The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

  (II)

  It was nearly midnight before Monsignor Masterman pushed away thebook that lay before him and leaned back in his chair. He feltsick and dazed at what he had read.

  First, he had studied with extreme care the constitution of theHeresy-Court, and had sent off a couple of hours ago the formalletters to the Dominican Provincial and two other priests whom hehad selected. Then he had studied the procedure of the court, andthe penalties assigned.

  At first he could not believe what he read. He had turned morethan once to the title-page of the great quarto, thinking that hemust find it to be a reprint of some medieval work. But the titlewas unmistakable. The book was printed in Rome in the spring ofthe present year, and contained an English supplement, dealingwith the actual relations of the Church laws with those of thecountry. There were minor penalties for minor offences; there wasat every turn an escape for the accused. He might, even in thelast event, escape all penalties by a formal renouncement ofChristianity; but if not, if he persisted simultaneously inclaiming a place in the Church of Christ and in holding to atheological opinion declared erroneous by the Court of Appealratified by the Pope, he was to be handed over to the seculararm; and by the laws of England--as well as of every otherEuropean country except Germany--the penalty inflicted by thesecular arm was, in the instance of a tonsured clerk, death.

  It was this that staggered the priest.

  Somewhere within him there rose up a protest so overwhelminglystrong as to evade even an attempt at deliberate analysis--aprotest that rested on the axiom that spiritual crimes deservedonly spiritual punishment. This he could understand. He perceivedclearly enough that no society can preserve its identity withoutlimitations; that no association can cohere without definiterules that must be obeyed. He was sufficiently educated then tounderstand that a man who chooses to disregard the demands of aspiritual society, however arbitrary these demands may seem tobe, can no longer claim the privileges of the body to which hehas hitherto adhered. But that death--brutal physicaldeath--could by any civilized society--still less any modernChristian society--be even an alternative penalty for heresy,shocked him beyond description.

  A ray of hope had shone on him when he first read the facts. Itmight be, perhaps, that this was merely a formal sentence, aswere the old penalties for high treason abandoned long beforethey were repealed. He turned to the index; and after a searchleaned back again in despair. He had seen half a dozen casesquoted, within the last ten years, in England alone, in which thepenalty had been inflicted.

  It was half an hour before he stood up, with one determination atleast formed in his mind--that he would consult no one. He hadlearnt in the last few weeks sufficient distrust of himself torefrain from formulating conclusions too soon, and he learntenough of the world in which he found himself to understand thatpositions accepted as self-evident by society in general, whichyet seemed impossible to himself, after all occasionally turnedout to be at least not ridiculous.

  But to think that it was the young monk with whom he had talkedat Lourdes who was to be the centre of the process he himself hadto prepare! . . . He understood now some of the hints that DomAdrian Bennett had let fall.