Great God! there is no safety here below;
Thou art my fortress; thou that seem’st my foe,
’Tis thou that strik’st the stroke, must guard the blow.
QUARLES.
Although the malice of the hypocrite Daws had been disappointed by the
result of his wicked artifices at Cheddar fair, and the worthy Noble
had been saved from the injury and ruin which a lawless rabble were
instigated to inflict on that peaceful man of God, yet Daws, being
unsuspected and secure from detection, did not relax his efforts for
the persecution and ejectment of Noble.
He contrived to have him haled before a committee of religious inquiry
which visited those parts soon after; but here again he was baffled:
for one of the commissioners being pricked in his conscience by
observing the godly simplicity of the good parson of Cheddar, and the
sincerity of his love to the blessed Saviour of the world, procured
his dismissal from that ordeal unharmed. Nevertheless Daws continued
to work secretly for his own ends, and gave himself no rest in the
pursuit of his great object. He had the reputation of great strictness
and sanctity as a minister,--and the outward man imposed upon many; in
his heart he cared not for the souls of men; his sins were those which
often and long escape the detection of the world, and which can be
indulged under the cloak of religious zeal without exciting the
suspicions of any, but those honest and sagacious persons who can
detect a character by indications of its spirit too slight and fine to
be admitted as important by the multitude. He was avaricious and
tyrannical: money was his idol; and to subject the minds of a
congregation was his next delight. From his pulpit he dealt forth the
most fierce and cruel fulminations against all unbelievers. Nor was he
without many trembling followers, whom he scolded and comforted,
according to the caprice of his own temper.
“He damned the sins he had no mind to,
And spared the few he was inclined to.”
In his creed, the prayers and alms of any one who did not exactly
entertain his notions of faith were sins, and would be visited as
such. Now Parson Noble was a minister who bowed his knees before the
Father of mercies as a self-abased sinner, confessing himself without
grace or strength to will or to do, save of God’s free mercy,
communicated through and for Christ’s sake. He taught all his people
that if they asked the gifts and graces of repentance and faith in
that precious name they could not be denied, and should never be sent
empty away: to proclaim the message of peace and reconciliation was
his delight; to invite all freely, to tell of a pardon to the human
race, which, under the present dispensation of mercy, was the common
right of all who were _willing_ to accept it, was his constant
practice; and he showed them plainly that if they came not to the
light, it was because they loved darkness; because they could not part
with their sins, and shrunk from the Gospel as a rule of life. “Love,”
he would say, “worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the
fulfilling of the law. Love is keeping the commandments: God is love,
from whom they came. Jesus is love, by whom they were taught,
magnified, and perfectly obeyed, that in his sacrifice of himself, as
a pure and spotless victim, we might have an all-sufficient atonement,
and hope towards a God who had taken our nature upon him, and been
manifest in the flesh.” Now Daws held that Noble was a blind leader of
the blind, and that both would fall into the ditch; and he desired,
first, the proceeds of Cheddar living in his pocket, and, next, the
gratification of telling the flock of Noble that they were one and all
in the broad road to destruction.
Nor did this insidious priest fail to spread all sorts of calumnies
about the poor unconscious vicar, and to irritate many furious
zealots against him. He kept up a constant correspondence with a
political partisan in London, to whom he gave much information on
local and county matters, stretching his invention not a little when
he had to tell any thing against the Royalists of those parts. By this
means he got a name as a person well affected to the Parliament, and
greatly interested in the cause of religious liberty.
It so happened, that, in the November immediately following the
breaking out of the war, and the great battle of Keinton, a body of
Parliamentarian horse being quartered in his neighbourhood, Daws found
a fit instrument for his purposes on Cheddar, in a most furious and
bigotted fanatic, who commanded a troop of horse. This man was easily
persuaded that he could not render a more acceptable service to God
than by destroying with fire and sword all places, all persons, and
all things, which were, in his own view, defiled, and idolatrous, and
impure; and he therefore sallied forth against the church and the
parson of Cheddar as he would against a temple and a priest of Baal.
