Campbell had been much pleased with Reding, and his interest in him
was not lessened by a hint from Bateman that his allegiance to the
English Church was in danger. He called on him in no long time, asked
him to dinner, and, when Charles had returned his invitation, and
Campbell had accepted it, the beginning of an acquaintance was formed
between the rectory at Sutton and the family at Boughton which grew
into an intimacy as time went on. Campbell was a gentleman, a travelled
man, of clear head and ardent mind, candid, well-read in English
divinity, a devoted Anglican, and the incumbent of a living so well
endowed as almost to be a dignity. Mary was pleased at the
introduction, as bringing her brother under the influence of an
intellect which he could not make light of; and, as Campbell had a
carriage, it was natural that he should wish to save Charles the loss
of a day's reading and the trouble of a muddy walk to the rectory and
back by coming over himself to Boughton. Accordingly it so happened
that he saw Charles twice at his mother's for once that he saw him at
Sutton. But whatever came of these visits, nothing occurred which
particularly bears upon the line of our narrative; so let them pass.
One day Charles called upon Bateman, and, on entering the room, was
surprised to see him and Campbell at luncheon, and in conversation with
a third person. There was a moment's surprise and hesitation on seeing
him before they rose and welcomed him as usual. When he looked at the
stranger he felt a slight awkwardness himself, which he could not
control. It was Willis; and apparently submitted to the process of
reconversion. Charles was evidently de trop, but there was no
help for it; so he shook hands with Willis, and accepted the pressing
call of Bateman to seat himself at table, and to share their bread and
cheese.
Charles sat down opposite Willis, and for a while could not keep his
eyes from him. At first he had some difficulty in believing he had
before him the impetuous youth he had known two years and a half
before. He had always been silent in general company; but in that he
was changed, as in everything else. Not that he talked more than was
natural, but he talked freely and easily. The great change, however,
was in his appearance and manner. He had lost his bloom and
youthfulness; his expression was sweeter indeed than before, and very
placid, but there was a thin line down his face on each side of his
mouth; his cheeks were wanting in fulness, and he had the air of a man
of thirty. When he entered into conversation, and became animated, his
former self returned.
“I suppose we may all admire this cream at this season,” said
Charles, as he helped himself, “for we are none of us Devonshire men.”
“It's not peculiar to Devonshire,” answered Campbell; “that is, they
have it abroad. At Rome there is a sort of cream or cheese very like
it, and very common.”
“Will butter and cream keep in so warm a climate?” asked Charles; “I
fancied oil was the substitute.”
“Rome is not so warm as you fancy,” said Willis, “except during the
summer.”
“Oil? so it is,” said Campbell; “thus we read in Scripture of the
multiplication of the oil and meal, which seems to answer to bread and
butter. The oil in Rome is excellent, so clear and pale; you can eat it
as milk.”
“The taste, I suppose, is peculiar,” observed Charles.
“Just at first,” answered Campbell; “but one soon gets used to it.
All such substances, milk, butter, cheese, oil, have a particular taste
at first, which use alone gets over. The rich Guernsey butter is too
much for strangers, while Russians relish whale-oil. Most of our tastes
are in a measure artificial.”
“It is certainly so with vegetables,” said Willis; “when I was a boy
I could not eat beans, spinach, asparagus, parsnips, and I think some
others.”
“Therefore your hermit's fare is not only the most natural, but the
only naturally palatable, I suppose,—a crust of bread and a draught
from the stream,” replied Campbell.
“Or the Clerk of Copmanhurst's dry peas,” said Charles.
“The macaroni and grapes of the Neapolitans are as natural and more
palatable,” said Willis.
“Rather they are a luxury,” said Bateman.
“No,” answered Campbell, “not a luxury; a luxury is in its very idea
a something recherché. Thus Horace speaks of the 'peregrina
lagois.' What nature yields sponte suâ around you, however
delicious, is no luxury. Wild ducks are no luxury in your old
neighbourhood, amid your Oxford fens, Bateman; nor grapes at Naples.”
“Then the old women here are luxurious over their sixpenn'rth of
tea,” said Bateman; “for it comes from China.”
Campbell was posed for an instant. Somehow neither he nor Bateman
were quite at their ease, whether with themselves or with each other;
it might be Charles's sudden intrusion, or something which had happened
before it. Campbell answered at length that steamers and railroads were
making strange changes; that time and place were vanishing, and price
would soon be the only measure of luxury.
