Part 34 (1/2)

”A thousand pardons!” said Bateman:--”not binding?--Pa.s.s it to him, Willis, if you please. Yes, it comes from a farmer, next door. I'm glad you like it.--I repeat, they _are_ binding, Campbell.”

”An odd sort of binding, when they have never bound,” answered Campbell; ”they have existed two or three hundred years; when were they ever put in force?”

”But there they are,” said Bateman, ”in the Prayer Book.”

”Yes, and there let them lie and never get out of it,” retorted Campbell; ”there they will stay till the end of the story.”

”Oh, for shame!” cried Bateman; ”you should aid your mother in a difficulty, and not be like the priest and the Levite.”

”My mother does not wish to be aided,” continued Campbell.

”Oh, how you talk! What shall I do? What can be done?” cried poor Bateman.

”Done! nothing,” said Campbell; ”is there no such thing as the desuetude of a law? Does not a law cease to be binding when it is not enforced? I appeal to Mr. Willis.”

Willis, thus addressed, answered that he was no moral theologian, but he had attended some schools, and he believed it was the Catholic rule that when a law had been promulgated, and was not observed by the majority, if the legislator knew the state of the case, and yet kept silence, he was considered _ipso facto_ to revoke it.

”What!” said Bateman to Campbell, ”do you appeal to the Romish Church?”

”No,” answered Campbell; ”I appeal to the whole Catholic Church, of which the Church of Rome happens in this particular case to be the exponent. It is plain common sense, that, if a law is not enforced, at length it ceases to be binding. Else it would be quite a tyranny; we should not know where we were. The Church of Rome does but give expression to this common-sense view.”

”Well, then,” said Bateman, ”I will appeal to the Church of Rome too.

Rome is part of the Catholic Church as well as we: since, then, the Romish Church has ever kept up fastings the ordinance is not abolished; the 'greater part' of the Catholic Church has always observed it.”

”But it has not,” said Campbell; ”it now dispenses with fasts, as you have heard.”

Willis interposed to ask a question. ”Do you mean then,” he said to Bateman, ”that the Church of England and the Church of Rome make one Church?”

”Most certainly,” answered Bateman.

”Is it possible?” said Willis; ”in what sense of the word _one_?”

”In every sense,” answered Bateman, ”but that of intercommunion.”

”That is, I suppose,” said Willis, ”they are one, except that they have no intercourse with each other.”

Bateman a.s.sented. Willis continued: ”No intercourse; that is, no social dealings, no consulting or arranging, no ordering and obeying, no mutual support; in short, no visible union.”

Bateman still a.s.sented. ”Well, that is my difficulty,” said Willis; ”I can't understand how two parts can make up one visible body if they are not visibly united; unity implies _union_.”

”I don't see that at all,” said Bateman; ”I don't see that at all. No, Willis, you must not expect I shall give that up to you; it is one of our points. There is only one visible Church, and therefore the English and Romish Churches are both parts of it.”

Campbell saw clearly that Bateman had got into a difficulty, and he came to the rescue in his own way.

”We must distinguish,” he said, ”the state of the case more exactly. A kingdom may be divided, it may be distracted by parties, by dissensions, yet be still a kingdom. That, I conceive, is the real condition of the Church; in this way the Churches of England, Rome, and Greece are one.”

”I suppose you will grant,” said Willis, ”that in proportion as a rebellion is strong, so is the unity of the kingdom threatened; and if a rebellion is successful, or if the parties in a civil war manage to divide the power and territory between them, then forthwith, instead of one kingdom, we have two. Ten or fifteen years since, Belgium was part of the kingdom of the Netherlands: I suppose you would not call it part of that kingdom now? This seems the case of the Churches of Rome and England.”

”Still, a kingdom may be in a state of decay,” replied Campbell; ”consider the case of the Turkish Empire at this moment. The Union between its separate portions is so languid, that each separate Pasha may almost be termed a separate sovereign; still it is one kingdom.”

”The Church, then, at present,” said Willis, ”is a kingdom tending to dissolution?”