On the day on which old Noble was ejected from Cheddar, with many
circumstances of cruelty and hardship, he arose, as usual, with some
fears, but with unshaken trust in the goodness and mercy of an
all-wise and almighty Father. The day was cold, and not a sunbeam was
admitted through the cloud and gloom which brooded over all things. It
chanced that the stout and resolute old franklin Blount had determined
that his grandchild should be publicly baptized at the same ancient
font at which his own venerable forehead had been signed with the sign
of the cross. There was some doubt in the mind of his son-in-law,
Hargood, whether it was prudent at that moment of busy persecution, on
the part of the county committee, to make so open a display of devout
attachment to the hallowed ceremony of a christening. His loving
daughter, from a tender apprehension about her infant’s safety, if any
thing should fall out amiss, would have stolen to church, at the
earliest possible hour, and in the most quiet manner. However, habits
of submission to her father, formed by an admiration of his character,
were of so long a growth, and so deeply rooted, that the remonstrance
of her fears was not ventured on; indeed Blount would have held it
craven to yield to the timid suggestions of prudence, where he looked
to a principle in his conduct. It is not improbable that some shadow
of a domestic tragedy had been cast upon the old man’s solitary
thoughts; for, within a few days past, there had been observable in
his manner a mixture of severity and gentleness at once strange and
affecting. He had twice been found in the large oak parlour alone,
reading from the Book of Martyrs, which was there chained upon a tall
desk. It is true that on both these occasions he had whistled and
walked away quick; but it was afterwards remembered. Howbeit, at ten
o’clock in the forenoon, there issued from the porch of the franklin’s
old mansion a small party consisting of about eight persons, male and
female: one of the last bore in her arms an infant so folded up and
hidden in a large mantle of thick white woollen, that nothing but a
little outline of the babe could be seen, and not a breath of the keen
wintry wind could penetrate to its tender frame. They moved slowly,
and in a formal order up the long straggling street; and all the
villagers who met them by the way, or looked at them from their doors,
saluted them with bows and good words, but with evident and anxious
wonder. A faithful woodman ventured to go close and whisper to Master
Blount that he was just come in from Axbridge, and saw some of the
rascal Roundheads mustering, and that he heard say, at the Old
Pack-horse Inn, that they were going to march for Wells by the road of
Cheddar. “Well, let them come,” said the franklin; “we are not doing
any thing to be ashamed of: let them see us doing as their forefathers
did before us, and redden in the face for their own falsehood; ‘church
and king’ is an old cry and a good one: out upon the knaves!--God will
defend his own.”
The party went forward; and having reached the churchyard, passed
into the church by the low chancel door, walked down the great aisle,
and turned into the southern transept. Here stood the font; here the
worthy parson awaited them, and his wife also, who was by a promise of
long date to stand as godmother to the child. The old stone font,
round which this pious family were assembled, had long been an object
of great veneration to the inhabitants of Cheddar. It was octagonal in
form, and supported upon a clustered shaft of Purbeck marble. The
compartments on its sides were sculptured with scenes from Holy Writ.
In one was represented the circumcision of Christ; in another the same
blessed Lord was figured in manhood, with a little child in his arms,
and his disciples standing round: through age and injury the subjects
in the other compartments were no longer discernible.
Above the font was a window of painted glass, which, as there was no
light of the sun to illuminate its gorgeous groups, did only present
to the eye a dim cold grandeur;--a grave and visionary glory, through
which, as in the pages of unaccomplished prophecy, might be caught
bright glimpses of pale and celestial faces, and yet garments crimson
withal, as though they had been rolled in blood.
In this solemn light, and around this sacred font, the family of
Blount reverently kneeled, and the service proceeded. The babe lay
still and unconscious in the arms of the old franklin’s wife; and
nothing told of its young life but a soft breath from parted lips, and
a faint flush upon a waxen cheek. By its side knelt the fair mother,
delicate and colourless, with eyes bent on the ground, and a forehead
over which fears flitted, and disturbed her prayers.
