“But the Church cannot err!”
“Truth, so long as she keep her true to God’s law. The Church is men, not God! and God must be above the Church. But what is the Church? Is it this priest or that bishop? Nay, verily; it is the congregation of all the faithful elect that follow Christ, and do after His commandments. So long, therefore, as they do after His commands, and follow Him, they be little like to err. ‘He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life.’”
“But we all believe in our Lord!” said Amphillis, feeling as if so many new ideas had never entered her head all at once before.
“Believe what?” said Marabel, and she smiled.
“Why, we believe that He came down from Heaven, and died, and rose again, and ascended, and such-like.”
“Wherefore?”
“Wherefore came He? Truly, that know I not. By reason that it liked Him, I count.”
“Ay, that was the cause,” said Marabel, softly. “He came because—shall we say?—He so loved Amphillis Neville, that He could not do without her in Heaven: and as she could win there none other way than by the laying down of His life, He came and laid it down.”
“Marabel! Never heard I none to speak after this manner! Soothly, our Lord died for us: but—”
“But—yet was it not rightly for us, thee and me, but for some folks a long way off, we cannot well say whom?”