Chapter 10

"Assuredly, nay."

"Then look you, Mistress Blanche, that it is greater matter than you maybe made account, when a man shall say, `I believe in Jesus Christ.' For it signifieth not only that I believe He was born, and lived, and suffered, and arose, and ascended. Nay, but it is, I account of Him as a true man; I trust Him, with body and soul, with friends and goods: I hold Him worthy of all affiance, and I will hold back nothing, neither myself nor my having, from His keeping and disposing. (Ah, my maid! which of us can say so much as this, at all times, and of all matters?) But above all, in the relation whereof we have spoken, it is to say, I trust Christ with my soul. I lean it wholly upon Him. I have no hope in myself; He is mine hope. I have no righteousness of myself; He is my righteousness. I have no standing before God,--I demerit nought but hell; but Christ standeth before God for me: His blood hath washed me clean from all sin, and His pleading with God availeth to hold me up in His ways. And unless or until you can from your heart thus speak I pray you say not again that you believe in Jesus Christ."

"But, Master, every man cannot thus believe."

"No man can thus believe until God have taught him."

Blanche thought, but was not bold enough to say, that she did not see why anybody should believe such disagreeable things about himself. She did not feel this low opinion of her own merits. Hers was the natural religion of professing Christians--that she must do the best she could, and Christ would make up the remainder. Mr Tremayne knew what was passing in her mind as well as if she had spoken it.

"You think that is hard?" said he.

"_I_ think it--Mr Tremayne, I could not thus account of myself."

"You could not, dear maid. I am assured of that."

"Then wherein lieth my fault?" demanded Blanche.

"In that you will not."

Blanche felt stung; and she spoke out now, with one of those bursts of confidence which came from her now and then.

"That is sooth, Master. I will not. I have not committed such sins as have many men and women. I ne'er stole, nor murdered, nor used profane swearing, nor worshipped idols, nor did many another ill matter: and I cannot believe but that God shall be more merciful to such than to the evil fawtors [factors, doers] that be in the world. Where were His justice, if no?"

"Mistress Blanche, you wit neither what is God, neither what is sin. The pure and holy law of God is like to a golden ring. You account, that because you have not broken it on this side, nor on that side, you have not broken it at all. But if you break it on any side, it is broken; and you it is that have broken it."

"Wherein have I broken it?" she asked defiantly.

"`All unrighteousness is sin.' Have you alway done rightly, all your life long? If not, then you are a sinner."

"Oh, of course, we be all sinners," said Blanche, as if that were a very slight admission.

"Good. And a sinner is a condemned criminal. He is not come into this world to see if he may perchance do well, and stand: he is already fallen; he is already under condemnation of law."

"Then 'tis even as I said,--there is no fault in any of us," maintained Blanche, sturdily clinging to her point.

"`This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.'"

"Nay, Master Tremayne, you be now too hard on me. I love not darkness rather than light."

"God saith you so do, dear maid. And He knoweth--ay, better than yourself. But look not only on that side of the matter. If a man believe that and no more, 'tis fit to drive him unto desperation. Look up unto the writing which is over the gate into God's narrow way--the gate and the way likewise being His Son Jesus Christ--and read His message of peace sent unto these sinners. `Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.' It is God's ordering, that whosoever _will_, he can."

"You said but this last Sunday, Master Tremayne, that 'twas not possible for any man to come to Christ without God did draw him thereto."

"_I_ said, my maid? My Master it was which said that. Well--what so?"

"Then we can have nought to answer for; for without God do draw us, we cannot come."

"And without we be willing to be thus drawn, God will not do it."

"Nay, but you said, moreover, that the very will must come from God."

"Therein I spake truth."

Blanche thought she had now driven her pastor into a corner.

"Then you do allow," she asked triumphantly, "that if I should not will the same, I am clean of all fault, sith the very will must needs come from God?"

Mr Tremayne understood the drift of his catechumen.

"An' it like you, Mistress Blanche, we will leave a moment to make inquiry into that point, till we shall have settled another, of more import to you and me."

"What is it, Master?"

"Are you willing?"

"Willing that I should be saved eternally? Most assuredly."

"Then--willing that all the will of God shall be done, in you and by you?"

"The one followeth not the other."

"I cry you mercy. The King of kings, like other princes, dealeth with His rebels on his own terms."

Blanche was silent, and, very uncomfortable.

"'Tis time for me to be about my duties. When you shall have fully settled that point of your willingness, Mistress Blanche, and shall have determined that you are thus willing--which God grant!--then, an' it like you, we will go into the other matter."

And Mr Tremayne left the room with a bow, very well knowing that as soon as the first point was satisfactorily settled, the second would be left quiescent.

Mrs Tremayne had never opened her lips; and leaving her in the study, Blanche wandered into the parlour, where Clare and Lysken were seated at work.

"I marvel what Master Tremayne would have!" said Blanche, sitting down in the window, and idly pulling the dead leaves from the plant which stood there. "He saith 'tis our own fault that we will not to be saved, and yet in the self breath he addeth that the will so to be must needs be given us of God."

