"I said not so. I pray thee, Master Arundel, to attach no such construction to my words; you would thereby do foul wrong to my thoughts. Nay, I thank the Governor for honoring me with the commission, and doubt not that he acted only in obedience to a higher prompting than his own. I did but point to a feeling which thine enlightenment must lament as much as mine, and which contracts Christian love into very narrow and erroneous boundaries. Dost thou understand me?"
"I think I do. You refer to the jealous retainer of power in the hands of their Church."
"Of their Church, so called. Here are we, for example: we may desire, with that natural longing whereby men are sometimes animated, to enter into closer relations, and to bind ourselves by more intimate ties with those around us, (oftentimes, I fear me, for purposes of worldly advancement, as well as encouragement in holy living); and, lo! a very slight difference of opinion—a sublety whereon a casuist shall batter his brains for days in vain—shall build up a wall of exclusion, especially if there be some within the enchanted circle who are jealous of our influence and distrust their own."
"I doubt not you are right. My own observation partly confirms these views, though I have been too short a time in the colony to form an undistrusted opinion. My youth and inexperience admonish me to express myself doubtfully; but I think myself safe in agreeing with you, that this is scarcely the best way to establish that universal Church to which the ambition of the Puritans aspires."
"Have a care, Master Arundel," said the Knight, laughing, and his laugh rang out joyously through the forest, as if he were glad to escape from restraint, and in strong contrast with the caution which he recommended, "lest thy treason be carried by some bird to the enthusiastic Endicott, or the stern Dudley, and thou be made to atone for thy lese majesté."
"I bear them no ill will, and they know it. I am but a stranger among them, seeking at their hands a jewel most unjustly detained, and which, if given up, will hardly endanger the common weal. But, Sir Christopher, explain your sentiments more perfectly on the point whither our conversation converged."
"Master Arundel, I am a soldier, and no casuist, and, therefore, hardly so well prepared to answer as good Mr. Eliot, or grave Mr. Wilson; yet do thoughts on such subjects sometimes puzzle the brains of a soldier in a steel helmet, as well as those of a teacher in a Geneva cap; and, sworn brothers as we are, proving our affection by a voluntary community of danger, I will not hesitate to avow my secret reflections, knowing that they are safe in thy keeping. All Christians must acknowledge Holy Scripture, when properly understood, as the imperative rule of faith, without a belief of which there can be no salvation. Now, in Scripture I do find the Church likened unto a net let down into the sea, and when drawn up containing within itself a diversity of fishes. This similitude teaches me that the Blessed Founder of our religion did contemplate variety, and not that strict and tame uniformity which would compel every curve into a straight line, and make the Church more like a platoon of point device Spanish soldiers than reasoning men variously organized."
"I have heard the text differently explained, to wit: that the Church is thereby intended to be represented as a receptacle of all men, without distinction of Jew or Gentile—of color, or of whatever separates man from man."
"They who interpret it thus, do limit the Word of God, and make vain the text itself. For, was it not designed that all should be brought within one fold, that there might be one shepherd? Now, how may this be done, if respect be not had to the prepossessions and prejudices of mankind? See the infinite differences that prevail all through the world. These it is the sacred prerogative of the Church to guide and control—not violently tearing them up by the roots, but making them subservient to her advancement."
"That, it seems to me, were little better than encouraging heathenism under the forms of Christianity."