CHAP. XVII.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
Milton.
The affliction of the good parson of Cheddar at the strange and painful conduct of his son Cuthbert was heavy to bear. However, from a sense of duty to his weaker partner, he made great efforts to preserve his wonted serenity and composure in her presence; but when alone he was bowed down in the dust.
Nothing could possibly present a greater contrast to the tone of religious profession which was, at this period, obtaining a wide reception among men than that in which old Noble lay prostrate in his closet before his God.
He had ever been a meek and cheerful Christian; but there were depths of humiliation which he had not as yet fathomed; and he would have fainted at the waves of trouble, which his prescient eye saw rolling onward, if he had not felt the hand, which led him down into the deep, was that of a heavenly Father, if he had not heard a voice that whispered in his ear, “It is I, be not afraid.”
In vain did he exhaust his heart in sound, pious, and affectionate remonstrances, meditated and penned in the spirit of prayer, that he might recall his dear and wandering child to the bosom of the church, or, at all events, so far recover him from gross delusions as to see him join that upright and devout portion of the community, which, though differing from the discipline of the church, maintained a pure and practical doctrine.
In vain did he press the return of Cuthbert to Cheddar, by every argument which parental love could suggest.
The letters of Noble and his wife were replied to in the words of love; but the fruit of his new persuasion was an obstinate self-will; and while he implored them, at great length, to consider his views, and urged the danger of despising them, he evinced to others, what was not perhaps suspected by himself, a degree of spiritual pride only to be exceeded by the strength of his delusion.
He had adopted the notions of those fanatics who were styled Fifth-monarchy Men, and who ranged themselves where, indeed, any sect, however extravagant, might have found a place, under the banner of the Independents.
It was some consolation to these troubled parents to hear from the Philips’s, their relations, and also from other friends, that the life and the conduct of Cuthbert were, as regarded all moral and social duties, a credit to any theory, and such as became the pure precepts of the Gospel.
His intellect was clear upon every other subject, except on that which, if it be rashly touched, seems to be guarded by invisible angels, who put forth their hands and smite the daring intruder with madness. “Oppression,” saith the preacher, “will make a wise man mad;“—a truth abundantly proved by the events, which, leading first to a secret and salutary reform, ended at last in a bloody revolution and an iron rule.
It may be added, that he who seeketh to meddle with the hidden mysteries of unfulfilled prophecy is often smitten with blindness and confusion for his presumption. Thus it was with Cuthbert:—sensible, amiable, and affectionate in all the relations of life, he was now the subject of a monomania, and turned a deaf ear to the voice of truth and wisdom, though it spoke with all the authority and all the earnestness of a father.
These were not times in which a minister could leave his parish for a distant journey, nor, indeed, was it at all likely that the presence of his parents would have effected that change in the sentiments or the course of Cuthbert, which their admirable and Christian letters had failed to produce.
Time wore on gloomily enough, even in the peaceful parsonage at Cheddar. Many a time as old Noble paced his garden amid sunbeams and flowers, praising that “mercy which endureth for ever,” his thanksgivings ended in tears and lamentations, not for his domestic troubles, but for the great evils which he feared and expected would befall the church and the nation.
Laud was already paying the penalty of his mistaken, but certainly conscientious, severity, in a prison, from whence it might be plainly foretold he would at length be conducted to the block. The bishops’ votes in parliament were taken away, and the deans and chapters were already voted against in the Commons, although their spoliation had not yet taken place, neither were the cathedral services as yet discontinued. As regularly, therefore, as the Thursday came round, Noble, if not prevented by a special call of duty at home, made his weekly visit to the fair city of Wells; where he in the first instance always bent his steps to the cathedral, and joined the congregation assembled for morning service.
It was on a saint’s day, in the summer of 1641, that, as usual, he proceeded to that venerable and glorious temple, and took his seat in the vacant stall which it was his wont to occupy. Directly opposite he observed a tall uncouth man of harsh features and a sour countenance, sitting very upright, and glancing a severe and restless eye at the organ, the first tones of which were pealing through the long aisles, as the dean, the prebends, and other officers of the choir, preceded by the vergers with their maces, slowly entered, and reverently took their seats.
The service began, and was conducted with that solemn decency, and with those clear fine chants, which dispose most hearts to a subdued feeling of intense devotion.
There is a something in sacred music which does wonderfully compose the mind, and cleanse it of all earthly-rooted cares. Upon the stranger above mentioned, however, it produced no such effect. He sat erect, cold, and contemptuous: he put aside the Book of Common Prayer with a rude thrust; and taking a small volume from his pocket opened it with ostentatious gravity, and, not joining in the worship that he witnessed, either by response, gesture, or any conformity of posture with those around him, sat, now casting his eyes on the page of his book, now severely around, and now raising them to Heaven after a manner that left nothing but the jaundiced whites visible.
