CHAP. X.
Great God! there is no safety here below;
Thou art my fortress; thou that seem’st my foe,
’Tis thou that strik’st the stroke, must guard the blow.
Quarles.
Although the malice of the hypocrite Daws had been disappointed by the result of his wicked artifices at Cheddar fair, and the worthy Noble had been saved from the injury and ruin which a lawless rabble were instigated to inflict on that peaceful man of God, yet Daws, being unsuspected and secure from detection, did not relax his efforts for the persecution and ejectment of Noble.
He contrived to have him haled before a committee of religious inquiry which visited those parts soon after; but here again he was baffled: for one of the commissioners being pricked in his conscience by observing the godly simplicity of the good parson of Cheddar, and the sincerity of his love to the blessed Saviour of the world, procured his dismissal from that ordeal unharmed. Nevertheless Daws continued to work secretly for his own ends, and gave himself no rest in the pursuit of his great object. He had the reputation of great strictness and sanctity as a minister,—and the outward man imposed upon many; in his heart he cared not for the souls of men; his sins were those which often and long escape the detection of the world, and which can be indulged under the cloak of religious zeal without exciting the suspicions of any, but those honest and sagacious persons who can detect a character by indications of its spirit too slight and fine to be admitted as important by the multitude. He was avaricious and tyrannical: money was his idol; and to subject the minds of a congregation was his next delight. From his pulpit he dealt forth the most fierce and cruel fulminations against all unbelievers. Nor was he without many trembling followers, whom he scolded and comforted, according to the caprice of his own temper.
“He damned the sins he had no mind to,
And spared the few he was inclined to.”
In his creed, the prayers and alms of any one who did not exactly entertain his notions of faith were sins, and would be visited as such. Now Parson Noble was a minister who bowed his knees before the Father of mercies as a self-abased sinner, confessing himself without grace or strength to will or to do, save of God’s free mercy, communicated through and for Christ’s sake. He taught all his people that if they asked the gifts and graces of repentance and faith in that precious name they could not be denied, and should never be sent empty away: to proclaim the message of peace and reconciliation was his delight; to invite all freely, to tell of a pardon to the human race, which, under the present dispensation of mercy, was the common right of all who were willing to accept it, was his constant practice; and he showed them plainly that if they came not to the light, it was because they loved darkness; because they could not part with their sins, and shrunk from the Gospel as a rule of life. “Love,” he would say, “worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is keeping the commandments: God is love, from whom they came. Jesus is love, by whom they were taught, magnified, and perfectly obeyed, that in his sacrifice of himself, as a pure and spotless victim, we might have an all-sufficient atonement, and hope towards a God who had taken our nature upon him, and been manifest in the flesh.” Now Daws held that Noble was a blind leader of the blind, and that both would fall into the ditch; and he desired, first, the proceeds of Cheddar living in his pocket, and, next, the gratification of telling the flock of Noble that they were one and all in the broad road to destruction.