"This would make all religions true," said Freeborn, "good and bad."
"No," answered White, "heathen rites are bloody and impure, not beautiful; and Mahometanism is as cold and as dry as any Calvinistic meeting. The Mahometans have no altars or priests, nothing but a pulpit and a preacher."
"Like St. Mary's," said Sheffield.
"Very like," said White; "we have no life or poetry in the Church of England; the Catholic Church alone is beautiful. You would see what I mean if you went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon, and subdeacon, acolytes with lights, the incense, and the chanting—all combine to one end, one act of worship. You feel it is really a worshipping; every sense, eyes, ears, smell, are made to know that worship is going on. The laity on the floor saying their beads, or making their acts; the choir singing out the Kyrie; and the priest and his assistants bowing low, and saying the Confiteor to each other. This is worship, and it is far above reason."
This was spoken with all his heart; but it was quite out of keeping with the conversation which had preceded it, and White's poetry was almost as disagreeable to the party as Freeborn's prose.
"White, you should turn Catholic out and out," said Sheffield.
"My dear good fellow," said Bateman, "think what you are saying. You can't really have gone to a schismatical chapel. Oh, for shame!"
Freeborn observed, gravely, that if the two Churches were one, as had been maintained, he could not see, do what he would, why it was wrong to go to and fro from one to the other.
"You forget," said Bateman to White, "you have, or might have, all this in your own Church, without the Romish corruptions."
"As to the Romish corruptions," answered White, "I know very little about them."