all. (Note 2.) This therefore is matter within the discerning of sense. If it be thus, then this change is needs one that I can see, can taste, can handle. I know, at my own table, whether I eat flesh or bread; how then should I be unable to know the same at the table of the Lord? Make it matter of sense, and I must needs submit it to the judgment of my senses. But now to take the other matter,—to wit, of faith. Christ said unto the Jews, ‘The bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’ They took Him right as the Papists do. They ‘strave among themselves, saying, How shall this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Now mark you our Lord’s answer. Doth He say, ‘Ye do ill to question this matter; ’tis a mystery of the Church; try it not by sense, but believe?’ Nay, He openeth the door somewhat wider, and letteth in another ray of light upon the signification of His words. He saith to them,—‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.’ I pray you, what manner of life? Surely not the common life of nature, for that may be sustained by other food. The life, then, is a spiritual life; and how shall spiritual life be sustained by natural meat? The meat must be spiritual, if the life be so. Again He saith,—‘He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him.’ Now, if the eating be after a literal manner, so also must be the dwelling. Our bodies, therefore, must be withinside the body of Christ in Heaven, and His body must be withinside every one of ours on earth. That this is impossible and ridiculous alike, I need not to tell you. Mistress Blanche, faith is not to believe whatsoever any shall tell you. It is less to believe a thing than to trust a man. And I can only trust a man on due testimony that he is worthy trust.”
“But this is to trust Christ our Lord,” said Blanche.
“Ay so, my maid? Or is it rather to trust our own fantasy of what Christ would say?”
Blanche was silent for a moment; then she answered,—“But He did say, ‘This is My body.’”
“Will you go further, an’ it like you?”
“How, Master Tremayne?”
“‘This is My body, which is broken for you.’ Was the bread that He held in His hand the body that was broken? Did that morsel of bread take away the sin of the world? Look you, right in so far as the bread was the body, in so far also was the breaking of that bread the death of that body,—and no further. Now, Mistress Blanche, was the breaking of the bread the death of the body? Think thereon, and answer me.”
“It was an emblem or representation thereof, no doubt,” she said slowly.
“Good. Then, inasmuch as the breaking did set forth the death, in so much did the bread set forth the body. If the one be an emblem, so must be the other.”
“That may be, perchance,” said Blanche, sheering off from the subject, as she found it passing beyond her, and requiring the troublesome effort of thought: “but, Master Tremayne, there is one other matter whereon the speech of you Gospellers verily offendeth me no little.”
“Pray you, tell me what it is, Mistress Blanche.”
“It is the little honour, or I might well say the dishonour, that you do put upon Saint Mary the blessed Virgin. Surely, of all that He knew and loved on this earth, she must have been the dearest unto our Lord. Why then thus scrimp and scant the reverence due unto her? Verily, in this matter, the Papists do more meetly than you.”
“‘More meetly’—wherewith, Mistress Blanche? With the truth of Holy Scripture, or with the fantasies of human nature?”
“I would say,” repeated Blanche rather warmly, “that her honour must be very dear to her blessed Son.”
“There is one honour ten thousand-fold dearer unto His heart, my maid, and that is the honour of God His eternal Father. All honour, that toucheth not this, I am ready to pay to her. But tell me wherefore you think she must be His dearest?”
“Because it must needs be thus,” replied illogical Blanche.
“I would ask you to remember, Mistress Blanche, that He hath told us the clean contrary.”
Blanche looked up with an astonished expression.
“‘Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.’ Equally honourable, equally dear, with that mother of His flesh whom you would fain upraise above all other women. And I am likewise disposed to think that word of Paul,—‘Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more’—I say, I am disposed to think this may have his reverse side. Though He hath known us after the flesh, yet thus, now that He is exalted to the right hand of God, He knoweth us no more. And if so, then Mary is now unto Him but one of a multitude of saved souls, all equally fair and dear and precious in the eyes of Him that died for them.”
“O Master Tremayne!”
“What would you say, Mistress Blanche?”
“That is truly—it sounds so cold!” said Blanche, disparagingly.
“Doth it so?” asked the Rector, smiling. “Cold, that all should be beloved of His heart? Dear maid, ’tis not that He loveth her the less, but that He loveth the other more.”
