“Good Madam, can I so be, and yet be in unity with the Catholic Church?” said Maude in a tone of distress. “Methinks ’tis little comfort to be not yet excommunicate, if I do wit that an’ holy Church knew of mine errors, she should cut me away as a dry branch. And yet—” and a very puzzled, troubled look came into Maude’s face—“what I crede, I crede; ne can I thereof uncharge (disburden) me.”
“My maid,” said the Dowager earnestly, looking up, “the true unity of the Church Catholic is the unity of Christ. He said not ‘Come into the Church,’ but ‘Come to Me.’ He that is one with Christ cannot be withoutenside Christ’s Church.”
No more was said at that time; but what she had heard already left Maude’s mind in a turmoil. She next, but very cautiously, endeavoured to ascertain the opinions of her mistress. Constance made her explain her motive in asking, and then laughed heartily.
“By Saint Veronica her sudary, what matter? Names be but names. So long as a man deal uprightly and keep him from deadly sin—call him Catholic, call him Lollard—is he the worser man? There be good and ill of every sort. I have known some weary tykes (really, a sheep-dog; used as a term of reproach) that were rare Catholics; and I once had a mother that is with God and His angels now, and men called her a Lollard.”
Evidently Constance’s practical religion was summed up in the childish phrase—“Be good.” An excellent medicine—if the patient were not unable to swallow.
Maude tried Bertram next, and felt, to use her own phrase, more “of a bire” (confused) than ever. For she found him nearly in the same state of mind as herself, but advanced one step further. Convinced that the true meaning of Lollardism was plain adhesion to Holy Scripture, he was prepared to accept the full consequences. He had not only been thinking for himself, but talking with Hugh Calverley: and Hugh, like his father, was a Lollard of the most extreme type.
“It seemeth me, Mistress Maude,” he said boldly, “less dread to say that the Church Catholic must needs have erred, than to say that God in His Word can err.”
“But the whole Church Catholic!” objected Maude in a most troubled voice. “All the holy doctors and bishops that have ever been—yea, and the very Fathers of the Church!”
“‘Nyle ye clepe to you a fadir on erthe,’” replied Bertram gravely.
“But, Master Lyngern, think you, the Holy Ghost dwelleth in the priests, and so He doth not in slender folk like to you and me.”