Blessed Edmund Campion

sports of her passengers. Campion had none. Moreover, as his religion was suspected, the dutiful Protestant frigate, homeward bound, promptly swallowed him, bag and baggage. His generous friends in I

ot then a legal crime, though it soon became so, for a Catholic Englishman to leave the country fast being made into a hell for him. The mighty Cecil treated this expatriation

n, Canon of York, afterwards Cardinal, once of Oriel College, Oxford, and Principal of St.[42] Mary Hall. Indeed, "Oxford may be said to have founded Douay." Allen was aided by many men of mark, notably by his old tutor, Morgan Phillipps, and by the latter's bequeathed funds; also by the Flemish Abbots and layfolk. Campion seems to have been the eighteenth arrival in the newly established house of young, prayerful, enthusiastic men. He found there as Professor of Hebrew, his beloved Gregory Martin, and a learned colleague, Richard Bristow, late Fellow of Exe

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You are sixty years old, more or less" (Cheyney was really sixty-eight), "of uncertain health, of weakened body; the hatred of heretics, the pity of Catholics, the talk of the people, the sorrow of your friends, the joke of your enemies. Who do you think yourself to be? What do you expect? What is your life? Wherein lies your hope? In the heretics hating you so implacably and abusing you so roundly? Because of all heresiarchs you are the least crazy? Because you confess the Living Presence of Christ on the Altar, and the freedom of man's will? Because you persecute no Catholics in your diocese? Because you are hospitable to your townspeople, and to good men? Because you plunder not your palace and lands, as your brethren[46] do? Surely these things will avail much, if you return to the bosom of the Church, if you suffer even the smallest persecution in common with those of the Household of Faith, or join your prayers with theirs. But now, whilst you are a stranger and an enemy, whilst, like a base deserter, you fight under an alien flag, it is in vain to attempt to cover your crimes with the cloak of virtues. . . . What is the use of fighting for many articles of the Faith, and to perish for doubting of a few? . . . He believes no one article of the Faith who refuses to believe any single one. In vain do you defend the religion of Catholics, if you hug only that which you like, and cut off all that seems not right in your eyes. There is but one plain, known road: not enclosed by your palings or mine, not by private judgment, but by the severe laws of humility and obedience: when you wander from these you are lost. You must be altogether within the house of God, within the walls of salvation, to be sound and safe from all injury; if you wander and walk abroad ever so little, if you carelessly thrust hand or foot[47] out of the ship, if you stir up ever so small a mutiny in the crew, you shall be thrust forth: the door is shut, the ocean roars: you are undone! . . . Do you remember the sober and solemn answer which you gave me when three years ago we met in the house of Thomas Dutton at Shireburn, where we were to dine? We were talking of St. Cyprian. I objected to you (in order to discover your real opinions) that Synod of Carthage which erred about the baptism of infants. You answered truly that the Holy Spirit was not promised to one Province, but to the Church; that the Universal Church is represented in a full Council; and that no doctrine can be pointed out about which such a Council ever erred. Acknowledge your

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n vain. It required the signing of the Thirty-nine Articles, and enacted, under Archbishop Grindal's leadership, many things equally hateful to Cheyney, such as displacement and defacement of Altar-stones-(a great symbol, this, and no mere act of pillage!), the abolition of Prayers for the Dead, the prohibition even of th

was contradicted by a lesser authority, but yet a good one. If it were indeed "certain", at least Edmund Campion, to whom the tidings would have been most consoling, never kn

To have valued it either as a piece of literary cleverness, or as a monument of misdirected concern, would have been equally cynical, and clean contrary to Cheyney's known attitude towards his friend. He did not live to see Campion return to England. Shunning the bigots and the unprincipled men in power[52] to the last, a