Luke began at once questioning him about his father.
‘And is he contrite and humbled? Does he see that he has sinned?’
‘In what?’
‘It is not for us to judge; but surely it must have been some sin or other of his which has drawn down such a sore judgment on him.’
Lancelot smiled; but Luke went on, not perceiving him.
‘Ah! we cannot find out for him. Nor has he, alas! as a Protestant, much likelihood of finding out for himself. In our holy church he would have been compelled to discriminate his faults by methodic self-examination, and lay them one by one before his priest for advice and pardon, and so start a new and free man once more.’
‘Do you think,’ asked Lancelot with a smile, ‘that he who will not confess his faults either to God or to himself, would confess them to man? And would his priest honestly tell him what he really wants to know? which sin of his has called down this so-called judgment? It would be imputed, I suppose, to some vague generality, to inattention to religious duties, to idolatry of the world, and so forth. But a Romish priest would be the last person, I should think, who could tell him fairly, in the present case, the cause of his affliction; and I question whether he would give a patient hearing to any one who told it him.’
‘How so? Though, indeed, I have remarked that people are perfectly willing to be told they are miserable sinners, and to confess themselves such, in a general way; but if the preacher once begins to specify, to fix on any particular act or habit, he is accused of personality or uncharitableness; his hearers are ready to confess guilty to any sin but the very one with which he charges them. But, surely, this is just what I am urging against you Protestants—just what the Catholic use of confession obviates.’
‘Attempts to do so, you mean!’ answered Lancelot. ‘But what if your religion preaches formally that which only remains in our religion as a fast-dying superstition?—That those judgments of God, as you call them, are not judgments at all in any fair use of the word, but capricious acts of punishment on the part of Heaven, which have no more reference to the fault which provokes them, than if you cut off a man’s finger because he made a bad use of his tongue. That is part, but only a part, of what I meant just now, by saying that people represent God as capricious, proud, revengeful.’
‘But do not Protestants themselves confess that our sins provoke God’s anger?’