I said nought, for I knew not what to answer.
“There is yet another thing,” saith Joan, dropping her voice low. “Can that be God’s Church which contradicts God’s Word? David saith ‘Over all things Thou hast magnified Thy Name’ (Note 2): but I have heard of a most wise man, that could read ancient volumes and dead tongues, that Saint Hierome set not down the true words, namely, ‘Over all Thy Name Thou hast magnified Thy Word.’ Now, if this be so—if God hath set up His Word over all His Name—the very highest part of Himself—how dare any assemblage of men to gainsay it? What then of these indulgences and licences to sin, which the Popes set forth? what of their suffering them to wed whom God has forbidden, and forbidding it to priests to whom God has suffered it? Surely this is the very thing which God points at, ‘teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.’”
“But, Joan,” said I, “my dear heart, did not our Lord say, ‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven?’ Surely that authorises the Church to do as she will.”
“Contrary unto God’s Word? It may give her leave to do her will within the limits of the Word: I trow not contrary thereto. When the King giveth plenipotentiary powers to his Keeper of the Great Seal, his own deposing and superseding, I reckon, are not among them. ‘All things are subject unto Christ,’ saith Paul; ‘doubtless excepting Him which did subject all things unto Him.’ So, if God give power of loosing and binding to His Church, it cannot be meant that she shall bind Himself who thus endowed her, contrary to His own will and law.”
I answered nought, again, for a little while. At last I said, “Joan, there is a word that troubles me, and religious folks are always quoting it. ‘If a man hate not his father and his mother’—and so forth—he cannot be our Lord’s disciple. I think I have heard it from one or another every week since I came here. What say these new doctrine folks that it means?”
“Ours are old doctrines, Mother dear,” saith she; “as old as the Apostles of Christ. What means it? Why, go forth to the end, and you will see what it means: he is to hate his own soul also. Is he then to kill himself, or to go wilfully into perdition? Nay, what can it mean, but only that even these dearest and worthiest loves are to be set below the worthier than them all, the love of the glory of God? That our Lord never meant a religious person should neglect his father and mother, is plainly to be seen by another word of His, wherein he rebukes the priests of His day, because they taught that a man might bestow in oblation to God what his father’s or his mother’s need demanded of him. Here again, he reproves them, because they rejected the command of God in order to keep their own tradition. You see, therefore, that when the Church doth this, it is not ratified in Heaven.”
“Then,” said I, after a minute’s thought, “I am not bidden to hate myself, any more than my relations?”
“Why should we hate one whom God loveth?” she answered. “To hate our selfishness is not to hate ourselves.”
I sat a while silent, setting red eyes and golden claws to my green wyvern, and Joan ran the white dots along her griffin’s tail. When she came to the fork of the tail, she laid down her brush.
“Mother,” she saith—the dear grey eyes looking up into my face—“shall we read together the holy Scripture, and beseech God to lead us into all truth?”