“I am never a bit worse than my neighbours,” said the Countess, leaving that inconvenient question without answer, and repairing, as thousands do, to that very much broken cistern of equality in transgression.
“You must be better than your neighbours ere God shall suffer you in His holy Heaven. You must be as good as He is, or you shall not win thither. And since man cannot be so, the only refuge for him is to take shelter under the cross of Christ, which wrought righteousness to cover him.”
“Then man may live as he list, and cover him with Christ’s righteousness?” slily responded the Countess, with that instant recourse to the Antinomianism inherent in fallen man.
“‘If man say he knoweth Him, and keepeth not His commandments, he is a liar,’” quoted the Archbishop in reply. “‘He that saith he abideth in Him, ought to walk as He walked.’ Man cannot abide in Christ, and commit sin, for He hath no sin. You left unanswered my question, Lady: what has been your god?”
“I have paid due worship to God and the Church,” was the rather stubborn answer. “Pass on, I pray you. I worshipped no false god; I took not God’s name in vain no more than other folks; I always heard mass of a Sunday and festival day; I never murdered nor stole; and as to telling false witness, beshrew me if it were false witness to tell Avena Foljambe she is a born fool, the which I have done many a time in the day. Come now, let me off gently, Father. There are scores of worser women in this world than me.”
“God will not judge you, Lady, for the sins of other women; neither will He let you go free for the goodness of other. There is but One other for whose sake you shall be suffered to go free, and that only if you be one with Him in such wise that your deeds and His be reckoned as one, like as the debts of a wife be reckoned to her husband, and his honours be shared by her. Are you thus one with Jesu Christ our Lord?”
“In good sooth, I know not what you mean. I am in the Church: what more lack I? The Church must see to it that I come safe, so long as I shrive me and keep me clear of mortal sin: and little chance of mortal sin have I, cooped up in this cage.”
“Daughter, the Church is every righteous man that is joined with Christ. If you wist not what I mean, can you be thus joined? Could a woman be wedded to a man, and not know it? Could two knights enter into covenant, to live and die each with other, and be all unsure whether they had so done or no? It were far more impossible than this, that you should be a member of Christ’s body, and not know what it meaneth so to be.”
“But I am in Holy Church!” urged the Countess, uneasily.
“I fear not so, my daughter.”