As Blanche made no response, Mr Tremayne went on.
“There is another side to this matter, Mistress Blanche, that I daresay you have ne’er looked upon: and it toucheth at once the matter of images, and the reverence due unto Saint Mary. Know you that great part of the images held in worship for her by the Papists, be no images of her at all? All the most ancient—and many be very ancient—were ne’er made for Mary. The marvel-working black Virgins—our Lady of Einsiedeln, our Lady of Loretto, and all such—be in very truth old idols, of a certain Tuscan or Etruscan goddess, elder than the days of the Romans. (Note 3.) Again, all they that are of fair complexion—such as have grey eyes (blue eyes were then called grey) and yellow hair—these be not Mary the Jewess. We can cast no doubt she was dark. Whence then come all these fair-complexioned pictures? We might take it, in all likelihood, from the fancy of the painters, that did account a fair woman to be of better favour than a dark. But search you into past history, and you shall find it not thus. These fair-favoured pictures be all of another than Mary; to wit, of that ancient goddess, in her original of the Babylonians, that was worshipped under divers names all over the world,—in Egypt as Isis; in Greece, as Athene, Artemis, and Aphrodite; in Rome as Juno, Diana, and Venus: truly, every goddess was but a diversity of this one. (Note 4.) These, then, be no pictures of the Maid of Nazareth. And ’tis the like of other images,—they be christened idols. The famed Saint Peter, in his church at Rome is but a christened Jupiter. Wit you how Paganism was got rid of? It was by receiving of it into the very bosom of the Roman Church. The ceremonies of the Pagans were but turned,—from Ceres, Cybele, Isis, or Aphrodite, unto Mary—from Apollo, Bacchus, Osiris, Tammuz, unto Christ. Thus, when these Pagans found that they did in very deed worship the same god, and with the same observances, as of old—for the change was in nothing save the name only—they became Christians by handfuls;—yea, by cityfuls. What marvel, I pray you? But how shall we call this Church of Rome, that thus bewrayed her trust, and sold her Lord again like Judas? An idolatrous Christianity—nay, rather a baptised idolatry! God hath writ her name, Mistress Blanche, on the last page of His Word; and it is, Babylon, Mother of all Abominations.”
“I do marvel, Master Tremayne,” said Blanche a little indignantly, though in a constrained voice, “how you dare bring such ill charges against the Papistical Church. Do they not set great store by holiness, I pray you? Yea, have they not monks and nuns, and a celibate priesthood, consecrate to greater holiness than other? How can you charge them with wickedness and abomination?”
“Poor child!” murmured the Rector, as if to himself,—“she little wist what manner of life idolaters term holiness! Mistress Blanche, yonder cloak of professed holiness hideth worser matter than you can so much as think on. ’Tis not I that set that name on the Papistical Church. It was God Himself. Will you tell me, moreover, an’ it like you,—What is holiness?”
“Goodness—right-doing.”
“Those be unclear words, methinks. They may mean well-nigh aught. For me, I would say, Holiness is walking with God, and according to the will of God.”
“Well! Is not God pleased with the doing of good?”
“God is pleased with nothing but Christ. He is not pleased with you because of your deeds. He must first accept you, and that not for any your deserving, but for the sake of the alone merits of His Son; and then He shall be pleased with your deeds, since they shall be such as His Spirit shall work in you. But nothing can please God except that which cometh from God. Your works, apart from Him, be dead works. And you cannot serve the living God with dead works.”
Blanche’s half-unconscious shrug of the shoulders conveyed the information that this doctrine was not agreeable to her.
“Surely God will be pleased with us if we do out best!” she muttered.
“By no means,” said Mr Tremayne quietly. “Your best is not good enough for God. He likeneth that best of yours to filthy rags. What should you say to one that brought you a present of filthy rags, so foul that you could not so much as touch them?”
Blanche, who was extremely dainty as to what she touched, quite appreciated this simile. She found an answer, nevertheless.
“God is merciful, Mr Tremayne. You picture Him as hard and unpitiful.”
“Verily, Mistress Blanche, God is merciful: more than you nor I may conceive. But God hath no mercies outside of Christ. Come to Him bringing aught in your hand save Christ, and He hath nought to say to you. And be you ware that you cannot come and bring nothing. If you bring not Christ, assuredly you shall bring somewhat else,—your own works, or your own sufferings, or in some manner your own deservings. And for him that cometh with his own demerits in hand, God hath nought saving the one thing he hath indeed demerited,—which is—Hell.”
