[Phases of Faith by Francis William Newman]@TWC D-Link book
Phases of Faith

CHAPTER II
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Two more letters from the same hand I saw, the latter of which was, to threaten some new acquaintances who were kind to me, (persons wholly unknown to him,) that if they did not desist from sheltering me and break off intercourse, they should, as far as his influence went, themselves everywhere be cut off from Christian communion and recognition.

This will suffice to indicate the sort of social persecution, through which, after a succession of struggles, I found myself separated from persons whom I had trustingly admired, and on whom I had most counted for union: with whom I fondly believed myself bound up for eternity; of whom some were my previously intimate friends, while for others, even on slight acquaintance, I would have performed menial offices and thought myself honoured; whom I still looked upon as the blessed and excellent of the earth, and the special favourites of heaven; whose company (though oftentimes they were considerably my inferiors either in rank or in knowledge and cultivation) I would have chosen in preference to that of nobles; whom I loved solely because I thought them to love God, and of whom I asked nothing, but that they would admit me as the meanest and most frail of disciples.

My heart was ready to break: I wished for a woman's soul, that I might weep in floods.

Oh, Dogma! Dogma! how dost them trample under foot love, truth, conscience, justice! Was ever a Moloch worse than thou?
Burn me at the stake; then Christ will receive me, and saints beyond the grave will love me, though the saints here know me not But now I am alone in the world: I can trust no one.

The new acquaintances who barely tolerate me, and old friends whom reports have not reached, (if such there be,) may turn against me with animosity to-morrow, as those have done from whom I could least have imagined it.


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