“Ay so?” answered he, with a slight curl of his lip. “He dwelleth in such men as my Lord of Canterbury, trow? Our Lord saith the tree is known by his fruits. It were a new thing, mereckoneth, for a man to be indwelt of the Holy Ghost, and to bring forth fruits of the Devil.”
“But our Lord behote (promised) to dwell in His Church alway,” urged Maude, though she was arguing against herself.
“He behote to dwell in all humble and faithful souls—they be His Church, Mistress Maude. I never read in no Scripture that He behote to write all the Pope’s decretals, nor to see that no Archbishop of Canterbury should blunder in his pastorals.”
“But the Church, Master Lyngern—the Church cannot err! Holy Scripture saith it.”
“Ay so?” said Bertram again. “Where?”
Maude was obliged to confess that she did not know where; she had “alway heard say the same;” but finding Bertram rather too much for her in argument, she carried her difficulty to Father Ademar when she next went to confession. She would never have propounded such a query to Father Dominic at Langley, since it would most certainly have ensured her a severe scolding and some oppressive penance; perhaps to lie flat on the threshold of the chapel and let every one pass over her, perhaps to lick the dust all round the base of the Virgin’s pedestal. And Maude’s own private conviction was that penances of this kind never did her the least good. Father Dominic told her that they humbled her. It was true they made her feel humiliated; but was that the same as feeling humble? They also made her feel irritated and angry—with whom, or with what, she hardly knew; but certainly with some person or thing outside of herself. But they never made her think that she had done wrong—only that she had been misunderstood and badly used.
Matters were very different with Father Ademar. He was so quiet and gentle that Maude never felt afraid of him. Confession to Father Dominic bore the awful aspect cast over a visit to a dentist’s surgery; but confession to Father Ademar was (at least to Maude) merely talking over her difficulties with a friend. He often said, “Pray our Lord to grant thee wisdom in this matter,” but he never said, “Repeat fifty Aves and ten Paternosters.” And when Maude now laid her troubles before him as lucidly as she could, he gave her an answer which, she thought at first, did not touch the case at all, and yet which in the end settled every difficulty connected with it.
“Daughter,” said the Lollard priest, “there is another question which must be first answered. Thou hast taken up the golden rod by the wrong end. Turn it around and have the other ensured; then we will talk of this.”
“What other question, Father?”
“The same that our Lord asked of the sick man at the cistern (pool)—‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ Art thou of the unity of Christ?—art thou one with Him? Hast thou closed with Him? Wist thou that ‘He loved thee, and gave Himself for thee?’ For without thou be first ensured of this, it shall serve thee but little to search all the tomes of the Fathers touching the unity of the Church.”