CHAPTER XXI.
Merely a nook partitioned off the family parlor was that study of the rector into which, after awhile, he brought Cormac Cullen. Their conference on the edge of the flax-fields had showed him that here was no amateur conversationalist, in love with disputation for its own sake; but a mind really wishing to be resolved of certain intellectual doubts, and willing to weigh dispassionately both sides of a momentous question. Neither had the momentary agitation caused by the priests finding him in the fact of conversation with a Protestant minister escaped Mr. Armstrong; and very pleased he was to have to deal with a man in earnest.
Four boys of almost similar sizes were seated on a bench in the study, before a row of well-worn books. Many had been their expeditions to the open window, to see whether papa was coming, and why that tiresome man was keeping him; not for that they desired to be at the lessons, so much as to be over with them. When they had been sent on an hour’s play Mr. Armstrong turned to his visitor:
“You want to seek for the truth; let us ask God’s help.”
Never had the young schoolmaster heard a prayer from the heart of a man to his Father in heaven until now; but always either vain repetition of senseless forms, or the usage of Latin prayers “not understanded of the people.” He took his seat with a sense of awe, a realization of things, unseen, which was to him quite new.
His first difficulty concerned the antiquity of the Church—Rome seeming to have the start of all Reformed communions in that respect.
Mr. Armstrong showed him the Nicene Creed in the English Prayer Book, drawn accurately from Scripture, and put together by a general council of bishops as early as 365, and recited as the undoubted creed of the Christian Church at the subsequent councils-general of Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, nay, even at Trent, 1546. Not until 1564 did a Pope “condense the floating heresies of Christendom” into a new and supplementary creed, stamping them with authority. And so the boasted antiquity of the Roman Church in her distinctive doctrines is reduced to 300 years.
The rector also showed him that the boasted Catholicity or universality could not be settled by a question of majorities of number, inasmuch as no part could ever equal a whole. Also, that the Greek Church fulfilled all the conditions insisted on by the Roman divines quite as well as (in case of habitual unity and apostolic succession, better than) the Roman Church. For there was once a double succession of Popes for fifty years, and finally the council of Constance deposed three Popes, and chose a fourth.
“But, sir, about Saint Peter being the rock; that seems very plain.”
“Your Church lays great stress on the Fathers; shall I show you some of their opinions?”
Augustine: “It is not said, Thou art Petra, (a rock,) but thou art Petrus, (a stone;) upon this rock which thou hast confessed, upon this rock which thou hast owned, saying, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my Church: that is, upon myself, Son of the living God, I will build my Church: I will build thee upon me, not me upon thee.”
Chrysostom: “On the rock, that is, the faith of his confession.”
Gregory the Great: “The rock of the Church—the confession of the blessed Peter.”
Cyril of Alexandria the same.
“Not,” added the minister, replacing on the shelf his dusty tomes, “not that I consider the Fathers in anywise conclusive as authorities for the settlement of a point of doctrine, or even the interpretation of a verse; they often write the merest absurdities. But I wanted to show you that some of the most celebrated of them held the Protestant opinion on this passage. Peter was given the keys of heaven, do you say? No, my friend, but of the kingdom of heaven—the Gospel dispensation, constantly so-called; which he in a manner opened to Jew and Gentile when the crowd was converted at Pentecost, and when he baptized Cornelius the centurion, and his household.”
But of all the arguments used by Mr. Armstrong in this interview, one sank deepest into Cormac’s mind; concerning the right of all men to study the holy Scriptures for themselves.”
“You have read the New Testament, my friend, and evidently with attention. Now did it ever strike you that every book of it, except the three letters to Timothy and Titus, were addresses by the clergy (so to speak) to the laity? These Gospels and Epistles were not written to the ministers of the Church, but by the highest order of ministers, the Apostles and Evangelists, to every member of the Church—Paul gives express directions that one of his letters was to be read to ‘all the brethren.’ Ask Mr. Devenish whether he thinks the Apostles did their work so badly, so awkwardly, that it is not safe for laymen to read what was written on purpose for laymen then? Nay, is it not an awful interference with God himself to interrupt what his Holy Spirit inspired, and caused to be written for our learning?”
The young schoolmaster went away, feeling as if some sudden light were let in upon a dark corner of his mind, and he needed to get accustomed to it, like the eyes of one who had been peering into the dusk hitherto.
Half a mile from his father’s house, when on a strip of elevated road through a bog, where in the black pools floated white china-like lilies, and on the marsh masses of purple loose-strife and snowy bog-cotton, he saw before him a solitary woman walking in the direction he was going. Could it be Maureen Clare? She wore the usual blue cloak, and a white handkerchief tying down her hair; but something of peculiar dejection in the mien and depression in the step made him doubt. He quickened his pace.
