The monastery; The abbot.

THE MONASTERY. 253
Dost thou come," he said, "to enjoy the hopes which fate holds out to thy
demented and accursed sect, to see the bosom of destruction sweep away
the pride of old religion - to deface our shrines,-to mutilate and lay waste
the bodies of our benefactors, as well as their sepulchres -to destroy the
pinnacles and carved work of God's house, and Our Lady's?"
"Peace, William Allan!" said the Protestant preacher, with dignified
composure; "for none of these purposes do I come. I would have these
stately shrines deprived of the idols which, no longer simply regarded as the
effigies of the good and of the wise, have become the objects of foul idolatry.
I would otherwise have its ornaments subsist, unless as they are, or may
be, a snare to the souls of men; and especially do I condemn those ravages
which have been made by the heady fury of the people, stung into zeal
against will-worship by bloody persecution. Against such wanton devastations I lift my testimony."
"Idle distinguisher that thou art!" said the Abbot Eustace, interrupting
him; "what signifies the pretext under which thou dost despoil the house
of God? and why at this present emergence will thou insult the master of
it by thy ill-omened presence?"
" Thou art unjust, William Allan," said Warden; " but I am not the less
settled in my resolution. Thou hast protected me some time since at the
hazard of thy rank, and what I know thou holdest still dearer, at the risk
of thy reputation with thine own sect. Our party is now uppermost, and,
believe me, I have come down the valley, in which thou didst quarter me for
sequestration's sake, simply with the wish to keep my engagements to thee."
"Ay," answered the Abbot, "and it may be, that my listening to that
worldly and infirm compassion which pleaded with me for thy life, is now
avenged by this impending judgment. Heaven hath smitten, it may be,
the erring shepherd, and scattered the flock."
" Think better of the Divine judgments," said Warden. "Not for thy
sins, which are those of thy blended education and circumstances; not for
thine own sins, William Allan, art thou stricken, but for the accumulated
guilt which thy mis-named Church hath accumulated on her head, and those
of her votaries, by the errors and corruption of ages."
" Now, by my sure belief in the Rock of Peter," said the Abbot, " thou
dost'rekindle the last spark of human indignation for which my bosom has
fuel- I thought I might not again have felt the impulse of earthly passion,
and it is thy voice which once more calls me to the expression of human
anger! yes, it is thy voice that comest to insult me in my hour of sorrow,
with these blasphemous accusations of that church which hath kept the light
of Christianity alive from the times of the Apostles till now."
"From the times of the Apostles?" said the preacher, eagerly. "Negatur, Gulielme Allan -the primitive church differed as much from that of
Rome, as did light from darkness, which, did time permit, I should speedily
prove. And worse dost thou judge, in saying, I come to insult thee in thy
hour of affliction, being here, God wot, with the Christian wish of fulfilling
an engagement I had made to my host, and of rendering myself to thy will
while it had yet power to exercise aught upon me, and if it might so be, to
mitigate in thy behalf the rage of the victors whom God hath sent as a scourge
to thy obstinacy."
"I will none of thy intercession," said the Abbot, sternly; "the dignity
to which the church has exalted me, never should have swelled my bosom
more proudly in the time of the highest prosperity, than it doth at this crisis
- I ask nothing of thee, but the assurance that my lenity to thee hath been
the means of perverting no soul to Satan, that I have not given to the wolf
any of the stray lambs whom the Great Shepherd of souls had intrusted to
my charge."
"William Allan," answered the Protestant, "I will be sincere with thee.
What I promised I have kept —I have withheld my voice from speaking
w