The winter had been on the whole dry and pleasant, but in February and March the rains were so profuse, and the winds so high, that Bateman saw very little of either Charles or Willis. He did not abandon his designs on the latter, but it was an anxious question how best to conduct them. As to Campbell, he was resolved to exclude him from any participation in them; but he hesitated about Reding. He had found him far less definitely Roman than he expected, and he conjectured that, by making him his confidant and employing him against Willis, he really might succeed in giving him an Anglican direction. Accordingly, he told him of his anxiety to restore Willis to “the Church of his baptism”; and not discouraged by Charles’s advice to let well alone, for he might succeed in drawing him from Rome without reclaiming him to Anglicanism, the weather having improved, he asked the two to dinner on one of the later Sundays in Lent. He determined to make a field-day of it; and, with that view, he carefully got up some of the most popular works against the Church of Rome. After much thought he determined to direct his attack on some of the “practical evils,” as he considered them, of “Romanism”; as being more easy of proof than points of doctrine and history, in which, too, for what he knew, Willis might by this time be better read than himself. He considered, too, that, if Willis had been at all shaken in his new faith when he was abroad, it was by the practical exemplification which he had before his eyes of the issue of its peculiar doctrines when freely carried out. Moreover, to tell the truth, our good friend had not a very clear apprehension how much doctrine he held in common with the Church of Rome, or where he was to stop in the several details of Pope Pius’s Creed; in consequence, it was evidently safer to confine his attack to matters of practice.
“You see, Willis,” he said, as they sat down to table, “I have given you abstinence food, not knowing whether you avail yourself of the dispensation. We shall eat meat ourselves; but don’t think we don’t fast at proper times; I don’t agree with Campbell at all; we don’t fast, however, on Sunday. That is our rule, and, I take it, a primitive one.”
Willis answered that he did not know how the primitive usage lay, but he supposed that both of them allowed that matters of discipline might be altered by the proper authority.
“Certainly,” answered Bateman, “so that everything is done consistently with the inspired text of Scripture;“—he stopped, itching, if he could, to bring in some great subject, but not seeing how. He saw he must rush in medias res; so he added:—“with which inspired text, I presume, what one sees in foreign churches is not very consistent”.
“What? I suppose you mean antependia, reredosses, stone altars, copes, and mitres,” said Willis innocently, “which certainly are not in Scripture.”
“True,” said Bateman; “but these, though not in Scripture, are not inconsistent with Scripture. They are all very right; but the worship of Saints, especially the Blessed Virgin, and of relics, the gabbling over prayers in an unknown tongue, Indulgences, and infrequent communions, I suspect are directly unscriptural.”
“My dear Bateman,” said Willis, “you seem to live in an atmosphere of controversy; so it was at Oxford; there was always argument going on in your rooms. Religion is a thing to enjoy, not to quarrel about; give me a slice more of that leg of mutton.”
“Yes, Bateman,” said Reding, “you must let us enjoy our meat. Willis deserves it, for I believe he has had a fair walk today. Have you not walked a good part of the way to Seaton and back? a matter of fourteen miles, and hilly ground; it can’t be dry, too, in parts yet.”
“True,” said Bateman “take a glass of wine, Willis; it’s good Madeira; an aunt of mine sent it me.”
“He puts us to shame,” said Charles, “who have stepped into Church from our bedroom; he has trudged a pilgrimage to his.”
“I’m not saying a word against our dear friend Willis,” said Bateman; “it was merely a point on which I thought he would agree with me, that there were many corruptions of worship in foreign churches.”
At last, when his silence was observable, Willis said that he supposed that persons who were not Catholics could not tell what were corruptions and what not. Here the subject dropped again; for Willis did not seem in humour—perhaps he was too tired—to continue it. So they ate and drank, with nothing but very commonplace remarks to season their meal withal, till the cloth was removed. The table was then shoved back a bit, and the three young men got over the fire, which Bateman made burn brightly. Two of them at least had deserved some relaxation, and they were the two who were to be opponent and respondent in the approaching argument—one had had a long walk, the other had had two full services, a baptism, and a funeral. The armistice continued a good quarter of an hour, which Charles and Willis spent in easy conversation; till Bateman, who had been priming himself the while with his controversial points, found himself ready for the assault, and opened it in form.