Of all the party none save the sweet infant was so calm as Blount
himself. Upon the throne of the old man’s heart his God was seated,
and his soul was at peace. In fancy and in spirit he was again the
subject of that holy rite. When Noble took the babe in his arms, and
it opened its blue eyes and stretched out its little helpless hands,
and as it felt the sprinkled water, and was signed with the sign of
the cross, gave that little cry for which mother and nurse listen so
fondly, a few large tears dropped from the eyelids of the stalwart
franklin, and the voice of Noble faltered a little as he saw them
fall. The solemn declaration by which the child is received into
Christ’s flock was completed, and was responded to by the deep and
fervent Amen of Blount, and the gentler tones of those around him; and
the good parson was proceeding to the thanksgiving that follows, when
that fearful sound, which is made up of the trampling of horses, and
the rattle of harness, and the blast of the trumpet, was heard at the
church doors in the opposite transept. Their heavy leaves were thrown
open with a sudden and violent crash, and two of the horsemen rode
into the body of the church, accompanied by three severe and sour
looking persons in sad coloured doublets, and narrow crowned hats, and
followed by some low rabble, with whom, in fear and curiosity, a few
of the good folk of Cheddar intermingled.
“I have a message for thee, thou priest of Baal,--thou blind leader of
the blind,--thou whited wall,” said he, whose caparisons bespoke him
the chief, laying the flat of his sword with a smart stroke upon the
neck of Noble. “Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting:
thou must come with me; thy mummeries and thy knaveries shall no more
pollute the sanctuary.”
“Dost thou not fear God?” said the meek but undaunted Noble, with a
firm voice and unshrinking mien. “Dost thou not fear God, that thus
thou comest to his holy temple? To what manner of man was it told,
that it were better for him a millstone were tied about his neck, and
he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little
ones? I tell thee, the angel of that helpless babe doth, even now,
behold the face of his Father, which is in heaven, and beareth witness
against thee.--Go forth. I myself will follow thee, whithersoever thou
wouldest, be it to judgment or to death; but this hoof-clatter in the
courts of the Lord is a most abominable sin.”
“Now will I do so, and yet more, thou hypocrite, thou whitened
sepulchre!” so saying, the fanatic plunged his spurs into the flanks
of his frightened war-horse, but the fretted and gallant beast did
only rear, and chafe, and champ the bit. Meanwhile, the young mother,
with her child in her bosom, and the other women round her, had sunk
back into the corner of the transept in terror. Old Blount and his
son-in-law interposed between the horsemen and Noble, and demanded of
them loudly to quit the sacred building.
“I ask ye not,” said he, “as Christians, for that ye cannot be, but
for your manhood’s sake, to suffer, that these poor terrified women
pass forth with the infant in peace; for ourselves, though we be
unarmed, we will abide your wrath as best we may.”
“Let not thine eye pity,” said a harsh voice from behind the horsemen:
“blessed be he that taketh her children and dasheth them against the
stones. Woe to the idolaters! woe!--The priest shall be slain at the
altar, and the water of the Babylonish font shall be red with the
blood of sacrifice.”
The frenzied zeal of the willing fanatic being thus excited, he urged
on his powerful steed, and raised his glittering sword. The hot animal
by a weighty plunge came breast upon the font, and overthrew and brake
it, and the consecrated water was spilled upon the ground. At this
sight old Blount, with the strong arm of a Samson, caught at the
bridle, and threw back the horse and his rider with so violent a
force, that the hoofs slipped upon the smooth pavement, and they fell
together; and before they had risen, the old man had caught up a heavy
bar of wood near him, and raising the ponderous weapon with both
hands, aimed so true and so deadly a blow at the sacrilegious chief
that he never moved after; and the life-blood ran from his mouth and
ears, and flowing onward, mingled with the water from the BROKEN FONT.
Every voice was silenced,--every foot was rivetted there where it
stood. All were hushed and motionless, and every face looked ghastly.
During this awful pause, the aged franklin, exhausted by the mighty
and energetic deed, fell back against a seat, and, sinking into it,
turned pale, and his eye-sight became dim. Noble went over and took
his hand in alarm, and eagerly inquired, “What is this? what is this?
Are you wounded?”
“No,” he faintly answered, “not wounded, but--this is--death. Heavenly
Father, forgive me, for thy dear Son’s sake, for I knew not what I
did.”
His wife and daughter and his sons now gathered round him; but he was
dying, and his words were few. He tried to kiss his infant grandchild,
and he said to Noble, with a heavy sigh,--
“Your trials are coming:--I count myself happy, and commit my own dear
family and yours to him who remembers mercy in judgment;” and now,
letting fall his head on his wife’s bosom, he breathed a few times in
a struggling convulsive manner, and his spirit returned to the God who
gave it.