The Monastery by Walter Scott (free novels to read .txt) 📖

said Henry Warden,—for to avoid confusion we describe him by his later and best known name—“Not as judge and criminal do we meet, but as a misguided oppressor and his ready and devoted victim. I, too, may ask, are these the harvest of the rich hopes excited by the classical learning, acute logical powers, and varied knowledge of William Allan, that he should sink to be the solitary drone of a cell, graced only above the swarm with the high commission of executing Roman malice on all who oppose Roman imposture?”

“Not to thee,” answered the Sub-Prior, “be assured—not unto thee, nor unto mortal man, will I render an account of the power with which the church may have invested me. It was granted but as a deposit for her welfare—for her welfare it shall at every risk be exercised, without fear and without favour.”

“I expected no less from your misguided zeal,” answered the preacher; “and in me have you met one on whom you may fearlessly exercise your authority, secure that his mind at least will defy your influence, as the snows of that Mont Blanc which we saw together, shrink not under the heat of the hottest summer sun.”

“I do believe thee,” said the Sub-Prior, “I do believe that thine is indeed metal unmalleable by force. Let it yield then to persuasion. Let us debate these matters of faith, as we once were wont to conduct our scholastic disputes, when hours, nay, days, glided past in the mutual exercise of our intellectual powers. It may be thou mayest yet hear the voice of the shepherd, and return to the universal fold.”

“No, Allan,” replied the prisoner, “this is no vain question, devised by dreaming scholiasts, on which they may whet their intellectual faculties until the very metal be wasted away. The errors which I combat are like those fiends which are only cast out by fasting and prayer. Alas! not many wise, not many learned are chosen; the cottage and the hamlet shall in our days bear witness against the schools and their disciples. Thy very wisdom, which is foolishness, hath made thee, as the Greeks of old, hold as foolishness that which is the only true wisdom.”

“This,” said the Sub-Prior, sternly, “is the mere cant of ignorant enthusiasm, which appealeth from learning and from authority, from the sure guidance of that lamp which God hath afforded us in the Councils and in the Fathers of the Church, to a rash, self-willed, and arbitrary interpretation of the Scriptures, wrested according to the private opinion of each speculating heretic.”

“I disdain to reply to the charge,” replied Warden. “The question at issue between your Church and mine, is, whether we will be judged by the Holy Scriptures, or by the devices and decisions of men not less subject to error than ourselves, and who have defaced our holy religion with vain devices, reared up idols of stone and wood, in form of those, who, when they lived, were but sinful creatures, to share the worship due only to the Creator—established a toll-house betwixt heaven and hell, that profitable purgatory of which the Pope keeps the keys, like an iniquitous judge commutes punishment for bribes, and——”

“Silence, blasphemer,” said the Sub-Prior, sternly, “or I will have thy blatant obloquy stopped with a gag!”

“Ay,” replied Warden, “such is the freedom of the Christian conference to which Rome's priests so kindly invite us!—the gag—the rack—the axe—is the ratio ultima Romae. But know thou, mine ancient friend, that the character of thy former companion is not so changed by age, but that he still dares to endure for the cause of truth all that thy proud hierarchy shall dare to inflict.”

“Of that,” said the monk, “I nothing doubt—Thou wert ever a lion to turn against the spear of the hunter, not a stag to be dismayed at the sound of his bugle.”—He walked through the room in silence. “Wellwood,” he said at length, “we can no longer be friends. Our faith, our hope, our anchor on futurity, is no longer the same.”

“Deep is my sorrow that thou speakest truth. May God so judge me,” said the Reformer, “as I would buy the conversion of a soul like thine with my dearest heart's blood.”

“To thee, and with better reason, do I return the wish,” replied the Sub-Prior; “it is such an arm as thine that should defend the bulwarks of the Church, and it is now directing the battering-ram against them, and rendering practicable the breach through which all that is greedy, and all that is base, and all that is mutable and hot-headed in this innovating age, already hope to advance to destruction and to spoil. But since such is our fate, that we can no longer fight side by side as friends, let us at least act as generous enemies. You cannot have forgotten,

'O gran bonta dei caralieri antiqui! Erano nemici, eran' de fede diversa'—

Although, perhaps,” he added, stopping short in his quotation, “your new faith forbids you to reserve a place in your memory, even for what high poets have recorded of loyal faith and generous sentiment.”

“The faith of Buchanan,” replied the preacher, “the faith of Buchanan and of Beza, cannot be unfriendly to literature. But the poet you have quoted affords strains fitter for a dissolute court than for a convent.”