Mr Tremayne spoke so solemnly that Blanche felt awed. But she did not relish the doctrine which he preached any better on that account.
“How have I demerited that?” she asked.
“God Himself shall answer you. ‘He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.’ ‘He that believeth not is condemned already.’”
“But I do believe—all Christians believe!” urged Blanche.
“What believe you?”
“I believe unfeignedly all that the creed saith touching our Lord.”
“And I believe as unfeignedly all that the Commentaries of Caesar say touching that same Julius Caesar.”
“What mean you, Master Tremayne?”
“What did Julius Caesar for me, Mistress Blanche?”
“Marry, nought at all,” said Blanche, laughing, “without his invading of England should have procured unto us some civility which else we had lacked.”
Civility, at that time, meant civilisation. When, according to the wondrous dreamer of Bedford Gaol, Mr Worldly Wiseman referred Christian, if he should not find Mr Legality at home, to the pretty young man called Civility, whom he had to his son, and who could take off a burden as well as the old gentleman himself,—he meant, not what we call civility, but what we call civilisation. That pretty young man is at present the most popular physician of the day; and he still goes to the town of Morality to church. The road to his house is crowded more than ever, though the warning has been standing for two hundred years, that “notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite,”—as well as another warning far older,—“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.” (Job twenty-eight verse 28.)
“But now,” said the Rector, with an answering smile, “tell me, what did Jesus Christ for me?”
“He is the Saviour,” she said in a low voice.
“Of whom, dear maid?”
Blanche felt rather vague on that point, and the feeling was combined with a conviction that she ought not to be so. She tried to give an answer which could not be contradicted.
“Of them that believe.”
“Certes,” said Mr Tremayne, suppressing a smile, for he saw both Blanche’s difficulty and her attempt to evade it. “But that, look you, landeth us on the self place where we were at aforetime: who be they that believe?”
Blanche wisely determined to commit herself no further.
“Would it please you to tell me, Sir?”
“Dear child, if you heard me to say, touching some man that we both were acquaint withal,—‘I believe in John’—what should you conceive that I did signify?”
“I would account,” said Blanche readily, thinking this question easy to answer, “that you did mean, ‘I account of him as a true man; I trust him; I hold him well worthy of affiance.’”
“Good. And if, after thus saying, you should see me loth to trust an half-angel into his hands to spend for me,—should you think that mine act did go with my words, or no?”
“Assuredly, nay.”
“Then look you, Mistress Blanche, that it is greater matter than you maybe made account, when a man shall say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ.’ For it signifieth not only that I believe He was born, and lived, and suffered, and arose, and ascended. Nay, but it is, I account of Him as a true man; I trust Him, with body and soul, with friends and goods: I hold Him worthy of all affiance, and I will hold back nothing, neither myself nor my having, from His keeping and disposing. (Ah, my maid! which of us can say so much as this, at all times, and of all matters?) But above all, in the relation whereof we have spoken, it is to say, I trust Christ with my soul. I lean it wholly upon Him. I have no hope in myself; He is mine hope. I have no righteousness of myself; He is my righteousness. I have no standing before God,—I demerit nought but hell; but Christ standeth before God for me: His blood hath washed me clean from all sin, and His pleading with God availeth to hold me up in His ways. And unless or until you can from your heart thus speak I pray you say not again that you believe in Jesus Christ.”
“But, Master, every man cannot thus believe.”
“No man can thus believe until God have taught him.”
Blanche thought, but was not bold enough to say, that she did not see why anybody should believe such disagreeable things about himself. She did not feel this low opinion of her own merits. Hers was the natural religion of professing Christians—that she must do the best she could, and Christ would make up the remainder. Mr Tremayne knew what was passing in her mind as well as if she had spoken it.
“You think that is hard?” said he.
“I think it—Mr Tremayne, I could not thus account of myself.”
“You could not, dear maid. I am assured of that.”
“Then wherein lieth my fault?” demanded Blanche.
“In that you will not.”
