“News which proves I was not mistaken the other day when I told you the
beautiful Faustina would take good care to avenge you. Only, I did not
think it would be so soon.”
Brought back so suddenly to the most painful reality of my life, I was the
more startled and confounded at what he said. Lando’s gossip was usually
odious to me; but now, instead of imposing silence on him, I insisted, on
the contrary, that he should conceal nothing from me.
“Well, then,” continued he, “it seems the fair Milanese, notwithstanding
her _belle passion_ for Lorenzo, had never been able to console herself
for being deprived of the duchess’ coronet on which she had depended. So
while neglecting nothing to maintain the ascendency she had regained over
him, she was not wholly indifferent to the homage of a certain potentate
from the Danube who offered to share with her his principality and his
millions. She was still hesitating, it seems, between ambition and love,
when Lorenzo, who had some suspicion, and was on the alert, unexpectedly
came upon his rival. Then there was a violent scene and high words, which
ended in a challenge. They were on the point of fighting when the lady
prevented the affair from going any further by declaring she would give
her hand to the potentate!... So in a short time, I imagine,” continued
Lando, rubbing his hands, “Donna Faustina will take her departure for the
banks of the Danube. You will be delivered for ever from her, and we shall
soon see Lorenzo come home in a terrible humor. But, frankly, it is good
enough for him. This punishment is not the hundredth part of what he
merits when he has a wife like you!”
“O merciful heaven! what a fate is mine! and what a husband I am obliged
to immolate myself to!...”
Such was my first thought on hearing this account, and an hour after, when
I went to my chamber, I had not yet overcome the bitterness and agitation
it caused me. My temptation became stronger and more formidable than ever,
and the desire again sprang up in my heart to retract the sentence I had
so recently pronounced. To see him, hear him, sometimes speak to him, and
meet his sympathetic glance—was all this really forbidden me? Would this
be failing in my duty to the husband who had outraged me so publicly? No,
no, it could not be.... No one yet knew Gilbert was to leave Naples. A
line, a word, from me, would suffice to prevent his departure. The new
life created by his presence would continue as if nothing had happened
that ought to terminate it!... I had already seized my pen and written the
word ... when suddenly there awoke in my memory the words of Livia: “Think
of God, whom he has offended a thousand times more than he has you”; and
afterwards these: “If you seek likewise to be released, your fall will be
speedy, rapid, and terrible.”
The recollection of these words stopped me and made me shudder. I now
perceived what gradations I had passed through within a month. I felt that
Livia was right—should I descend from the height I had just attained, it
would indeed be to fall lower than I was before, and perhaps to the lowest
depths!
My sister in her quiet cell still aided me with her prayers, which
doubtless augmented the increasing light in my soul. I tore up the note I
had begun to write, and, again preparing myself to struggle and suffer
more than ever, I calmly renewed the resolution I had been so near
breaking. It seemed to me this slight victory, though it did not lessen my
sadness, added to my strength, and made the jewel within gleam with a
lustre somewhat brighter than before.
Another General Convention Of The Protestant Episcopal Church.
The late convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church has, we believe,
disappointed everybody. With skilful care to avoid anything which might
cause a rupture, the various factions of this large and respectable
denomination have spoken to each other, and parted. The world is none the
wiser, and we hardly think that _they_ are. High‐Churchmen have maintained
their ground with smooth dignity; Low‐Churchmen have gained some points,
while they have lost others; and Ritualists have hidden themselves in
silence. If neither party is suited, there is the consolation that no one
is pleased; and from this universal negative we presume the conclusion
comes to an universal affirmative that all are pleased. We have long ago
foreseen this result, and they who, arguing from the defection of Bishop
Cummins, expected to hear something decisive in the way of doctrine, have
learned how peace may be maintained by simply abstaining from war. The
Episcopal Church has no fixed creed. Its articles of faith contradict its
offices. Its various members interpret both, so that from the Babel of
conflicting opinions no certain sound can be heard. Thus it has been, and
thus it will be to the end. There is only one thing on which Episcopalians
unite—namely, hostility to the Catholic Church. With various degrees of
ignorance or honesty, they are enemies of the only body which teaches with
authority, whose forms they counterfeit by sad travesties or servile
imitations.
The action of this convention, as far as it concerns the interior
structure of the church, which they profess to have modelled after the
American Constitution, has no particular interest for the world. Some
improvement may have been made in the canons, of which we can be no
judges. Legislation is one of the peculiarities of our day. If it be
harmless, it is looked upon as a safe use of force and nerve which,
expended in another direction, might have done damage. We proceed to
notice a few things which are of importance, and they are the only acts of
the convention which, on the reading of the journal, strike us as of any
consequence.
We are happy to be able to congratulate our friends on the rejection of
the _provincial system_. With them it would have worked very badly,
because a province supposes some central government and a unit in
authority. When a province separates from its parent state, it becomes
independent. If there be no home government, there can be no province,
properly so‐called. The committee very _learnedly_ explains the
constitution of the primitive church, and concludes that it would not
apply to them, and could not without injury be forced upon them.
