His listener folded his arms tightly over his breast and nodded for
answer.
"Ah, yes; ah, yes," continued the Bishop, musingly, "do I not know?
Was I not even as thou in my youthful days? But I am an old man now,
and many things lie bathed in the clear white light of knowledge that
then lay darkly shrouded in mystery. My dear son, you are only one of
many who fix their eyes on what should have been, instead of on what
really was. Ye bury your faces within the pages of the Bible, and if ye
look up once to see what is going on about you, it is only to contrast
with impatience the teaching and example of the Church Visible with
the teaching and example of Christ and His disciples. Ye are willing
to look on the Church as it now is, and God knows there are faults and
crimes enough to excuse some of your impatience, but ye refuse to look
at the history of the Church, and at the magnificent service it has
rendered in the cause of humanity. Ye refuse to consider gravely and
seriously the work that it has accomplished, and to ask yourselves if
any other human agency could have done a tenth as well. You critics
are as men who have been saved by a bridge from a wild and devastating
stream, and now once safely crossed, ye kneel down--not to thank God
Almighty for having saved you, but to detect the flaws in the bridge."
Annys could not but be moved by the eloquence of the old man. He began
to understand something of the great power which had been wielded from
the throne of Ely. Yet he waited not with his answer, "Christianity
is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep
up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to
Christ as St. Francis did before me."
"Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world
needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after
his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the
great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?"
Annys remained silent.
"The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one
Rule," went on the Bishop. "Why think you it was that the wolves of
the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks
and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their
onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the
Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest
statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a
fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall
brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the
early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the
reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others.
It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan,
Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours,
Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the
world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great
when he placed the diadem of the Cæsars on the Frankish Emperor's brow;
yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not
quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow
that would have shattered the sword."
"Ah, but how much finer had the Church of Christ been built up even as
Solomon would have had it, if it could have truly been said of the Head
of the Church:--
"'He shall not put his trust in horse or rider, and bow, nor shall he
multiply unto himself gold and silver for war, for he shall smite the
earth with the word of his mouth.'"
"A beautiful dream, no more, my son. Take the Crusades; how easy is it
for critics to aver that an intriguing Pope started them to increase
his own glory and gratify his sense of power. Yet hast ever thought
whether the peoples of Europe would not have fallen upon and destroyed
one another but for the wise craft of a leader who united them by
finding a common enemy? Now do not misunderstand me; no one more than
I realizes the awful sins of the Schismatic Popes, the terrible greed
of some of the powerful Churchmen, their criminal neglect of their
charges; no one realizes more that the people have wrongs that should
be righted. But I am sure it is for the good of the people that these
wrongs be righted from within the Church. The people have no better
friend than the Church. It has been the one Institution which has
sought out the individual, and asked of him only what service he could
render it. In its bosom it has held the divine spark of the equality
of man, and kept it there and protected it while the world was not yet
ready for it. It has nourished it until it will be a flame great enough
to light the torch of Freedom.
"We agree, save that you think the world is ripe for that spark, and I
know that it is not; loosed now, it will but scorch and sear; it is not
ready to illumine."
Annys had listened with profound earnestness to the impetuous words of
the great prelate; before he could respond, the speaker continued,
with a great light of enthusiasm in his face:--
"Think on the refrain which you know well. Con it when you are tempted
to think that the Church has done naught for the people:--
"'Had they (the priests) been out of religion,
They must have hanged at the plowe.
Threshing and diking fro towne to towne,
With sorrie meat, and not halfe ynowe.'
"What can that mean, save that the Church hath taken up into its bosom
the men who otherwise had no career save the plough? True, the time
has come when the Church once again needs to be drawn nearer to the
people--the people who all yearn for it and need it. Do not lead the
people away from it, lest in the end you destroy their faith and undo
them. The Church needs just such workers as thou; come to us and work
with us. Stand no longer without!"
At this appeal, the young poor priest suddenly roused himself.
