"Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay not!" added Mrs Thompson, interrupting me. "Mr Clayton says, Satan has got his janysarries abroad, and has a reason for every thing. It is very proper to say, too, I suppose, that it is an imposition when the bishops ordain the ministers? What a word to make use of. It's truly frightful!"
"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed Thompson, "if I don't think you had better hold your tongue, old girl, about impositions; for sich oudacious robbers as your precious brothers is, I never come across, since I was stopped that ere night, as we were courting, on Shooter's Hill. It's a system of imposition from beginning to end."
"Look to your Bible, Thompson; what does that say? Does that tell ministers to read their sermons? There can't be no truth and right feeling when a man puts down what he's going to say; the vital warmth is wanting, I'm sure. And then to read the same prayers Sunday after Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at hearing them over and over again, and finding nothing new! How can you improve an occasion if you are tied down in this sort of way."
"Did you ever see one of the brothers eat, Stukely?" asked Thompson, avoiding the main subject. "Don't you ask one of them to dinner—that's all. That nice boy Buster ought to eat for a wager. I had the pleasure of his company to dinner one fine afternoon. I don't mean to send him another invitation just yet, at all events."
"Yes," proceeded the fair, but stanch nonconformist; "what does the Bible say, indeed! 'Take no thought of what you should say.' Why, in the church, I am told they are doing nothing else from Monday morning to Saturday night but writing the sermon they are going to read on the Sabbath. To read a sermon! What would the apostles say to that?"
"Why, didn't you tell me, my dear, that the gentleman as set for that pictur got all his sermons by heart before he preached 'em?"
"Of course I did—but that's a very different thing. Doesn't it all pour from him as natural as if it had come to him that minute? He doesn't fumble over a book like a schoolboy. His beautiful eyes, I warrant you, ain't looking down all the time, as if he was ashamed to hold 'em up. Isn't it a privilege to see his blessed eyes rolling all sorts of ways; and don't they speak wolumes to the poor benighted sinner? Besides, don't tell me, Thompson; we had better turn Catholics at once, if we are to have the minister dressing up like the Pope of Rome, and all the rest of it."
"You are the gal of my heart," exclaimed the uxorious Thompson; "but I must say you have got some of the disgracefulest notions out of that ere chapel as ever I heard on. Why, it's only common decency to wear a dress in the pulpit; and I believe in my mind, that that's come down to us from time immemorable, like every thing else in human natur. What's your opinion, Stukely?"
"Yes; and what's your opinion, Mr Stukely," added the lady immediately, "about calling a minister of the gospel—a priest? Is that Paperistical or not?"
"That isn't the pint, Polly," proceeded John. "We are talking about the silk dress now. Let's have that out first."