Chapter XXVII: June 1

DICK was right! I shall never go back to the convent.

The next day after the May games, my mother, according to her promise, put into my hand Master Tyndale's New Testament, and with it a copy of the same in Latin—the Vulgate, as 'tis called—bidding me compare as I read. Since then every leisure moment has been spent in reading and studying and comparing, and oh, in what a new world of thought and feeling and experience do I find myself! What clouds have cleared away from my mind!

I have spent many hours closeted with my mother, and while our fingers worked at Harry's outfit, our minds were busy with these great themes. No, I never can go back, never can take the veil! I find in the word of God no warrant for any such life.

How astonished I was to find that St. Peter and St. James and other of the Apostles had been married—that our Lady herself seems to have lived at home with her husband like any other woman—and that she is nowhere represented as bearing any rule, or being of more authority in the Church than any other woman. Indeed, our Lord Himself said that any one who had His word and kept it, was as near to Him as His mother—"the same is my brother, and sister, and mother"—are His words. And then this very Gospel, which the priests keep so jealously from us, was at the first preached to the common folk in those parts—they followed Him in crowds to hear His words, and indeed very few of the better or more religious class followed Him at all. But I cannot write down all my thoughts—they are too new and too precious. I must think them over.

My mother tells me that the chapman whom we saw at the May games, and who stayed more than one night here and at the Court, was a member of the fraternity known among themselves as the Christian Brothers—a company of merchants and men of substance who devote their time, their means, yea and their lives also to spreading the word of God in this land. This same Master Bradbury's stock in trade consisted chiefly of Testaments, or fragments of the same, which he disseminated wherever he found opportunity.

My mother, I can see, builds nothing at all on his Majesty's favor for the new religion. She says he may quarrel with the Pope about this matter of the divorce, but if so, 'twill be but to make himself Pope instead. He is already highly enraged at Tyndale, because of his letter against the divorce, and hath forbidden the circulation of his books; but, said my mother, he might as well forbid the wind to blow.

'Tis even as Master Ellenwood said—like making a breach in the dykes and forbidding the sea to run through.

But I can't help hoping more than my mother does—perhaps because I am younger. Anyhow I am sure I shall never be sorry that I have come to know the true Gospel. It has cleared away many doubts and fears and cares from my mind. All anxiety for my mother's soul, for one thing; because, though she believed as she was taught, and never saw this book, yet I am sure she trusted in God for her salvation, and served Him according to the light that she had. As for my dear Amice, I feel sure that she has obtained the object of her old ambition, though in a far different way from that she proposed for herself, and is now indeed a saint—a glorified saint, to go no more out from His presence forever, in whom she trusted. Oh, that dear Mother Gertrude could have this comfort about one whom she mourns as eternally condemned to perdition! I cannot give it her—I can only pray for her and—what a word have I here written! Only pray for her, forsooth!