“Your committee assume that the terms ‘provincial system’ are used
in the resolution in their full ecclesiastical and primitive
sense. In the early church there were: 1. the parish; 2, the
diocese; 3, the province; 4, the patriarchate. The parish had its
priest, the diocese its bishop, the province its archbishop, the
patriarchate its patriarch. Among these, the dominant and most
active power was the province with its archbishop. Speaking
generally, we may say that it possessed the powers of this body
and of the House of Bishops, and many of the powers of our
diocesan councils. The provinces were disconnected and
independent, except as, by very slender ties, they were united in
the patriarchate. Such a system would dismember this church, and
out of this now compact, now united body create five, or seven, or
ten separate churches. The ties which may at first unite them will
grow weaker and weaker. However similar they may be at the moment
of dismemberment, at that moment the process of divergence will
begin, and it will go on until the separation will be as great as
that now existing between York and Canterbury. Those provinces now
communicate with each other only informally.
“Any institution of provinces or provincial synods, with powers
subject at all times to revocation by the General Convention,
would be useless and illusory. The provinces, if invested with
irrevocable powers, and discharged from the constant and necessary
authority and supervision of the General Convention, certainly
might, and probably would, soon diverge into widely differing
practices and opinions, engendering ecclesiastical conflicts,
threatening the unity of our church.”
Nothing could be plainer than this argument. In any Protestant
organization, the least separation makes an independent church. It could
not be otherwise where there is no infallible authority and no divine
government to bind all the members to one head. It must be sad to the
lovers of primitive purity to know how imperfect the constitution of the
early church was. Everything tended to disintegration, and a more perfect
system has been found out by the wisdom of modern days. In the mind of the
committee, the hand of God had nothing to do with the primitive church;
for there is only _one_ author of confusion and disorder. These learned
antiquarians never heard of the See of Rome, and do not know that our Lord
said to Peter, “Thou art the rock, and on this rock will I build my
church.” Viewing them, however, from their own standpoint, we are glad to
note their acuteness, and to congratulate them that they have not
_divided_ themselves.
It appears also that there was some disposition to consider the American
Episcopal Church as a province of the English, and to treat the Archbishop
of Canterbury as a kind of patriarch. This disposition was rebuked by the
convention. The following are among the remarks made in the House of
Deputies which show that the _quasi_ mission of the Bishop of Lichfield
was fruitless:
“The right reverend gentleman who has taken so strong an interest
in this subject has made a proposition, and the proposition is
that we should become one great province, if you please, with the
Archbishop of Canterbury as metropolitan of these United States
for the nonce, and that in all these conferences the Archbishop of
Canterbury, as the great metropolitan or patriarch, is to preside.
“I know that many are wont to call the Church of England the
mother church. I hold that she is not. If so, I claim her to be
nothing but a very poor stepmother. The church in this country
never was perfected till she got her perfection by the
consecration of Seabury from the bishops of Scotland; and if we
acknowledge a mother other than the mother church of Jerusalem
(which I am not prepared to acknowledge), we must acknowledge
Scotland, not England.
“I could say a great deal more on this subject—full of it I am;
but, under the circumstances, I think I have said enough to
satisfy the members of this house that they had better let it
alone, and wait till the bishops tell us what they think of it.
They are the persons interested. They accepted the first
invitation without asking us ‘with your leave’ or ‘by your leave.’
Now, after they have been bluffed, and this church, I would say,
insulted as it has been by the Dean of Canterbury, and by the
prearrangement of keeping out the very question which these
gentlemen, at a large expense of time and money, went to attend
to, why not leave them first to express their opinion? My word for
it, from what I know of the self‐respect of the members of that
house, if you wait for that, you will wait to the end of the term.
“There are several parties to this movement, of different
temperaments. One of them is the great apostolic prelate whom we
have welcomed twice to this convention—the illustrious prelate, of
whom I speak with the most unbounded admiration as a churchman, as
a gentleman, as a historian, as a man. In every capacity in which
I can know human nature, he deserves honor and affection. I do not
enter into the motives of this movement, but I simply say that he
is affirmatively moving, in my belief, to gratify what he has
largely developed in his great nature—the power of organism. He
does wish, I have no doubt, something like an organic union of the
two churches of the two great English‐speaking races. That
movement, to a certain extent, is creditable and desirable, but to
a certain other extent it is extremely dangerous and utterly
inadmissible.”
The organic unity of the Anglican with the American Episcopal Church is as
far from perfect as the union of provinces would prove if the _primitive_
system, as stated by the learned committee, were adopted. The independence
of the two churches is as complete as that of the Presbyterian or
Methodist denominations in this country. Neither is bound by the doctrinal
decisions of the other. This being the case, we hardly understand the full
significance of the ceremony by which an “alms‐basin” was presented by the
General Convention to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop of
Lichfield, explaining his part in the august rite, says:
“It was my happiness to present that alms‐basin to the Archbishop
of Canterbury in concert with one whose loss we all lament, who is
now with God in his rest—Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, who, hand‐in‐
hand with me, each of us holding the alms‐basin by one hand and on
bended knee, presented that alms‐basin for the Lord’s table in S.
Paul’s Cathedral, on the fourth of July, on that occasion.”