Part 13 (1/2)

”Nonsense,” answered Charles; ”you shouldn't say such things, even in jest.”

”I don't jest; I am in earnest: you are plainly on the road.”

”Well, if I am, you have put me on it,” said Reding, wis.h.i.+ng to get away from the subject as quick as he could; ”for you are ever talking against shams, and laughing at King Charles and Laud, Bateman, White, rood-lofts, and piscinas.”

”Now you are a Puseyite,” said Sheffield in surprise.

”You give me the name of a very good man, whom I hardly know by sight,”

said Reding; ”but I mean, that n.o.body knows what to believe, no one has a definite faith, but the Catholics and the Puseyites; no one says, 'This is true, that is false; this comes from the Apostles, that does not.'”

”Then would you believe a Turk,” asked Sheffield, ”who came to you with his 'One Allah, and Mahomet his Prophet'?”

”I did not say a creed was everything,” answered Reding, ”or that a religion could not be false which had a creed; but a religion can't be true which has none.”

”Well, somehow that doesn't strike me,” said Sheffield.

”Now there was Vincent at the end of term, after you had gone down,”

continued Charles; ”you know I stayed up for Littlego; and he was very civil, very civil indeed. I had a talk with him about Oxford parties, and he pleased me very much at the time; but afterwards, the more I thought of what he said, the less was I satisfied; that is, I had got nothing definite from him. He did not say, 'This is true, that is false;' but 'Be true, be true, be good, be good, don't go too far, keep in the mean, have your eyes about you, eschew parties, follow our divines, all of them;'--all which was but putting salt on the bird's tail. I want some practical direction, not abstract truths.”

”Vincent is a humbug,” said Sheffield.

”Dr. Pusey, on the other hand,” continued Charles, ”is said always to be decisive. He says, 'This is Apostolic, that's in the Fathers; St.

Cyprian says this, St. Augustine denies that; this is safe, that's wrong; I bid you, I forbid you.' I understand all this; but I don't understand having duties put on me which are too much for me. I don't understand, I dislike, having a will of my own, when I have not the means to use it justly. In such a case, to tell me to act of myself, is like Pharaoh setting the Israelites to make bricks without straw.

Setting me to inquire, to judge, to decide, forsooth! it's absurd; who has taught me?”

”But the Puseyites are not always so distinct,” said Sheffield; ”there's Smith, he never speaks decidedly in difficult questions. I know a man who was going to remain in Italy for some years, at a distance from any English chapel,--he could not help it,--and who came to ask him if he might communicate in the Catholic churches; he could not get an answer from him; he would not say yes or no.”

”Then he won't have many followers, that's all,” said Charles.

”But he has more than Dr. Pusey,” answered Sheffield.

”Well, I can't understand it,” said Charles; ”he ought not; perhaps they won't stay.”

”The truth is,” said Sheffield, ”I suspect he is more of a sceptic at bottom.”

”Well, I honour the man who builds up,” said Reding, ”and I despise the man who breaks down.”

”I am inclined to think you have a wrong notion of building up and pulling down,” answered Sheffield; ”Coventry, in his 'Dissertations,'

makes it quite clear that Christianity is not a religion of doctrines.”

”Who is Coventry?”

”Not know Coventry? he is one of the most original writers of the day; he's an American, and, I believe, a congregationalist. Oh, I a.s.sure you, you should read Coventry, although he is wrong on the question of Church-government: you are not well _au courant_ with the literature of the day unless you do. He is no party man; he is a correspondent of the first men of the day; he stopped with the Dean of Oxford when he was in England, who has published an English edition of his 'Dissertations,'

with a Preface; and he and Lord Newlights were said to be the two most witty men at the meeting of the British a.s.sociation, two years ago.”

”I don't like Lord Newlights,” said Charles, ”he seems to me to have no principle; that is, no fixed, definite religious principle. You don't know where to find him. This is what my father thinks; I have often heard him speak of him.”

”It's curious you should use the word _principle_,” said Sheffield; ”for it is that which Coventry lays such stress on. He says that Christianity has no creed; that this is the very point in which it is distinguished from other religions; that you will search the New Testament in vain for a creed; but that Scripture is full of _principles_. The view is very ingenious, and seemed to me true, when I read the book. According to him, then, Christianity is not a religion of doctrines or mysteries; and if you are looking for dogmatism in Scripture, it's a mistake.”