By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson (large ebook reader txt) 📖

assertion, that valuable as the remedy is, it cannot always be had.

Anthony sat back, puzzled. Both sides seemed right. Persecution must often hinder the full privileges of Church membership and the exercise of discipline. Yet the question was, What was Christ's intention? Was it that the Church should be visible? It seemed that even the ministers allowed that, now. And if so, why then the Catholic's claim that Christ's intention had never been wholly frustrated, but that a visible unity was to be found amongst themselves--surely this was easier to believe than the Protestant theory that the Church which had been visible for fifteen centuries was not really the Church at all; but that the true Church had been invisible--in spite of Christ's intention--during all that period, and was now to be found only in small separated bodies scattered here and there. How of the prevailing of the gates of hell, if that were allowed to be true?

* * * *


At two o'clock they reassembled for the afternoon conference; and now they got even closer to the heart of the matter, for the subject was to be, whether the Church could err?

Fulke asserted that it could, and did; and made a syllogism:

"Whatsoever error is incident to every member, is incident to the whole. But it is incident to every member to err; ergo, to the whole."

"I deny both major and minor," said Campion quietly. "Every man may err, but not the whole gathered together; for the whole hath a promise, but so hath not every particular man."

Fulke denied this stoutly, and beat on the table.

"Every member hath the spirit of Christ," he said, "which is the spirit of truth; and therefore hath the same promise that the whole hath."

"Why, then," said Campion, smiling, "there should be no heretics."

"Yes," answered Fulke, "heretics may be within the Church, but not of the Church."

And so they found themselves back again where they started from.

Anthony sat back on the oak bench and sighed, and glanced round at the interested faces of the theologians and the yawns of the amateurs, as the debate rolled on over the old ground, and touched on free will, and grace, and infant baptism; until the Lieutenant interposed:

"Master Doctors," he said, with a judicial air, "the question that was appointed before dinner was, whether the visible Church may err"--to which Goode retorted that the digressions were all Campion's fault.

Then the debate took the form of contradictions.

"Whatsoever congregation doth err in matters of faith," said Goode, "is not the true Church; but the Church of Rome erreth in matters of faith; ergo, it is not the true Church."

"I deny your minor," said Campion, "the Church of Rome hath not erred." Then the same process was repeated over the Council of Trent; and the debate whirled off once more into details and irrelevancies about imputed righteousness, and the denial of the Cup to the laity.

Again the audience grew restless. They had not come there, most of them, to listen to theological minutiae, but to see sport; and this interminable chopping of words that resulted in nothing bored them profoundly. A murmur of conversation began to buzz on all sides.

Campion was in despair.

"Thus shall we run into all questions," he cried hopelessly, "and then we shall have done this time twelve months."

But Fulke would not let him be; but pressed on a question about the Council of Nice.

"Now we shall have the matter of images," sighed Campion.

"You are nimis acutus," retorted Fulke, "you will leap over the stile or ever you come to it. I mean not to speak of images."

And so with a few more irrelevancies the debate ended.

The third debate in September (on the twenty-third), at which Anthony was again present, was on the subject of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Fulke was in an evil temper, since it was common talk that Campion had had the best of the argument on the eighteenth.

"The other day," he said, "when we had some hope of your conversion, we forbare you much, and suffered you to discourse; but now that we see you are an obstinate heretic, and seek to cover the light of the truth with multitude of words, we mean not to allow you such large discourses as we did."

"You are very imperious to-day," answered Campion serenely, "whatsoever the matter is. I am the Queen's prisoner, and none of yours."

"Not a whit imperious," said Fulke angrily,--"though I will exact of you to keep the right order of disputation."

Then the argument began. It soon became plain to Anthony that it was possible to take the Scripture in two senses, literally and metaphorically. The sacrament either was literally Christ's body, or it was not. Who then was to decide? Father Campion said it meant the one; Dr. Fulke the other. Could it be possible that Christ should leave His people in doubt as to such a thing? Surely not, thought Anthony. Well, then, where is the arbiter? Father Campion says, The Church; Dr. Fulke says, The Scripture. But that is a circular argument, for the question to be decided is: What does the Scripture mean? for it may mean at least two things, at least so it would seem. Here then he found himself face to face with the claims of the Church of Rome to be that arbiter; and his heart began to grow sick with apprehension as he saw how that Church supplied exactly what was demanded by the circumstances of the case--that is, an infallible living guide as to the meaning of God's Revelation. The simplicity of her claim appalled him.

