Prior Robert had them written down, and delivered them with a neutral voice and impartial countenance, as if even he had felt how the very atmosphere within the enclave had changed towards the accused.
“My lord, in sum, there are four heads: first, that he does not believe that children who die unbaptized are doomed to reprobation. Second, and as reason for that, he does notbelieve in original sin, but holds that the state of newborn children is the state of Adam before his fall, a state of innocence. Third, that he holds that a man can, by his own acts, make his own way towards salvation, which is held by the Church to be a denial of divine grace. Fourth, that he rejects what Saint Augustine wrote of predestination, that the number of the elect is already chosen and cannot be changed, and all others are doomed to reprobation. For he said rather that he held with Origen, who wrote that in the end all men would be saved, since all things came from God, and to God they must return.”
“And those four heads are all the matter?” said the bishop thoughtfully.
“They are, my lord.”
“And how do you say, Elave? Have you been misreported in any of these counts?”
“No, my lord,” said Elave firmly. “I hold by all of those. Though I never named this Origen, for I did not then know the name of the elder who wrote what I accepted and still believe.”
“Very well! Let us consider the first head, your defense of those infants who die unbaptized. You are not alone in having difficulty in accepting their damnation. In doubt, go back to Holy Writ. That cannot be wrong. Our Lord,” said the bishop, “ordered that children should be allowed to come to him freely, for of such, he said, is the kingdom of heaven. To the best of my reading, he never asked first whether they were baptized or not before he took them up in his arms. Heaven he certainly allotted to them. But tell me, then, Elave, what value do you see in infant baptism, if it is not the sole way to salvation?”
“It is a welcome into the Church and into life, surely,” said Elave, uncertain as yet of his ground and of his judge, but hopeful. “We come innocent, but such a membership and such a blessing is to help us keep our innocence.”
“To speak of innocence at birth is to bring us to the second count. It is part of the same thinking. You do not believe that we come into the world already rotten with the sin of Adam?”
Pale, obstinate, and unrelenting, Elave said, “No, I do not believe it. It would be unjust. How can God be unjust? By the time we are grown we have enough to bear with our own sins.”
“Of all men,” agreed the bishop with a rueful smile, “that is certainly true. Saint Augustine, who has been mentioned here, regarded the sin of Adam as perpetuated in all his heirs. It might be well to give a thought to what the sin of Adam truly was. Augustine held it to be the fleshly act between man and woman, and considered it the root and origin of all sin. There is here another disputable point. If this in every case is sin, how comes it that God instructed his first-made creatures to be fruitful and multiply and people the earth?”
“It is nevertheless a more blessed course to refrain,” said Canon Gerbert coldly but carefully, for Roger de Clinton was on his own ground, noble, and highly regarded.
“Neither the act nor abstention from the act is of itself either good or bad,” said the bishop amiably, “but only in respect of its purpose, and the spirit in which it is undertaken. What was your third head, Father Prior?”
“The question of free will and divine grace,” said Robert. “And namely, whether a man can of his free will choose right instead of wrong, and whether by so doing he can proceed one step towards his own salvation. Or whether nothing can avail of all he does, however virtuous, but only by divine grace.”
“As to that, Elave,” said the bishop, looking at the resolute face that fronted him with such intent and somber eyes, “you may speak your mind. I am not trying to trap you, I desire to know.”
“My lord,” said Elave, picking his way with deliberation, “I do believe we have been given free will, and can and must use it to choose between right and wrong, if we are men and not beasts. Surely it is the least of what we owe, to try and make our way towards salvation by right action. I never denied divine grace. Surely it is the greatest grace that we are given this power to choose, and the strength to make right use of it. And see, my lord, if there is a last judgment, it will not and cannot be of God’s grace, but of what every man has done with it, whether he buried his talent or turned it to good profit. It is for our own actions we shall answer, when the day comes.”
“So thinking,” said the bishop, eyeing him with interest, “I see that you can hardly accept that the roll of the elect is already made up, and the rest of us are eternally lost. If that were true, why strive? And strive we do. It is native to man to have an aim, and labor towards it. And God he knows, better than any, that grace and truth and uprightness are as good aims as any. What else is salvation? It is no bad thing to feel obliged to earn it, and not wait to be given it as alms to a beggar, unearned.”
“These are mysteries for the wise to ponder, if anyone dare,” said Gerbert in chill disapproval, but somewhat abstractedly, too, for a part of his mind was already preoccupied with the journey on to Chester, and the subtle diplomacy he must have at his finger-ends when he got there. “From one obscure even among the laity it is presumptuous.”
“It was presumptuous of Our Lord to argue with the doctors in the temple,” said the bishop, “seeing he was human boy as well as God, and in both kinds true to that nature. But he did it. We doctors in the temple nowadays do well to recall how vulnerable we are.” And he sat back in his stall, and regarded Elave very earnestly for some minutes. “My son,” he said then, “I find no fault with you for venturing to use wits which, I’m sure you would say, are also the gift of God, and meant for use, not to be buried profitless. Only take care to remember that you also are subject to error, and vulnerable after your own kind as I after mine.”
“My lord,” said Elave, “I have learned it all too well.”
“Not so well, I hope, as to bury your talent now. It is better to cut too deep a course than to stagnate and grow foul. One test only I require, and that is enough for me. If you believe, in all good faith, the words of the creed, in the sight of this assembly and of God, recite it for me now.”
Elave had begun to glow as brightly as the sun slanting across the floor of the chapter house. Without further invitation, without an instant’s thought, he began in a voice loud, clear, and joyfuclass="underline" “I believe in one God, the Father, the ruler of all men, the maker of all things visible and invisible“
For this belonged in the back of his mind untouched since childhood, learned from his first priestly patron, whom he had loved and who could do no wrong for him, and with whom he had chanted it regularly and happily for years without ever questioning what it meant, only feeling what it meant to the gentle teacher he adored and imitated. This was his faith for once not chiseled out for himself, but received, rather an incantation than a declaration of belief. After all his doubts and probings and rebellions, it was his innocence and orthodoxy that set the seal on his deliverance.
He was just ending, in triumph, knowing himself free and vindicated, when Hugh Beringar came quietly into the chapter house, with a bundle wrapped in thick swathes of waxed cloth under his arm.