“Annas,” said I, “I wish you would tell me what right is. I do get so puzzled.”
“What puzzles you, Cary? Right is what God wills.”
“But would the Prince not have the right, if God did not will him to succeed?”
“The Lawgiver can always repeal His own laws. We in the crowd, Cary, can only judge when they be repealed by hearing Him decree something contrary to them. And there are no precedents in that Court. ‘Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He.’ We can only wait and see. Until we do see it, we must follow our last orders.”
“My Father says,” added Flora, “that this question was made harder than it need have been, by the throwing out of the Exclusion Bill. The House of Commons passed it, but the Bishops and Lord Halifax threw it out; if that had been passed, making it impossible for a Papist to be King, then King James would never have come to the throne at all, and all the troubles and persecutions of his reign would not have happened. That, my Father says, was where they went wrong.”
“Well,” said I, “it does look like it. But how queer that the Bishops should be the people to go wrong!”
Annas laughed.
“You will find that nothing new, Cary, if you search,” said she. “‘They that lead thee cause thee to err’ is as old a calamity as the Prophets. And where priests or would-be priests are the leaders, they very generally do go wrong.”
“I wish,” said I, “there were a few more ‘Thou shalt nots’ in the Bible.”
“Have you finished obeying all there are?”