“Cormac!” with a very apparent start when he spoke in nearing her. “You frightened me. I never heard the step.”
“On this soft soil,” he responded. “Or may be you were dreaming: you’re not like yourself to-day, Maureen,” he could not help adding, when he regarded the pallid face and eyes with a tender circle about them, as from tears.
“What wonder! Ye aren’t afraid to spake to me, Cormac?” she said with a sudden change of manner. “But may be you never heard?”
“I know all about it,” was his reply. “From first to last. And I only wish—” he stopped short, looking at her.
“O, I never thought the people could be so unkind,” she said, with a sort of burst. “Them I have known since I was born pass me by as if I was some kind of a disgrace. The farmers wont sell us a drop of milk—even Protestant Phil said, ‘Why weren’t ye content with your own religion?’ And—and—look at that, Cormac.”
She pushed aside the hair from her forehead, and showed a blue bruise. “They threw stones at me yesterday in Rienvella.” Evidently the poor girl was longing for compassion and sympathy; and this neighbour’s son, the playmate of her childhood, could give it.
“The cowards!” he said; “I’ll walk with you home now. And where is your mother?”
“Poor mother! she’s gone on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg, on the borders of a place they call Donegal, I hear it is, for our sakes, mine and my father’s; in hopes we’d give up the book at long last.”
“And ye wont?”
“Cormac, if there wasn’t any thing to make us think Father Devenish wrong, would not this persecution do it? But the book is God’s word; I hope we will never give it up. I don’t think we’ll be sorry in heaven for having held by it.”
“Neither do I, Maureen.”
“You know I was a great one for confessions an’ rounds, an’ all sorts of holy devotions,” she said. “An’ for all that I never was easy in my mind about my sins, and more especially about purgatory. Many’s the time I’ve dreamed I was there of nights, an’ woke cryin’ out. But now in the Testament I find there’s no purgatory anywhere, but pardon for all them that believe in our blessed Saviour. Yes, Cormac, in spite even of the people’s crossness, I’m happier thinkin’ God loves me an’ has heaven ready for me, than I was while I was workin’ hard tryin’ to earn heaven for myself.”
“I wish I could think the same.” he said. As yet he had been exploring religious subjects with his intellect, but scarcely with his heart.
Just then came, jogging on his way to midday market, Farmer Denis Purcell with his wife on a pillion behind. Powerful was the steed, and tending toward seventeen hands high, which he kept for this double duty. Cormac saw the anxious glance of his companion, apprehensive of renewed slight or discourtesy; but ere she could well shape the fear, honest Denis had stopped his horse.
“Save you both kindly this fine mornin’! Give us yer hand, Maureen, for old friendship’s sake, an’ yer father’s. An’ I hope he’s quite well, an’ not lettin’ himself be vexed out of the common?”
Maureen could scarcely keep back her tears at the unexpected kindness of this address. Farmer Denis did it in such a marked way, too; he had never shaken hands with her before.
“Hut tut, my girl, don’t take on. Here, missus, spake to Donat Clare’s daughter when I bid ye!”
The imperative face that looked over his shoulder was not to be trifled with; so Mrs. Denis, who had gazed steadfastly beyond into the fields, as if no human being existed nearer than the horizon, was fain to lower her vision, and utter a few words of salutation.
“Short an’ sour, missus,” was her husband’s commentary. “Only awhile ago, Maureen, did I hear you’ve been wantin’ milk, an’ can’t get it to buy; now there’s seventeen cows milkin’ at our place, an’ any day ye come or send up, I’ll answer for it ye’ll have milk galore. Goodbye now; we’re late on the road, as it is.”
Quietly, but with an occasional sob to inform him of what was going on, did Mrs. Denis weep on the pillion behind her husband. For a couple of miles he took no notice, hoping it would wear out. Suddenly he pulled up the horse.
“What on earth is the matter with you, woman?”
“To think you’d bring the curse on me that way, all unbeknownst in a minit, an’ on the house, an’ the children!”
“Look here, missus; I’ll never believe Almighty God, who sent his own Son to die for us, would come at the biddin’ of any priest or bishop to curse a man for spakin’ a few kind words. An’ I intend to down a churn of milk to Donat Clares to-night, please God; an’ I don’t care if Father Devenish hears it; never you fear, he wont meddle wi’ me!”
Denis gave the horse a very needless prick with his one spur, and jogged at a great pace into Roonard.