“I hope it’s all right,” said David, rather uneasily.
“David, I wish I could put a little sense into you. You are a good man, but you are a very foolish one. ‘All right!’ Of course it is all right. It is man, and not God, who starts at trifles like a frightened horse, and makes men offenders for a word. The Lord looketh on the heart.”
“Ay, but Moses (on whom be peace!) was particular enough about some details which look very trifling to us.”
“He was particular enough where they concerned the honour of God, or where they formed a part of some symbolism which the alteration would cause to be wrongly interpreted so as to teach untruth. But for all else, he let them go, and so did our Lord. When Aaron explained why he had not eaten the goat of the sin-offering, Moses was content. Nor did Christ condemn David the King, but excused him, for eating the shewbread. I am sure Moses would have baptised me this morning, without waiting for sponsors or Lucca oil. This is a very silly world; I should have thought the Church might have been a trifle wiser, and really it seems to have less common sense of the two. How could I have found sponsors, I should like to know? I know nobody but you and Christian.”
“They told us, when we were baptised, that the Church did not allow a husband and wife to be sponsors to the same person. So we could not both have stood for you. It would have had to be Christian and Rudolph, and some other woman.”
“Rudolph! That baby! (Note 1.) Would they have let him stand?”
“Yes—if you could not find any one else.”
“And promise to bring me up in the Catholic faith? Well, if that is not rich!—when I have got to bring him up! I will tell you what, David—if some benevolent saint would put a little common sense into the Church, it would be a blessing to somebody. ‘The Church!’ I am weary of that ceaseless parrot scream. The Church stands in the way to Jesus of Nazareth, not as a door to go in, but as a wall to bar out. I wish we had lived in earlier days, before all that rubbish had had time to grow. Now, mind you,” concluded Countess, as she rose to go to bed, “David and Christian, I don’t mean to be bothered about this. Don’t talk to me, nor to Rudolph, nor to any body else. I shall read the Book, and teach him to do it; but I shall not pray to those gilded things; and he shall not. What Gerhardt taught is enough for him and me. And remember, if too much be said, the King’s officers may come and take every thing away. I do not see that it is my duty to go and tell them. If they come, let them come, and God be my aid and provider! Otherwise, we had better keep quiet.”
Note 1. That little children were at times allowed to be sponsors in the Middle Ages, is proved by the instance of John Earl of Kent in 1330, whose brother and sister, the former probably under ten years of age, and the latter aged only eighteen months, stood sponsors for him. (Prob. aet. Johannis Com. Kant., 23 Edward Third, 76.)