"Morbleu!" I replied, "then you are not Christians?"
"Swear not, my son," he said gently; "we try to be good Christians; but we believe not that Christianity consists in throwing cold water on the head, with a little salt."
"Ventrebleu!" I retorted, "have you forgotten that Jesus Christ was baptised by John?"
"Once more, my friend, no swearing," replied the mild Quaker. "Christ was baptised by John, but himself baptised no one. We are disciples of Christ, not of John."
He proceeded to give me briefly the reasons for some peculiarities which expose this sect to the sneers of others. "Confess," he said, "that thou hast had much ado not to smile at my accepting thy courtesies with my hat on my head, and at my calling thee 'thou.' Yet thou must surely know that at the time of Christ no nation was so foolish as to substitute the plural for the singular. It was not until long afterwards that men began to call each other 'you' instead of 'thou,' as if they were double, and to usurp the impudent titles of Majesty, Eminence, Holiness, that some worms of the earth bestow on other worms. It is the better to guard ourselves against this unworthy interchange of lies and flatteries that we address kings and cobblers in the same terms, and offer salutations to nobody; since for men we have nothing but charity, and respect only for the laws.
"We don a costume differing a little from that of other men as a constant reminder that we are unlike them. Others wear the tokens of their dignities; we wear those of Christian humility. We never take an oath, not even in a court of justice; for we think that the name of the Almighty should not be prostituted in the miserable wranglings of men. We never go to war—not because we fear death; on the contrary, we bless the moment that unites us with the Being of Beings; but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor bulldogs, but Christian men, whom God has commanded to love our enemies and suffer without murmuring. When London is illuminated after a victory, when the air is filled with the pealing of bells and the roar of cannon, we mourn in silence over the murders that have stirred the people to rejoice."
II.—Anglicans and Presbyterians
This is the land of sects. An Englishman is a free man, and goes to Heaven by any road he pleases.
But although anybody may serve God after his own fashion, their true religion, the one in which fortunes are made, is the Episcopal sect, called the Anglican Church, or, simply and pre-eminently, the Church. No office can be held in England or Ireland except by faithful Anglicans; a circumstance which has led to the conversion of many Noncomformists.
The Anglican clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, above all that of receiving tithes with a most scrupulous attention. They have also a pious ambition for religious ascendancy, and do what they can to foment a holy zeal against Nonconformists. But a Whig ministry is just now in power, and the Whigs are hostile to Episcopacy. They have prohibited the lower clergy from meeting in convocation, a sort of clerical house of commons; and the clergy are limited to the obscurity of their parishes, and to the melancholy task of praying God for a government that they would be only too happy to disturb. The bishops, however, sit in the House of Lords in spite of the Whigs, because the old abuse continues of counting them as barons.