“This seems the measure also of grasso and magro food
in Italy,” said Willis; “for I think there are dispensations for
butcher's meat in Lent, in consequence of the dearness of bread and
oil.”
“This seems to show that the age for abstinences and fastings is
past,” observed Campbell; “for it's absurd to keep Lent on beef and
mutton.”
“Oh, Campbell, what are you saying?” cried Bateman; “past! are we
bound by their lax ways in Italy?”
“I do certainly think,” answered Campbell, “that fasting is
unsuitable to this age, in England as well as in Rome.”
“Take care, my fine fellows,” thought Charles; “keep your ranks, or
you won't secure your prisoner.”
“What, not fast on Friday!” cried Bateman; “we always did so most
rigidly at Oxford.”
“It does you credit,” answered Campbell; “but I am of Cambridge.”
“But what do you say to Rubrics and the Calendar?” insisted Bateman.
“They are not binding,” answered Campbell.
“They are, binding,” said Bateman.
A pause, as between the rounds of a boxing-match. Reding interposed:
“Bateman, cut me, please, a bit of your capital bread—home-made, I
suppose?”
“A thousand pardons!” said Bateman:—“not binding?—Pass it to him,
Willis, if you please. Yes, it comes from a farmer, next door. I'm glad
you like it.—I repeat, they are binding, Campbell.”
“An odd sort of binding, when they have never bound,” answered
Campbell; “they have existed two or three hundred years; when were they
ever put in force?”
“But there they are,” said Bateman, “in the Prayer Book.”
“Yes, and there let them lie and never get out of it,” retorted
Campbell; “there they will stay till the end of the story.”
“Oh, for shame!” cried Bateman; “you should aid your mother in a
difficulty, and not be like the priest and the Levite.”
“My mother does not wish to be aided,” continued Campbell.
“Oh, how you talk! What shall I do? What can be done?” cried poor
Bateman.
“Done! nothing,” said Campbell; “is there no such thing as the
desuetude of a law? Does not a law cease to be binding when it is not
enforced? I appeal to Mr. Willis.”
Willis, thus addressed, answered that he was no moral theologian,
but he had attended some schools, and he believed it was the Catholic
rule that when a law had been promulgated, and was not observed by the
majority, if the legislator knew the state of the case, and yet kept
silence, he was considered ipso facto to revoke it.
“What!” said Bateman to Campbell, “do you appeal to the Romish
Church?”
“No,” answered Campbell; “I appeal to the whole Catholic Church, of
which the Church of Rome happens in this particular case to be the
exponent. It is plain common sense, that, if a law is not enforced, at
length it ceases to be binding. Else it would be quite a tyranny; we
should not know where we were. The Church of Rome does but give
expression to this common-sense view.”
“Well, then,” said Bateman, “I will appeal to the Church of Rome
too. Rome is part of the Catholic Church as well as we: since, then,
the Romish Church has ever kept up fastings the ordinance is not
abolished; the 'greater part' of the Catholic Church has always
observed it.”
“But it has not,” said Campbell; “it now dispenses with fasts, as
you have heard.”
Willis interposed to ask a question. “Do you mean then,” he said to
Bateman, “that the Church of England and the Church of Rome make one
Church?”
“Most certainly,” answered Bateman.
“Is it possible?” said Willis; “in what sense of the word one
?”
“In every sense,” answered Bateman, “but that of intercommunion.”
“That is, I suppose,” said Willis, “they are one, except that they
have no intercourse with each other.”
Bateman assented. Willis continued: “No intercourse; that is, no
social dealings, no consulting or arranging, no ordering and obeying,
no mutual support; in short, no visible union.”
Bateman still assented. “Well, that is my difficulty,” said Willis;
“I can't understand how two parts can make up one visible body if they
are not visibly united; unity implies union.”
“I don't see that at all,” said Bateman; “I don't see that at all.
No, Willis, you must not expect I shall give that up to you; it is one
of our points. There is only one visible Church, and therefore the
English and Romish Churches are both parts of it.”
Campbell saw clearly that Bateman had got into a difficulty, and he
came to the rescue in his own way.
“We must distinguish,” he said, “the state of the case more exactly.
