"Why not? You both believe in the same God. You are both Christians, are you not?"
"Yes; but I shall never make thee understand how little it takes to make men cease to be of one mind in a house. We think we are right, and Wilfrid thinks he is right, but we are willing to think the differences are of little importance, only we don't like to give up our old custom, while he thinks we are stubborn schismatics and obdurate stumbling-blocks, stiff-necked in our ignorance and blinded by our own conceits. Truly our blessed Lord was right when He said, 'I came not to bring peace upon the earth, but a sword.'"
This was all impossible for Ædric to understand. That Christians who took their lives in their hands to convert the heathen, whose whole doctrine turned upon love, charity, peace, should yet be so bitter against each other, was incomprehensible to him, and still more so that they should let this appear in the face of strangers and the common enemy.
"Well, brother Corman, Wulfstan and I often quarrel, but we always make it up and fight like anything against anyone who is our enemy, and we don't let them know we quarrel."
The conversation was interrupted by breakfast, after which arrangements were talked about for taking Ædric to Wilfrid.
The monks had shown a certain animosity and bitterness in speaking of Wilfrid which had communicated itself to Ædric, and he was very unwilling to go to him. He was eager to know more about him, but the monks, to do them justice, were not willing to speak against the bishop, or to prejudice the mind of the boy in any way; while feeling as they did that the branch of the Christian church which they represented was older than the later form introduced by St. Augustine the Monk, they could not but be irritated at the superiority which Wilfrid assumed, and his assertion that they were in error. Worst of all, the new missionaries from Rome had sided with the victorious and pagan Saxon, and had added insult to injury by branding the suffering British with the odious name of unorthodox. And after all, what were these great differences? A fashion of shaving the head dissimilar to that prevailing at Rome, and a different system for calculating the Paschal moon. For practical purposes this last was the more serious difficulty, for it occasioned the inconvenient anomaly of one set of Christians fasting while the other set were feasting, according as they observed the Roman or the Eastern custom of calculating Easter; but the fashion of the tonsure was quite as warmly disputed, and the Irish monks were taunted with being the imitators of Simon Magus![1]
[1] Vide Milman. Latin Christianity, vol. ii., pp. 247-269.
The preparations of the monks did not take very long, but it suddenly occurred to brother Corman that Ædric could not walk, and they had no conveyance by which he could be carried. It certainly would have seemed a matter of no great difficulty to have thought of this before, but their minds were so occupied with speculation, and the little daily round of their religious services, teaching the few children that came to be taught, and providing for their small daily wants, that they had not given any thought as to how Ædric was to get to Selsea, a distance of some five or six miles.
"Beate Columba!" said Father Dicoll, "but my head gets duller every day. Why did I not think of this before? We shall have to send someone to tell Wilfrid, and who will go?"
"True," said Corman, looking at Dicoll with a perplexed air. "We have nought that will tempt any of these South Saxons to go. I shall have to go myself."