_June 1._
DICK was right! I shall never go back to the convent.
The next day after the May games, my mother, according to her promise,
put into my hand Master Tyndale's New Testament, and with it a copy
of the same in Latin—the Vulgate, as 'tis called—bidding me compare
as I read. Since then every leisure moment has been spent in reading
and studying and comparing, and oh, in what a new world of thought and
feeling and experience do I find myself! What clouds have cleared away
from my mind!
I have spent many hours closeted with my mother, and while our fingers
worked at Harry's outfit, our minds were busy with these great themes.
No, I never can go back, never can take the veil! I find in the word of
God no warrant for any such life.
How astonished I was to find that St. Peter and St. James and other
of the Apostles had been married—that our Lady herself seems to have
lived at home with her husband like any other woman—and that she is
nowhere represented as bearing any rule, or being of more authority in
the Church than any other woman. Indeed, our Lord Himself said that any
one who had His word and kept it, was as near to Him as His mother—"the
same is my brother, and sister, and mother"—are His words. And then
this very Gospel, which the priests keep so jealously from us, was at
the first preached to the common folk in those parts—they followed Him
in crowds to hear His words, and indeed very few of the better or more
religious class followed Him at all. But I cannot write down all my
thoughts—they are too new and too precious. I must think them over.
My mother tells me that the chapman whom we saw at the May games, and
who stayed more than one night here and at the Court, was a member
of the fraternity known among themselves as the Christian Brothers—a
company of merchants and men of substance who devote their time, their
means, yea and their lives also to spreading the word of God in this
land. This same Master Bradbury's stock in trade consisted chiefly of
Testaments, or fragments of the same, which he disseminated wherever he
found opportunity.
My mother, I can see, builds nothing at all on his Majesty's favor for
the new religion. She says he may quarrel with the Pope about this
matter of the divorce, but if so, 'twill be but to make himself Pope
instead. He is already highly enraged at Tyndale, because of his letter
against the divorce, and hath forbidden the circulation of his books;
but, said my mother, he might as well forbid the wind to blow.
'Tis even as Master Ellenwood said—like making a breach in the dykes
and forbidding the sea to run through.
But I can't help hoping more than my mother does—perhaps because I am
younger. Anyhow I am sure I shall never be sorry that I have come to
know the true Gospel. It has cleared away many doubts and fears and
cares from my mind. All anxiety for my mother's soul, for one thing;
because, though she believed as she was taught, and never saw this
book, yet I am sure she trusted in God for her salvation, and served
Him according to the light that she had. As for my dear Amice, I feel
sure that she has obtained the object of her old ambition, though in a
far different way from that she proposed for herself, and is now indeed
a saint—a glorified saint, to go no more out from His presence forever,
in whom she trusted. Oh, that dear Mother Gertrude could have this
comfort about one whom she mourns as eternally condemned to perdition!
I cannot give it her—I can only pray for her and—what a word have I
here written! Only pray for her, forsooth!
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