They had reached the cherry stage before they began to talk beyond mere passing remarks. Then the priest said:—
“I am somewhat feared, Master Commissioners, you shall reckon Colchester an infected place, seeing there be here so many touched with the poison of heresy.”
“It all comes of self-conceit,” said Sir John.
“Nay,” answered Dr Chedsey. “Self-conceit is scarce wont to bring a man to the stake. It were more like to save him from it.”
“Well, but why can’t they let things alone?” inquired Sir John, helping himself to a biscuit. “They know well enough what they shall come to if they meddle with matters of religion. Why don’t they leave the priest to think for them?”
Dr Chedsey was silent: not because he did not know the answer. The time was when he, too, had been one of those now despised and condemned Gospellers. In Edward the Sixth’s day, he had preached the full, rich Gospel of the grace of God: and now he was a deserter to the enemy. Some of such men—perhaps most—grew very hard and stony, and seemed to take positive pleasure in persecuting those who were more faithful than themselves: but there were a few with whom the Spirit of God continued to strive, who now and then remembered from whence they had fallen, and to whom that remembrance brought poignant anguish when it came upon them. Dr Chedsey appears to have been one of this type. Let us hope that these wandering sheep came home at last in the arms of the Good Shepherd who sought them with such preserving tenderness. But the sad truth is that we scarcely know with certainty of one who did so. On the accession of Elizabeth, when we might have expected them to come forward and declare their repentance if it were sincere, they did no such thing: they simply dropped into oblivion, and we lose them there.
It is a hard and bitter thing to depart from God: how hard, and how bitter, only those know in this world who try to turn round and come back. It will be known fully in that other world whence there is no coming back.
Dr Chedsey, then, was silent: not because he did not understand the matter, but because he knew it too well. Sir John had said the Protestants “knew what they would come to”: that was the stake and the fire. But those who persecuted Christ in the person of His elect—what were they going to come to? It was not pleasant to think about that. Dr Chedsey was very glad that it was just then announced that a woman begged leave to speak with their Worships.
“It shall be yon woman that would fain take the children, I cast no doubt,” said Sir John: “and we have had no talk thereupon. Shall she have them or no?”