This strange conduct disturbed, irritated, or amused the observers, according to the impression that was made upon them. Some of the prebends and vicars choral looked red and angry. The dean was greatly distressed, and knew not what to do. At first he called the verger, with a design to remove the intruder; but, upon second thoughts, he feared that a yet greater interruption and indecency might take place if such a course was attempted, he therefore commanded his feelings with as much dignity as he could. But his grave frowns were totally without power upon the youthful choristers, whose laughter would have been loud and audible, but for the thick folds of the surplice with which they stuffed their rebellious and aching jaws.
Noble himself was mournfully agitated, and prayed in the spirit with that deep and melancholy fervour which hath no outward expression but the abased eyes.
By degrees, the congregation recovered their composure, and never was an anthem performed with more earnest solemnity, or a sweetness more touching to the inmost soul, than the “Ne Irascaris,” the “Be not Wroth,” or “Bow thine Ear” of the famous composer Bird. At the words “Sion, thy Sion is wasted and brought low,” which are set to a tender and solemn passage, and are sung very soft and slow, the effect was sublime. Moved by the deep pathos of the expression, the cheeks of Noble, as of a few others present, were bathed in tears.
But the stranger remained in his seat without rising, and perused his book with a kind of resolved and insulting inattention to it all.
The service was not permitted to close without this mysterious personage marking his contempt of it yet farther, by rising suddenly, while all the congregation were on their knees, and stalking slowly down the middle of the aisle with a loud and measured stamp of his great thick boots.
He wore by his side a long heavy-looking sword, and had certainly the air of a man who could use it, if he chose, with little fear and no favour.
Noble joined the clergy in the chapter-room directly after the morning prayers were ended, and there learned that there had been a riot the night before in the streets, excited by some mischievous emissary from London; and that some of the rabble had burned a bishop in effigy, in the close just under the windows of the dean. It seemed, however, that this outrage had been committed by a band of low persons, who had come up from Bristol to attend a fair, and had brought with them sundry printed papers and ribald songs to distribute in the lanes and alleys of the city: the object of which was to bring the church and clergy into public contempt.
However, it so happens that, for the most part, the inhabitants of a cathedral town take a great pride in the edifice itself, whatever may be their indifference to religion. Those magnificent structures are the first wonders upon which the eyes of the human beings, born and suckled beneath their shadow, are taught to gaze. They are noble and solemn features in the scene of early life; and are printed so indelibly on the mind, that, let the native of a cathedral city wander where he will, the recollection of the venerable temple goes with him, associated, in his memory, with his birthplace, his holydays, his truant hours, with the merry music of festival bells, with the pride of having often seen strangers and travellers, both of high and low degree, walk about its walls, and linger in its spacious aisles, with pleasure and admiration.
Therefore a party among the common people was easily roused to take up sticks and stones against the insulting mischief-makers, who were thus at last driven away from the city with great tumult.
It was the very day following this riot that the offensive adventure in the cathedral, which we have just related, occurred. As no doubt existed in the minds of the clergy assembled in the chapter-room that the extraordinary person, who had just committed so gross and indecent an outrage in a place of public worship, was, in some measure, connected with the disturbance of the preceding day, they resolved to make an immediate complaint to the Mayor of Wells, that the obnoxious individual might be taken up, and committed to prison, or otherwise punished for his offence.
Some little time had been lost in their consultations; and they came forth from the cathedral in a body, with the intention of despatching two of the prebends, already deputed for that purpose, to wait upon the mayor, when, to their surprise and mortification, they saw the object of their anger approaching them on horseback. As he drew near, it was evident that the opportunity of arresting him was already lost. He rode a very powerful young horse of generous breed and fine action—and he sat upon him as on a throne.
“Look ye,” said he, as he drew up close to the astonished group,—“Look ye, Scribes and Pharisees! hypocrites!—ye love greetings in the market-place—take mine:—the time is come to set your houses in order—even now the decree is gone forth—the sword is now sharpening that shall pass through the land:—it glitters, look ye.” So saying, with a grim smile he drew the blade of his own half out of the scabbard, and let it fall again with a forcible rattle.
The dean, who was a bold and athletic man, disregarding this fierce action, made an active effort to seize the bridle of the Puritan’s steed; but the wary rider with a jerk of the reins threw up the animal’s head, and at the same moment touching his flank with the spur made him give a plunge forward that scattered the frightened priests a few yards on either side. Nevertheless, the dean remonstrated in very angry terms against his insulting abuse; as did others, who were, like himself, courageous. They did not, however, succeed either in stopping the fanatic or in driving him away:—a small mob was gathering in the cathedral yard, and the fiery zealot continued his address.
