“There’ll not be many of them, I reckon,” saith Aunt Joyce.
“More than you should think,” saith he. “There be to join them every year.”
“Well, I’ll not join them this bout,” quoth she.
“Now, wherein doth that differ from the old monks?” saith Father, as in meditation. “Be we setting up monasteries for Protestants already?”
Mynheer shrugged up his shoulders. “They say, the Mennonites,” he made answer, “that all pleasing of self is contrary unto God’s Word. I must do nothing that pleases me. Are there two dishes for my dinner? I like this, I like not that. Good! I take that I love not. Elsewise, I please me. A Christian man must not please himself—he must please God. And (they say) he cannot please both.”
“Ah, therein lieth the fallacy,” saith Father. “All pleasing of self counter unto God, no doubt, is forbidden in Holy Scripture. But surely I am not bid to avoid doing God’s commandments, if He command a thing I like?”
“Why, at that rate,” quoth Aunt Joyce, “one should never search God’s Word, nor pray unto Him,—except such as did not love it. Methinks these Mennonites stand o’ their heads, with their heels in air.”
“Ah, but they say it is God’s command that thou shalt not please thyself,” saith Mynheer. “Therefore, that which pleases thee cannot be His will. You see?”
“They do but run the old monks’ notions to ground,” quoth Father. “They go a bit further—that is all. I take it that whensoever my will is contrary unto God’s, my will must go down. But when my will runneth alongside of His, surely I am at liberty to take as much pleasure in doing His will as I may? ‘Ye have been called unto liberty,’ saith Paul: ‘only, let not your liberty be an occasion to the flesh, but in love serve one another.’”
“And if serving one another be pleasant unto thee, then give o’er,” quoth Aunt Joyce. “Good lack, this world doth hold some fools!”