Blessed Edmund Campion

st time, Fr. Campion preach. It was no easy task to find a safe and suitable auditorium; but Lord Paget, one of their own number, was daring enough to hire from Lord

s with those whom he knew. The missionaries were sent to strengthen the wills of the wavering Catholics, and not primarily to make converts. Personal dealings with would-be converts were never attempted except as supplementary to the action of the lay helpers, who took all the soundings, and gave any needful catechizing. When Parsons, who had been away in the country, got back to town, Mr. Henry Orton and

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fore he begged both Jesuits to write "a vindication of their presence and purpose in England," which, signed and sealed, might be given to the public, if things came to the worst. The certain accusation and its answer had been debated before, in council, by many clergy, who had contented themselves with agreeing to swear, when called upon, that they[103] had no business whatever in hand but that of religion. But Campion now drew up his own document then and there at a table, while the others were talking. In it, he declares that "my charge is of free cost to preach the Gospel . . . to cry alarm spiritual;" that "matters of state are things which appertain not to my vocation," and are "straitly forbid": things "from which I d

f the[105] laws standing." Then he pleads in deferent and almost affectionate words, for a special audience of "her noble Grace" the Queen. In his candour and fearless simplicity he believed that opponents had only to hear to be convinced, thus crediting them with that earnestness in religious matters which he possessed himself, and which only a very few of the best Protestants of that day shared with him. Campion closes his appeal with a wonderfully beautiful reference to the vowed Seminarian priests, and in a lofty music of good English, worthy to stand by any passage of like length in the great prose classics. "Hearken to those which spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up unto Heaven for you, daily and hourly, by those English students whose posterity shall not die, which, beyond the seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you to Hea

ved, and we much eased in our charge." These were the old Marian priests, active in obscurity. The "harvest is wonderful great": so many show "a conscience pure, a courage invincible, zeal incredible, a work so worthy; the number innumerable, of high degree, of mean calling . . . of every age and sex." "The solaces that are ever[108] intermingled with the miseries are so great that they do not only countervail the fear of what punishment temporal soever, but by infinite sweetness make all worldly pains, be they never so great, seem nothing," for the sake of "this good people which had lived before, so many ages, in one only Faith." Day by day, running in and out of all the busy heroic toil, is the fiery thread of danger and alarm. "We are sitting merrily at table, conversing familiarly on matters of faith and devotion (for our talk is generally of such things) when comes a hurried

noted that the little Jesuit mission was directed to the gentry. This was not through accident, or partiality, or snobbery. The gentry had most personal weight; they were better able to protect a hunted man; and they were naturally supposed to have stricter notions of honour: this last was a point on which everything depended

to the top." A thoughtful living writer sums it up as his conclusion that England would have resumed the Faith with a sigh of relief, had it not been for the resentments bred by the Catholic "plotters." Considering the frightful circumstances of the body to which these men belonged, it is putting too great a strain, perhaps, upon human nature to expect smooth behaviour[111] from every individual in it. The genuine "plotte