Blanche felt stung; and she spoke out now, with one of those bursts of confidence which came from her now and then.
“That is sooth, Master. I will not. I have not committed such sins as have many men and women. I ne’er stole, nor murdered, nor used profane swearing, nor worshipped idols, nor did many another ill matter: and I cannot believe but that God shall be more merciful to such than to the evil fawtors (factors, doers) that be in the world. Where were His justice, if no?”
“Mistress Blanche, you wit neither what is God, neither what is sin. The pure and holy law of God is like to a golden ring. You account, that because you have not broken it on this side, nor on that side, you have not broken it at all. But if you break it on any side, it is broken; and you it is that have broken it.”
“Wherein have I broken it?” she asked defiantly.
“‘All unrighteousness is sin.’ Have you alway done rightly, all your life long? If not, then you are a sinner.”
“Oh, of course, we be all sinners,” said Blanche, as if that were a very slight admission.
“Good. And a sinner is a condemned criminal. He is not come into this world to see if he may perchance do well, and stand: he is already fallen; he is already under condemnation of law.”
“Then ’tis even as I said,—there is no fault in any of us,” maintained Blanche, sturdily clinging to her point.
“‘This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’”
“Nay, Master Tremayne, you be now too hard on me. I love not darkness rather than light.”
“God saith you so do, dear maid. And He knoweth—ay, better than yourself. But look not only on that side of the matter. If a man believe that and no more, ’tis fit to drive him unto desperation. Look up unto the writing which is over the gate into God’s narrow way—the gate and the way likewise being His Son Jesus Christ—and read His message of peace sent unto these sinners. ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’ It is God’s ordering, that whosoever will, he can.”
“You said but this last Sunday, Master Tremayne, that ’twas not possible for any man to come to Christ without God did draw him thereto.”
“I said, my maid? My Master it was which said that. Well—what so?”
“Then we can have nought to answer for; for without God do draw us, we cannot come.”
“And without we be willing to be thus drawn, God will not do it.”
“Nay, but you said, moreover, that the very will must come from God.”
“Therein I spake truth.”
Blanche thought she had now driven her pastor into a corner.
“Then you do allow,” she asked triumphantly, “that if I should not will the same, I am clean of all fault, sith the very will must needs come from God?”
Mr Tremayne understood the drift of his catechumen.
“An’ it like you, Mistress Blanche, we will leave a moment to make inquiry into that point, till we shall have settled another, of more import to you and me.”
“What is it, Master?”
“Are you willing?”
“Willing that I should be saved eternally? Most assuredly.”
“Then—willing that all the will of God shall be done, in you and by you?”
“The one followeth not the other.”
“I cry you mercy. The King of kings, like other princes, dealeth with His rebels on his own terms.”
Blanche was silent, and, very uncomfortable.
“’Tis time for me to be about my duties. When you shall have fully settled that point of your willingness, Mistress Blanche, and shall have determined that you are thus willing—which God grant!—then, an’ it like you, we will go into the other matter.”
And Mr Tremayne left the room with a bow, very well knowing that as soon as the first point was satisfactorily settled, the second would be left quiescent.
Mrs Tremayne had never opened her lips; and leaving her in the study, Blanche wandered into the parlour, where Clare and Lysken were seated at work.
“I marvel what Master Tremayne would have!” said Blanche, sitting down in the window, and idly pulling the dead leaves from the plant which stood there. “He saith ’tis our own fault that we will not to be saved, and yet in the self breath he addeth that the will so to be must needs be given us of God.”
Lysken looked up.
“Methinks we are all willing enow to be saved from punishment,” she said. “What we be unwilling to be saved from is sin.”
“‘Sin’—alway sin!” muttered Blanche. “Ye be both of a story. Sin is wickedness. I am not wicked.”
“Sin is the disobeying of God,” replied Lysken. “And saving thy presence, Blanche, thou art wicked.”
“Then so art thou!” retorted Blanche.
“So I am,” said Lysken. “But I am willing to be saved therefrom.”
“Prithee, Mistress Elizabeth Barnevelt, from what sin am I not willing to be saved?”
“Dost truly wish to know?” asked Lysken in her coolest manner.
“Certes!”
“Then—pride.”
“Pride is no sin!”
