"If I drive them away by preaching error, I
shall answer to God for their souls. But if men choose to go because
they find truth unpalatable, I have no responsibility for them. The
Lord has not given me those souls; that is plain. If He have given them
to another sower of seed, by all means let them go to him as fast as
they can."

"Mr Liversedge, I do believe,"--Ambrose drew his chair back an inch--"I
do almost think--you must be--a--a Calvinist."

"It is not catching, I assure you, Mr Catterall."

"But are you?"

"That depends on what you mean. I certainly do not go blindly over
hedge and ditch after the opinions of John Calvin. I am not sure that
any one does."

"No, but--you believe that people are--a--are elect or non-elect; and if
they be elect, they will be saved, however they live, and if they be
not, they must needs be lost, however good they are. Excuse my speaking
so freely."

"I am very much obliged to you for it. No, Mr Catterall, I do not
believe anything of the sort. If that be what you mean by Calvinism, I
abhor it as heartily as you do."

"Why, I thought all Calvinists believed that!"

"I answer most emphatically, No. I believe that men are elect, but that
they are elected `unto sanctification': and a man who has not the
sanctification shows plainly--unless he repent and amend--that he is not
one of the elect."

"Now I know a man who says, rolling the whites of his eyes and clasping
his palms together as if he were always saying his prayers, like the
figures on that old fellow's tomb in the chancel--he says he was elected
to salvation from all eternity, and cannot possibly be lost: and he is
the biggest swearer and drinker in the parish. What say you to that?
Am I to believe him?"

"Can you manage it?"

"I can't: that is exactly the thing."

"Don't, then. I could not."

"But now, do you believe, Mr Liversedge,--I have picked up the words
from this fellow--that God elected men because He foreknew them, or that
He foreknew because He had elected them?"

Ambrose gave a little wink at Fanny and me, sitting partly behind him,
as if he thought that he had driven the Vicar completely into a corner.

"When the Angel Gabriel is sent to tell me, Mr Catterall, I shall be
most happy to let you know. Until then, you must excuse my deciding a
question on which I am entirely ignorant."

Ambrose looked rather blank.

"Well, then, Mr Liversedge, as to free-will. Do you think that ever