“Do you mean about the Chinese screens, Aunt?” said I. “The gold lacquer would have gone very well with the damask, but—”
“Chinese screens!” saith my Aunt, with a hearty laugh. “Why, whatever is the girl thinking about? No, child! I mean about the Prince.”
“Aunt Kezia!” I cried. “You never mean to say we did wrong in fighting for our King?”
“Wrong? No, child, for we meant to do right. I gather from Scripture that the Lord takes a deal more account of what a man means than of what he does. Thank God it is so! For if a man means to come to Christ, he does come, no matter how: ay, and if a man means to reject Christ, he does that too, however fair and orthodox he may look in the eyes of the world. Therefore, as to those matters that are in doubt, and cannot be plainly judged by Scripture, but Christian men may and do lawfully differ about them, if a man honestly meant to do God’s will, so far as he knew it, I don’t believe he will be judged as if he had not cared to do it. But what I intend to say is this—that it is plain to me now that the Lord hath repealed the decree whereby He gave England to the House of Stuart. There is no right against Him, Cary. He doeth as He will with all the kingdoms of the world. Maybe it’s not so plain to you—if so, don’t you try to see through my eyes. Follow your own conscience until the Lord teaches yourself. If our fathers had been truer men, and had passed the Bill of Exclusion in 1680, the troubles of 1688 would never have come, nor those of 1745 neither. They ate sour grapes, and set our teeth on edge—ay, and their own too, poor souls! It was the Bishops and Lord Halifax that did it, and the Bishops paid the wyte, as Sam says. It must have been a bitter pill to those seven in the Tower, to think that all might have been prevented by lawful, constitutional means, and that they—their Order, I mean—had just pulled their troubles on their own heads.”
“Aunt Kezia,” I cried in distress, “you never mean to say that Colonel Keith died for a wrongful cause?”
“God forbid!” she said, gravely. “Colonel Keith did not die for that Cause. He died for right and righteousness, for truth and honour, for faithfulness, for loyalty and love—no bad things to die for. Not for the Prince—only for God and Flora, and a little, perhaps, for Angus. God forbid that I should judge any true and honourable man—most of all that man who gave his life for those we love. Only, Cary, the Cause is dead and gone. The struggle is over for ever: and we may thank God it is so. On the wreck of the old England a new England may arise—an England standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made her free, free from priestly yoke and priest-ridden rulers, free not to revolt but to follow, not to disobey, but to obey. If only—ah! if only she resolve, and stand to it, never to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage, never to forget the lessons which God has taught her, never again to eat the sour grapes, and set the children’s teeth on edge. Let her once begin to think of the tiger’s beauty, and forget its deathly claws—once lay aside her watchword of ‘No peace with Rome’—and she will find it means no peace with God, for His scourge has always pursued her when she has truckled to His great enemy. Eh, but men have short memories, never name short sight. Like enough, by a hundred years are over, they’ll be looking at Roman sugar-sticks as the Scarlet Woman holds them out, and thinking that she is very fair and fine-spoken, and why shouldn’t they have a few sweets? Well! it is well the government of the world isn’t in old Kezia’s hands, for if it were, some people would find themselves uncommonly uncomfortable before long.”
“You don’t mean me, I hope?” I said, laughing.
“Nay, child, I don’t mean you, nor yet your husband. Very like you’ll not see it as I do. But you’ll live to see it—if only you live long enough.”
Well, my Aunt Kezia may be right, though I do not see it. Only that I do think it was a sad blunder to throw out the Bill of Exclusion. It had passed the Commons, so they were not to blame. But one thing I should like to set down, for any who may read this book a hundred years hence, if it hath not been tore up for waste-paper long ere that—that we Protestants who fought for the Prince never fought nor meant to fight for Popery. We hated it every bit as much as any who stood against him. We fought because the contrary seemed to us to be doing evil that good might come. But I won’t say we may not live to be thankful that we lost our cause.