“I love not gainsaying, Blanche. But I dare in no wise gainsay the Lord. And He saith of pride, that it is an abomination unto Him, and He hateth it.” (Proverbs six, verse 16; and sixteen verse 5.)
“But that is ill and sinful pride,” urged Blanche. “There is proper pride.”
“It seemeth to my poor wits,” said Lysken, “that a thing which the Lord hateth must be all of it improper.”
“Why, Lysken! Thus saying, thou shouldst condemn all high spirit and noble bearing!”
“‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ There was no pride in Christ, Blanche. And thou wilt scarce say that He bare Him not nobly.”
“Why, then, we might as well all be peasants!”
“I suppose we might, if we were,” said Lysken.
“Lysken, it should be a right strange world, where thou hadst the governance!”
“Very like,” was Lysken’s calm rejoinder, as she set the pin a little further in her seam.
“What good is it, prithee, to set thee up against all men’s opinion? (What are now termed ‘views’ were then called ‘opinions.’) Thou shalt but win scorn for thine.”
“Were it only mine, Blanche, it should be to no good. But when it is God’s command wherewith mine opinion runneth,—why then, the good shall be to hear Christ say, ‘Well done, faithful servant.’ The scorn I bare here shall be light weight then.”
“But wherefore not go smoothly through the world?”
“Because it should cost too much.”
“Nay, what now?” remonstrated Blanche.
“I have two lives, Blanche: and I cannot have my best things in both. The one is short and passing; the other is unchangeable, and shall stand for ever. Now then, I would like my treasures for the second of these two lives: and if I miss any good thing in the first, it shall be no great matter.”
“Thou art a right Puritan!” said Blanche disgustedly.
“Call not names, Blanche,” gently interposed Clare.
“Dear Clare, it makes he difference,” said Lysken. “If any call me a Papist, ’twill not make me one.”
“Lysken Barnevelt, is there aught in this world would move thee?”
“‘In this world?’ Well, but little, methinks. But—there will be some things in the other.”
“What things?” bluntly demanded Blanche.
“To see His Face!” said Lysken, the light breaking over her own. “And to hear Him say, ‘Come!’ And to sit down at the marriage-supper of the Lamb,—with the outer door closed for ever, and the woes, and the wolves, and the winter, all left on the outside. If none of these earthly things move me, Blanche, it is because those heavenly things will.”
And after that, Blanche was silent.
Note 1. The Gentiles (saith Saint Augustine), which seem to be of the purer religion, say, We worship not the images, but by the corporal image we do behold the signs of the things which we ought to worship. And Lactantius saith, The Gentiles say, We fear not the images, but them after whose likeness the images be made, and to whose names they be consecrated. And Clemens saith, That serpent the Devil uttereth these words by the mouth of certain men: We, to the honour of the invisible God, worship visible images.—(Third Part of the Homily on Peril of Idolatry: references in margin to Augustine Ps. 135; Lactantius l. 2. Inst.; Clem., L. S ad Jacob.) Here are the “Fathers” condemning as Pagan the reasoning of modern Papists.
Note 2. “Credit et defendit que in eucharistia sive altaris sacramento verum et naturalem Christi corpus ac verus et naturalis Christi sanguis sub speciebus panis et vini vere non est; et quod ibi est materialis panis et materiale vinum tantum absque veritati et presentia corporis et sanguinis Christi.”—Indictment of Reverend Lawrence Saunders, January 30, 1555; Harl. MS. 421, folio 44.
“Tenes et defendes in prout quod in eucharistia sive sacramento altaris verum naturalem et realem Christi corpus ac verus naturalis et realis Christi sanguis sub speciebus panis et vini vere non est, sed post consecratione remanet substantia panis et vini.”—Indictment of Reverend Thomas Rose, May 31, 1555; Harl. MS. 421, folio 188.
Note 3. There is the initial M on the pedestal of one or more of these black Virgins, which of course the priests interpret as Mary. This is certainly not the case. It has been suggested that it stands for Maia, a name of the Tuscan goddess. May it not be the initial of Mylitta, “the Mediatrix,” one of the favourite names of the great original goddess?
Note 4. See Hislop’s Two Babylons, pages 22, 122, 491, et aliis; and Shepheard’s Traditions of Eden, page 117, note (where many references are given), and page 188.