Micah Clarke Chapter 2 - Of My Going to School and of My Coming Thence

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Chapter Two, Of My Going to School and Of My Coming Vents.

With the home influences which I have described, it may be readily imagined that my young mind turned very much upon the subject of religion. The more so as my father and mother took different views upon it. The old Puritan soldier held that the Bible alone contained all things essential to salvation, and that though it might be advisable that those who were gifted with wisdom or eloquence should expound the scriptures to their brethren, it was by no means necessary, but rather hurtful and degrading that any organized body of ministers or of bishops should claim special prerogatives, or take the place of mediators between the creature and the creator. For the wealthy dignitaries of the church, rolling in their carriages to their cathedrals in order to preach the doctrines of their master, who wore his sandals out in tramping over the countryside, he professed the most bitter contempt. Nor was he more lenient to those poorer members of the clergy who winked at the vices of their patrons that they might secure a seat at their table, and who would sit through a long evening of profanity rather than bid goodbye to the cheesecakes and the wine flask. That such men represented religious truth was abhorrent to his mind. Nor would he even give his adhesion to that form of church government dear to the Presbyterians, where a general council of the ministers directed the affairs of their church. Every man was, in his opinion, equal in the eyes of the Almighty, and none had a right to claim any precedence over his neighbor in matters of religion. The book was written for all, and all were equally able to read it, provided that their minds were enlightened by the Holy Spirit. My mother, on the other hand, held that the very essence of a church was that it should have a hierarchy and a graduated government within itself, with the king at the apex, the archbishops beneath him, the bishops under their control, and so down through the ministry to the common folk. Such was, in her opinion, the church as established in the beginning, and no religion without these characteristics could lay any claim to being the true one. Ritual was, to her, of as great importance as morality, and if every tradesman and farmer were allowed to invent prayers and change the service as the fancy seized him, it would be impossible to preserve the purity of the Christian creed. She agreed that religion was based upon the Bible, but the Bible was a book which contained much that was obscure, and unless that obscurity were cleared away by a duly elected and consecrated servant of God, a lineal descendant of the disciples, all human wisdom might not serve to interpret it aright. That was my mother's position, and neither argument nor entreaty could move her from it. The only question of belief on which my two parents were equally ardent was their mutual dislike and distrust of the Roman Catholic forms of worship. And in this, the churchwoman was every whitest decided as the fanatical independent. It may seem strange to you in these days of tolerance that the adherence of this venerable creed should have met with such universal ill will from successive generations of Englishmen. We recognize now that there are no more useful or loyal citizens in the state than our Catholic brethren. Mr. Alexander Pope or any other leading papist is no more looked down upon for his religion than was Mr. William Penn for his Quakerism in the reign of King James. We can scarce credit now how noblemen like Lord Stafford, ecclesiastics like Archbishop Plunkett, and commoners like Langhorne and Pickering were dragged to death on the testimony of the vileest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf, or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbors who differed from him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in a milder and rarer form. Foolish as it appears to us, there were some solid reasons to account for it.

You have read doubtless how a century before I was born, the great kingdom of Spain waxed and prospered. Her ships covered every sea. Her troops were victorious wherever they appeared. In letters, in learning, in all the arts of war and peace, they were the foremost nation in Europe. You have heard also of the ill blood which existed between this great nation and ourselves. How our adventurers harried their possessions across the Atlantic, while they retorted by burning such of our semen as they could catch by their devilish inquisition and by threatening our coasts both from Cadiz and from their provinces in the Netherlands. At last, so hot became the quarrel that the other nations stood off, as I have seen the folk clear a space for the swordplayers at Hockley in the Hall, so that the Spanish giant and tough little England were left face to face to fight the matter out. Throughout all that business, it was as the emissary of the pope, and as the avenger of the dishonored Roman church, that King Philip professed to come. It is true that Lord Howard and many other gentlemen of the old religion fought stoutly against the Dons, but the people could never forget that reformed faith had been the flag under which they had conquered and that the blessing of the Pontiff had rested with their opponents. Then came the cruel and foolish attempt of Mary to force upon them a creed for which they had no sympathy and at the heels of it another great Roman Catholic power menaced our liberty from the continent. The growing strength of France promoted a corresponding distrust of papistry in England, which reached ahead when at about the time of which I write, Louis XIV threatened us with invasion at the very moment when, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he showed his intolerant spirit toward the faith which we held dear.