“What mean ye, ye priests of Baal, by your silks, and your satins, and your hoods, and your scarfs, and your square caps, and your surplices, and all your fooleries? what mean your boy choristers that bleat like young kids, and your men choristers that bellow like oxen? what means your grunting organ? Is it thus you worship God, as though he were an idol and an abomination, and his temple like that of the heathen? It should be a house of prayer, and ye have made it a den of thieves, and all its services vain and lewd mummeries. I cry, Fie upon you!—Wo, wo, wo!—Ye shall see me again when the blast of the trumpet soundeth, and mine eye shall not pity. I will smite, I will not spare you. Have ye not preached blasphemies? have ye not broken and polluted the holy Sabbath with your sports and your harlotries? have ye not shed the blood of God-fearing men? yea, verily. Now hear my warning:—come out of her, come out of her, my people. There are among you, even among your priests, some whom the Lord hath chosen:—yet again I call to you, Come out of her, come out of Babylon, that ye perish not with her. To me is appointed this cry:—every where I must lift up my voice thus, till the day of vengeance come. Wo shall be the portion of those who hear me not!”
An insane delight gleamed in his dark eyes, a convulsive energy distorted his features, and seemed to affect and agitate his whole form. The crowd drew closer to him: the resolute dean beckoning them forward, again advanced with the intention of seizing him, when he suddenly gave his horse the head; and touching the high spirited beast with both spurs, he was borne out of their sight at a few rapid bounds, and was very soon beyond all danger of pursuit.
Several of the mob ran round the corner after him jeering and cheering; but the clergy went their ways, by twos and threes, and talked over the uncomfortable though diseased words of the fanatic with much gravity and discomposure.
Many painful extravagancies of a fanatic character had been already committed in various parts of the country; and in London many scandalous scenes had been enacted, expressive of a contempt for the Established Church and her ministers.
The prelates and dignitaries were the especial marks of popular hatred; but, hitherto, nothing approaching to the indecency and outrage above recorded had occurred in the neighbourhood and under the eye of Noble.
Again he could have wished Cuthbert to have been present, as he had formerly wished that he could have witnessed the unmannerly and unchristian bearing of Master Daws, the morose and designing curate, whose interview with Noble we have in a former part of this story related.
“Surely,” thought the mild man of peace,—“Surely such things would open his eyes to the spirit that is abroad, and to the aim and end of these violent men, who would purify our venerable church as with fire, and wash away her few stains with the blood and the tears of her faithful children.”
After partaking of a dinner, with little appetite, in the house of his friend, where the party assembled formed but a sad society, and where the time passed in the discussion of more grave and anxious matters than those upon which they were commonly engaged in these innocent weekly meetings, the worthy parson mounted his old mare, and rode back slowly to Cheddar. His thoughts were so profoundly and mournfully absorbed by reflections on the very startling occurrences of the morning, that he saw not the clouds which were gathering overhead, until he was awakened to observe them by a sudden and loud clap of thunder. The sunshine was suddenly obscured by a deep gloom. A few heavy rain drops fell upon him, and were soon followed by a thick and rushing deluge of such rain as falls in summer tempests. The sky was covered with a mass of clouds black as a funeral pall. Every moment flashes of angry lightning passed across it in vivid and arrowy forms; while thunder followed, peal after peal rolling in quick and troubled succession. Noble had just entered the defile or pass by which Cheddar is approached; and as the narrow road lies in the bottom of a chasm, on either side of which the rocks rise many hundred feet with a terrific grandeur, the horrid gloom—the lurid and ghastly lights—and the prolonged echoes with which the roar of the thunder was borne from crag to crag—gave a tenfold awfulness to the storm, and sublimely shadowed forth the power of Jehovah.
Amid this war of elements the meek parson felt almost happy:—his frightened beast had stopped beneath a rock that inclined somewhat over the road, though not sufficiently to afford any shelter from the rain. He was drenched to the skin himself, and as he could not urge his animal forward he dismounted; but the wet and the delay were forgotten, were disregarded. There are moments of communion with the Deity, which, when they are accorded to his feeble children, cause their spirits to be rapt in seraphic love. The adoration that is born of a faith trembling yet holding fast is the sublimest human worship:—“the firmest thing in this inferior world is a believing soul.” And he that can lift up his voice with the Psalmist, and, amid the horrors of a tempest, can say, “Praise the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me praise his holy name,” hath, as it were, a sublime foretaste of that great and terrible day of the Lord, when the Christian shall witness the final and everlasting triumph of his Redeemer over sin and death,—and shall behold his salvation draw nigh.