“Then, if they do get saved, what reason shall I have to regret their absence? But suppose they do not, Mr Catterall,—is that my loss or theirs?”
“Why couldn’t you keep them?” said Ambrose.
“At what cost?” was the Vicar’s answer.
“A little more music and rather less thunder,” said Ambrose, laughing. “Give us back the anthem—you have no idea how many have taken seats at All Saints’ because of that. And do you know your discarded singers are there?”
“All Saints’ is heartily welcome to everybody that has gone there,” replied Mr Liversedge. “If I drive them away by preaching error, I shall answer to God for their souls. But if men choose to go because they find truth unpalatable, I have no responsibility for them. The Lord has not given me those souls; that is plain. If He have given them to another sower of seed, by all means let them go to him as fast as they can.”
“Mr Liversedge, I do believe,”—Ambrose drew his chair back an inch—“I do almost think—you must be—a—a Calvinist.”
“It is not catching, I assure you, Mr Catterall.”
“But are you?”
“That depends on what you mean. I certainly do not go blindly over hedge and ditch after the opinions of John Calvin. I am not sure that any one does.”
“No, but—you believe that people are—a—are elect or non-elect; and if they be elect, they will be saved, however they live, and if they be not, they must needs be lost, however good they are. Excuse my speaking so freely.”