A kingdom may be divided, it may be distracted by parties, by
dissensions, yet be still a kingdom. That, I conceive, is the real
condition of the Church; in this way the Churches of England, Rome, and
Greece are one.”
“I suppose you will grant,” said Willis, “that in proportion as a
rebellion is strong, so is the unity of the kingdom threatened; and if
a rebellion is successful, or if the parties in a civil war manage to
divide the power and territory between them, then forthwith, instead of
one kingdom, we have two. Ten or fifteen years since, Belgium was part
of the kingdom of the Netherlands: I suppose you would not call it part
of that kingdom now? This seems the case of the Churches of Rome and
England.”
“Still, a kingdom may be in a state of decay,” replied Campbell;
“consider the case of the Turkish Empire at this moment. The Union
between its separate portions is so languid, that each separate Pasha
may almost be termed a separate sovereign; still it is one kingdom.”
“The Church, then, at present,” said Willis, “is a kingdom tending
to dissolution?”
“Certainly it is,” answered Campbell.
“And will ultimately fail?” asked Willis.
“Certainly,” said Campbell; “when the end comes, according to our
Lord's saying, 'When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the
earth?' just as in the case of the chosen people, the sceptre failed
from Judah when the Shiloh came.”
“Surely the Church has failed already before the end,” said
Willis, “according to the view you take of failing. How can any
separation be more complete than exists at present between Rome,
Greece, and England?”
“They might excommunicate each other,” said Campbell.
“Then you are willing,” said Willis, “to assign beforehand something
definite, the occurrence of which will constitute a real separation.”
“Don't do so,” said Reding to Campbell; “it is dangerous; don't
commit yourself in a moral question; for then, if the thing specified
did occur, it would be difficult to see our way.”
“No,” said Willis; “you certainly would be in a difficulty;
but you would find your way out, I know. In that case you would choose
some other ultimatum as your test of schism. There would be,” he
added, speaking with some emotion, “'in the lowest depth a lower
still.'”
The concluding words were out of keeping with the tone of the
conversation hitherto, and fairly excited Bateman, who, for some time,
had been an impatient listener.
“That's a dangerous line, Campbell,” he said, “it is indeed; I can't
go along with you. It will never do to say that the Church is failing;
no, it never fails. It is always strong, and pure, and perfect, as the
Prophets describe it. Look at its cathedrals, abbey-churches, and other
sanctuaries, these fitly typify it.”
“My dear Bateman,” answered Campbell, “I am as willing as you to
maintain the fulfilment of the prophecies made to the Church, but we
must allow the fact that the branches of the Church are
divided, while we maintain the doctrine, that the Church
should be one.”
“I don't see that at all,” answered Bateman; “no, we need not allow
it. There's no such thing as Churches, there's but one Church
everywhere, and it is not divided. It is merely the outward
forms, appearances, manifestations of the Church that are divided. The
Church is one as much as ever it was.”
“That will never do,” said Campbell; and he stood up before the fire
in a state of discomfort. “Nature never intended you for a
controversialist, my good Bateman,” he added to himself.
“It is as I thought,” said Willis; “Bateman, you are describing an
invisible Church. You hold the indefectibility of the invisible Church,
not of the visible.”
“They are in a fix,” thought Charles, “but I will do my best to tow
old Bateman out;” so he began: “No,” he said, “Bateman only means that
one Church presents, in some particular point, a different appearance
from another; but it does not follow that, in fact, they have not a
visible agreement too. All difference implies agreement; the English
and Roman Churches agree visibly and differ visibly. Think of the
different styles of architecture, and you will see, Willis, what he
means. A church is a church all the world over, it is visibly one and
the same, and yet how different is church from church! Our churches are
Gothic, the southern churches are Palladian. How different is a
basilica from York Cathedral! yet they visibly agree together. No one
would mistake either for a mosque or a Jewish temple. We may quarrel
which is the better style; one likes the basilica, another calls it
pagan.”
“That I do,” said Bateman.
“A little extreme,” said Campbell, “a little extreme, as usual. The
basilica is beautiful in its place. There are two things which Gothic
cannot show—the line or forest of round polished columns, and the
graceful dome, circling above one's head like the blue heaven itself.”
All parties were glad of this diversion from the religious dispute;
so they continued the lighter conversation which had succeeded it with
considerable earnestness.
“I fear I must confess,” said Willis, “that the churches at Rome do
not affect me like the Gothic; I reverence them, I feel awe in them,
but I love, I feel a sensible pleasure at the sight of the Gothic
arch.”
