“And therein are you an Essene,” answereth Father.
“Oh, Grissel would fain have every man close examined,” saith Sir Robert, “and only admitted unto the Lord’s Supper by the clergy after right strict dealing.”
“Were you alway of this manner of thought, Mistress Martin?” asks Father.
“I trow not,” said she. “As one gets on in life, you see, one doth perceive many difficulties and differences that one noted not aforetime.”
“One is more apt to fall into ruts, that I know,” saith Aunt Joyce: “I had ado enough, and yet have, to keep me out of them.”
“A man is apt to do one of two things,” saith Father: “either to fall into a rut, or to leave the road altogether. Either his charity contracteth, and he can see none right that walk not in his rut; or else his charity breaketh all bounds, and he would have all to be right, which way soever they walk.”
“Why, those be the two ends of the pole,” quoth Sir Robert, “and, I warrant you, you shall find Grissel right at the end, which so it be. She hath a conceit that a man cannot be too right, nor that, if a thing be good, you cannot have too much thereof.”
“Ah, that hangeth on the thing,” saith Father. “You cannot have too much faith nor charity, but you may get too much syllabub. Methinks that is scantly the true rendering thereof. Have not the proportions much to do withal? If a man’s faith outrun his charity, behold him at the one end of your pole; but if his charity outrun his faith, here is he at the other. Now faith and charity should keep pace. Let either get afore the other, and the man is no longer a perfect man; but a man with one limb grown out, and another shrivelled up.”
“But, Sir Aubrey,” quoth Mistress Martin, “can a man be too holy, or too happy?”
“Surely not, Mistress Martin,” saith he. “But look you, God is the fountain and pattern of both: and in Him all attributes are at once in utmost perfection, and in strictest proportion. We sons of Adam, since his fall, be gone out of proportion. And note you, for it is worthy note—that nothing short of revelation did ever yet conceive of a perfect God. The gods of the heathen were altogether such as themselves. Even very Christians, with revelation to guide them, are ever starting aside like a broken bow in their conceits of God. Either they would have Him all justice and no mercy, or else all mercy and no justice: and the looser they hold by the revelation God has made of Himself, the dimmer and the more out of proportion be their thoughts of God. The most men frame a God unto themselves, and be assured that he shall be like themselves—that the sins which he holds in abhorrence shall be the sins whereto they are not prone.”