"What? stand no longer without! work with you! with a Church whose head
hath launched bull after bull against my master and his teachings? Come
within a Church that sets the ruling of a man above the words of Holy
Writ? The chief article of my creed is that the Gospel suffices for
the salvation of Christians without the keeping of ceremonials and
statutes that have been made by sinful and unknowing men. What work has
Holy Church for me? Surely there are others who can mouth more glibly
than I the words of the Mass, and who are more deeply versed in the
labyrinths of canonical lore."
"What canst thou?" replied the Bishop, warmly, "everything! Once
within the Church, thou canst raise the authority of the Scriptures,
beat down the vicious barriers that exist between the people and the
prelates. Remember, one blow from within counts for ten from without.
Come within, and help me in my fight against foreigners who care naught
for the people who are their charge, foreigners who never deign to
approach these shores, save perchance to count the moneys that are
yielded from their sees." Then with a swift change his voice softened,
and there was a pathetic appeal in it. "I have fought hard for more
than thirty years," he pleaded. "I am worn in body and spirit; if I die
to-morrow without providing for a successor, doubtless all that I have
accomplished will be as naught. The old conditions in this diocese will
arise again. There are many priests and abbots--ay! and some higher
than they--who will click their heels gleefully over my grave. Come to
Ely and be its Archdeacon. I--nay!--the Church of Christ has need of
thee. Come!"
The poor priest was astounded. How could this be that the archdeaconate
of Ely should be offered to a poor priest, one of Wyclif's band, so
distrusted and hated by Rome?
"You, the Bishop of Ely, you offer me this? It is no jest?"
The Bishop smiled. "Well, I do not mind confessing that it was no
easy matter to bring about. Yet why should we go on permitting you
to take people away from the Church? I am persuaded that the people
need the Church as much as the Church needs the people. They have your
confidence; I want you to bring them back to the altar."
"But, Father, the instant I doff this russet gown and don the albe and
stole, that instant the people's confidence in me is gone."
"I cannot believe it has gone so far as that."
"Yea, I say it. It is too late to try to drag the people back. They
have grown weary of having fat and lazy priests prate to them, with
white hand on full belly, of patience and humility and duty to their
overlords. Why do the people believe in me? Why do they follow me?
Because they wot well that my meals are as uncertain as their own,
that my face is roughened by the same wind that roughens theirs.
Because I can look into their faces and say, 'I too have a-hungered, I
too have a-thirsted, I too have sweated in the fields.'"
The Bishop looked very old and tired. A sob rose suddenly in the poor
priest's throat. To his own surprise, suddenly he flung himself upon
his knees before the couch.
"Little thought I, Father, when I came here with defiance and distrust
in my heart, that I would fling myself on my knees before you; yet it
is true that I feel it as a great personal sorrow that I cannot both
stay with you and also answer the call of my master. But I cannot
desert my people. Where they turn up the soil, where they guide the
plough, where their tired backs bend, where the wind and the hail beat
down upon them in the fields, there is my place, and there I must go."
The Bishop's sensitive face quivered with emotion. He remained silent
an instant and then looked up into the young man's face. "Wilt promise
me one thing?"
"If I can, Father."
"Wilt preach the sermon in the Cathedral next Sunday?"
Annys hesitated an instant before he replied. "Only to give the
sermon," he stipulated.
"I shall celebrate the Mass myself. I would like you to give the sermon
just as you are. There will be a goodly number of people, and it is my
whim that you should be heard once from the pulpit. It will come with a
new authority. Besides," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "I should
like to have some of our priests hear it. It might not be a bad thing
for the Nuncio himself."
And thus, before he departed, Robert Annys had given his promise to
deliver the sermon on the following Sunday at Ely.
The Bishop did not yet acknowledge himself defeated. Well he knew the
magnetism of the wonderful old church. Well he knew that men did not
preach before three thousand souls in Ely Minster and then lightly step
forth on their way again.