“There are other reasons for that in Rome,” said Campbell; “the
churches are so unfinished, so untidy. Rome is a city of ruins! the
Christian temples are built on ruins, and they themselves are generally
dilapidated or decayed; thus they are ruins of ruins.” Campbell was on
an easier subject than that of Anglo-Catholicism, and, no one
interrupting him, he proceeded flowingly: “In Rome you have huge high
buttresses in the place of columns, and these not cased with marble,
but of cold white plaster or paint. They impart an indescribable
forlorn look to the churches.”
Willis said he often wondered what took so many foreigners, that is,
Protestants, to Rome; it was so dreary, so melancholy a place; a number
of old, crumbling, shapeless brick masses, the ground unlevelled, the
straight causeways fenced by high monotonous walls, the points of
attraction straggling over broad solitudes, faded palaces, trees
universally pollarded, streets ankle deep in filth or eyes-and-mouth
deep in a cloud of whirling dust and straws, the climate most
capricious, the evening air most perilous. Naples was an earthly
paradise; but Rome was a city of faith. To seek the shrines that it
contained was a veritable penance, as was fitting. He understood
Catholics going there; he was perplexed at Protestants.
“There is a spell about the limina Apostolorum,” said
Charles; “St. Peter and St. Paul are not there for nothing.”
“There is a more tangible reason,” said Campbell; “it is a place
where persons of all nations are to be found; no society is so varied
as the Roman. You go to a ballroom; your host, whom you bow to in the
first apartment, is a Frenchman; as you advance your eye catches
Massena's granddaughter in conversation with Mustapha Pasha; you soon
find yourself seated between a Yankee chargé d'affaires and a
Russian colonel; and an Englishman is playing the fool in front of
you.”
Here Campbell looked at his watch, and then at Willis, whom he had
driven over to Melford to return Bateman's call. It was time for them
to be going, or they would be overtaken by the evening. Bateman, who
had remained in a state of great dissatisfaction since he last spoke,
which had not been for a quarter of an hour past, did not find himself
in spirits to try much to detain either them or Reding; so he was
speedily left to himself. He drew his chair to the fire, and for a
while felt nothing more than a heavy load of disgust. After a time,
however, his thoughts began to draw themselves out into series, and
took the following form: “It's too bad, too bad,” he said; “Campbell is
a very clever man—far cleverer than I am; a well-read man, too; but he
has no tact, no tact. It is deplorable; Reding's coming was one
misfortune; however, we might have got over that, we might have even
turned it to an advantage; but to use such arguments as he did! how
could he hope to convince him? he made us both a mere
laughing-stock.... How did he throw off? Oh, he said that the Rubrics
were not binding. Who ever heard such a thing—at least from an
Anglo-Catholic? Why pretend to be a good Catholic with such views?
better call himself a Protestant or Erastian at once, and one would
know where to find him. Such a bad impression it must make on Willis; I
saw it did; he could hardly keep from smiling: but Campbell has no tact
at all. He goes on, on, his own way, bringing out his own thoughts,
which are very clever, original certainly, but never considering his
company. And he's so positive, so knock-me-down; it is quite
unpleasant, I don't know how to sit it sometimes. Oh, it is a cruel
thing this—the effect must be wretched. Poor Willis! I declare I don't
think we have moved him one inch, I really don't. I fancied at one time
he was even laughing at me.... What was it he said afterwards?
there was something else, I know. I recollect; that the Catholic Church
was in ruins, had broken to pieces. What a paradox! who'll believe that
but he? I declare I am so vexed I don't know what to be at.” He jumped
up and began walking to and fro. “But all this is because the Bishops
won't interfere; one can't say it, that's the worst, but they are at
the bottom of the evil. They have but to put out their little finger
and enforce the Rubrics, and then the whole controversy would be at an
end.... I knew there was something else, yes! He said we need not fast!
But Cambridge men are always peculiar, they always have some whim or
other; he ought to have been at Oxford, and we should have made a man
of him. He has many good points, but he runs theories, and rides
hobbies, and drives consequences, to death.”
Here he was interrupted by his clerk, who told him that John Tims
had taken his oath that his wife should not be churched before the
congregation, and was half-minded to take his infant to the Methodists
for baptism; and his thoughts took a different direction.