"She must then be distant indeed," said the Carmelite [Carthusian].
"And now, brother Simon, since you think it perilous to own me and my
opinions, I must walk alone with my own doctrines and the dangers they
draw on me. But should your eye, less blinded than it now is by worldly
hopes and fears, ever turn a glance back on him who soon may be snatched
from you, remember, that by nought save a deep sense of the truth and
importance of the doctrine which he taught could Clement Blair have
learned to encounter, nay, to provoke, the animosity of the powerful and
inveterate, to alarm the fears of the jealous and timid, to walk in the
world as he belonged not to it, and to be accounted mad of men, that he
might, if possible, win souls to God. Heaven be my witness, that I would
comply in all lawful things to conciliate the love and sympathy of my
fellow creatures! It is no light thing to be shunned by the worthy as
an infected patient, to be persecuted by the Pharisees of the day as an
unbelieving heretic, to be regarded with horror at once and contempt by
the multitude, who consider me as a madman, who may be expected to turn
mischievous. But were all those evils multiplied an hundredfold, the
fire within must not be stifled, the voice which says within me 'Speak'
must receive obedience. Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel, even
should I at length preach it from amidst the pile of flames!"

So spoke this bold witness, one of those whom Heaven raised up from time
to time to preserve amidst the most ignorant ages, and to carry down to
those which succeed them, a manifestation of unadulterated Christianity,
from the time of the Apostles to the age when, favoured by the invention
of printing, the Reformation broke out in full splendour. The selfish
policy of the glover was exposed in his own eyes; and he felt himself
contemptible as he saw the Carthusian turn from him in all the
hallowedness of resignation. He was even conscious of a momentary
inclination to follow the example of the preacher's philanthropy and
disinterested zeal, but it glanced like a flash of lightning through a
dark vault, where there lies nothing to catch the blaze; and he slowly
descended the hill in a direction different from that of the Carthusian,
forgetting him and his doctrines, and buried in anxious thoughts about
his child's fate and his own.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

What want these outlaws conquerors should have
But history's purchase