He did not follow the argument closely, since it seemed to him but a secondary question now; though he heard one or two sentences. At one point Campion was explaining what the Church meant by substance. It was that which transcended the senses.

"Are you not Dr. Fulke?" he said. "And yet I see nothing but your colour and exterior form. The substance of Dr. Fulke cannot be seen."

"I will not vouchsafe to reply upon this answer," snarled Fulke, whose temper had not been improved by the debate--"too childish for a sophister!"

Then followed interminable syllogisms, of which Campion would not accept the premises; and no real progress was made. The Jesuit tried to explain the doctrine that the wicked may be said not to eat the Body in the Sacrament, because they receive not the virtue of It, though they receive the Thing; but Fulke would not hear him. The distinction was new to Anthony, with his puritan training, and he sat pondering it while the debate passed on.

The afternoon discussion, too, was to little purpose. More and more Anthony, and others with him, began to see that the heart of the matter was the authority of the Church; and that unless that was settled, all other debate was beside the point; and the importance of this was brought out for him more clearly than ever on the 27th of the month, when the fourth and last debate took place, and on the subject of the sufficiency of the Scriptures unto salvation.

Mr. Charke, who had now succeeded as disputant, began with extempore prayer, in which as usual the priest refused to join, praying and crossing himself apart.

Mr. Walker then opened the disputation with a pompous and insolent speech about "one Campion," an "unnatural man to his country, degenerated from an Englishman, an apostate in religion, a fugitive from this realm, unloyal to his prince." Campion sat with his eyes cast down, until the minister had done.

Then the discussion began. The priest pointed out that Protestants were not even decided as to what were Scriptures and what were not, since Luther rejected three epistles in the New Testament; therefore, he argued, the Church is necessary as a guide, first of all, to tell men what is Scripture. Walker evaded by saying he was not a Lutheran but a Christian; and then the talk turned on to apocryphal books. But it was not possible to evade long, and the Jesuit soon touched his opponent.

"To leave a door to traditions," he said, "which the Holy Ghost may deliver to the true Church, is both manifest and seen: as in the Baptism of infants, the Holy Ghost proceeding from Father to Son, and such other things mentioned, which are delivered by tradition. Prove these directly by the Scripture if you can!"

Charke answered by the analogy of circumcision which infants received, and by quoting Christ's words as to "sending" of the Comforter; and they were soon deep in detailed argument; but once more Anthony saw that it was all a question of the interpretation of Scripture; and, therefore, that it would seem that an authoritative interpreter was necessary--and where could such be found save in an infallible living Voice? And once more a question of Campion's drove the point home.

"Was all Scripture written when the Apostles first taught?" And Charke dared not answer yes.

The afternoon's debate concerned justification by faith, and this, more than ever, seemed to Anthony a secondary matter, now that he was realising what the claim of a living authority meant; and he sat back, only interested in watching the priest's face, so controlled yet so transparent in its simplicity and steadfastness, as he listened to the ministers' brutal taunts and insolence, and dealt his quiet skilful parries and ripostes to their incessant assaults. At last the Lieutenant struck the table with his hand, and intimated that the time was past, and after a long prayer by Mr. Walker, the prisoners were led back to their cells.

As Anthony rode back alone in the evening sunlight, he was as one who was seeing a vision. There was indeed a vision before him, that had been taking shape gradually, detail by detail, during these last months, and ousting the old one; and which now, terribly emphasised by Campion's arguments and illuminated by the fire of his personality, towered up imperious, consistent, dominating--and across her brow her title, The Catholic Church. Far above all the melting cloudland of theory she moved, a stupendous fact; living, in contrast with the dead past to which her enemies cried in vain; eloquent when other systems were dumb; authoritative when they hesitated; steady when they reeled and fell. About her throne dwelt her children, from every race and age, secure in her protection, and wise with her knowledge, when other men faltered and questioned and doubted: and as Anthony looked up and saw her for the first time, he recognised her as the Mistress and Mother of his soul; and although the blinding clouds of argument and theory and self-distrust rushed down on him again and filled his eyes with dust, yet he knew he had seen her face in very truth, and that the memory of that vision could never again wholly leave him.


CHAPTER VI


SOME CONTRASTS

In the Lambeth household the autumn passed by uneventfully. The rigour of the Archbishop's confinement had been mitigated, and he had been allowed now and again to visit his palace at Croydon; but his inactivity still continued as the sequestration was not removed; Elizabeth had refused to listen to the petition of Convocation