But Fulke would not let him be; but pressed on a question about the Council of Nice.
“Now we shall have the matter of images,” sighed Campion.
“You are nimis acutus,” retorted Fulke, “you will leap over the stile or ever you come to it. I mean not to speak of images.”
And so with a few more irrelevancies the debate ended.
The third debate in September (on the twenty-third), at which Anthony was again present, was on the subject of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.
Fulke was in an evil temper, since it was common talk that Campion had had the best of the argument on the eighteenth.
“The other day,” he said, “when we had some hope of your conversion, we forbare you much, and suffered you to discourse; but now that we see you are an obstinate heretic, and seek to cover the light of the truth with multitude of words, we mean not to allow you such large discourses as we did.”
“You are very imperious to-day,” answered Campion serenely, “whatsoever the matter is. I am the Queen’s prisoner, and none of yours.”
“Not a whit imperious,” said Fulke angrily,—“though I will exact of you to keep the right order of disputation.”
Then the argument began. It soon became plain to Anthony that it was possible to take the Scripture in two senses, literally and metaphorically. The sacrament either was literally Christ’s body, or it was not. Who then was to decide? Father Campion said it meant the one; Dr. Fulke the other. Could it be possible that Christ should leave His people in doubt as to such a thing? Surely not, thought Anthony. Well, then, where is the arbiter? Father Campion says, The Church; Dr. Fulke says, The Scripture. But that is a circular argument, for the question to be decided is: What does the Scripture mean? for it may mean at least two things, at least so it would seem. Here then he found himself face to face with the claims of the Church of Rome to be that arbiter; and his heart began to grow sick with apprehension as he saw how that Church supplied exactly what was demanded by the circumstances of the case—that is, an infallible living guide as to the meaning of God’s Revelation. The simplicity of her claim appalled him.