Lysken looked up.

"Methinks we are all willing enow to be saved from punishment," she said. "What we be unwilling to be saved from is sin."

"`Sin'--alway sin!" muttered Blanche. "Ye be both of a story. Sin is wickedness. I am not wicked."

"Sin is the disobeying of God," replied Lysken. "And saving thy presence, Blanche, thou art wicked."

"Then so art thou!" retorted Blanche.

"So I am," said Lysken. "But I am willing to be saved therefrom."

"Prithee, Mistress Elizabeth Barnevelt, from what sin am I not willing to be saved?"

"Dost truly wish to know?" asked Lysken in her coolest manner.

"Certes!"

"Then--pride."

"Pride is no sin!"

"I love not gainsaying, Blanche. But I dare in no wise gainsay the Lord. And He saith of pride, that it is an abomination unto Him, and He hateth it." [Proverbs six, verse 16; and sixteen verse 5.]

"But that is ill and sinful pride," urged Blanche. "There is proper pride."

"It seemeth to my poor wits," said Lysken, "that a thing which the Lord hateth must be all of it improper."

"Why, Lysken! Thus saying, thou shouldst condemn all high spirit and noble bearing!"

"`Blessed are the poor in spirit.' There was no pride in Christ, Blanche. And thou wilt scarce say that He bare Him not nobly."

"Why, then, we might as well all be peasants!"

"I suppose we might, if we were," said Lysken.

"Lysken, it should be a right strange world, where thou hadst the governance!"

"Very like," was Lysken's calm rejoinder, as she set the pin a little further in her seam.

"What good is it, prithee, to set thee up against all men's opinion? [What are now termed `views' were then called `opinions.'] Thou shalt but win scorn for thine."

"Were it only mine, Blanche, it should be to no good. But when it is God's command wherewith mine opinion runneth,--why then, the good shall be to hear Christ say, `Well done, faithful servant.' The scorn I bare here shall be light weight then."

"But wherefore not go smoothly through the world?"

"Because it should cost too much."

"Nay, what now?" remonstrated Blanche.

"I have two lives, Blanche: and I cannot have my best things in both. The one is short and passing; the other is unchangeable, and shall stand for ever. Now then, I would like my treasures for the second of these two lives: and if I miss any good thing in the first, it shall be no great matter."

"Thou art a right Puritan!" said Blanche disgustedly.

"Call not names, Blanche," gently interposed Clare.

"Dear Clare, it makes he difference," said Lysken. "If any call me a Papist, 'twill not make me one."

"Lysken Barnevelt, is there aught in this world would move thee?"

"`In this world?' Well, but little, methinks. But--there will be some things in the other."

"What things?" bluntly demanded Blanche.

"To see His Face!" said Lysken, the light breaking over her own. "And to hear Him say, `Come!' And to sit down at the marriage-supper of the Lamb,--with the outer door closed for ever, and the woes, and the wolves, and the winter, all left on the outside. If none of these earthly things move me, Blanche, it is because those heavenly things will."

And after that, Blanche was silent.

Note 1. The Gentiles (saith Saint Augustine), which seem to be of the purer religion, say, We worship not the images, but by the corporal image we do behold the signs of the things which we ought to worship. And Lactantius saith, The Gentiles say, We fear not the images, but them after whose likeness the images be made, and to whose names they be consecrated. And Clemens saith, That serpent the Devil uttereth these words by the mouth of certain men: We, to the honour of the invisible God, worship visible images.--(Third Part of the Homily on Peril of Idolatry: references in margin to Augustine Ps. 135; Lactantius l. 2. Inst.; Clem., L. S ad Jacob.) Here are the "Fathers" condemning as Pagan the reasoning of modern Papists.

Note 2. "Credit et defendit que in eucharistia sive altaris sacramento verum et naturalem Christi corpus ac verus et naturalis Christi sanguis sub speciebus panis et vini vere non est; et quod _ibi est materialis panis et materiale vinum_ tantum absque veritati et presentia corporis et sanguinis Christi."--Indictment of Reverend Lawrence Saunders, January 30, 1555; Harl. MS. 421, folio 44.

"Tenes et defendes in prout quod in eucharistia sive sacramento altaris verum naturalem et realem Christi corpus ac verus naturalis et realis Christi sanguis sub speciebus panis et vini vere non est, sed _post consecratione remanet substantia panis et vini_."--Indictment of Reverend Thomas Rose, May 31, 1555; Harl. MS. 421, folio 188.

Note 3. There is the initial M on the pedestal of one or more of these black Virgins, which of course the priests interpret as Mary. This is certainly not the case. It has been suggested that it stands for Maia, a name of the Tuscan goddess. May it not be the initial of Mylitta, "the Mediatrix," one of the favourite names of the great original goddess?

Note 4. See Hislop's _Two Babylons_, pages 22, 122, 491, et aliis; and Shepheard's _Traditions of Eden_, page 117, note (where many references are given), and page 188.