Cartomancy

“ The attributes of God like jury sit,
And all consign the sinner to the pit;
And Justice, as the counsel for Heaven’s Crown,
Demands that they should cut the rebel down.
Does not the law condemn thee to thy face,
And is not thine an aggravated case?
“Thou hast destroyed thyself,” the Judge deelares;
This is one charge which thy indictment bears.
Hast thou not dozed thy precious soul with sin,
And poisoned every noble power within?
Bad words and deeds, those poisons given by thee,
Have they not wrought both death and misery?
Hast thou not sinned in thought, and word, and deed? ”

“ For heresy there was the punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity. 'I deny,' wrote Cartwright, 'that upon repentance there ought to follow any pardon of death. ... Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted with the Holy Ghost.'" I could give numerous quotations from other writers to illustrate this side of the Puritan character. In the year 1655 the Puritans passed an edict dealing with the subject of the banishment of the clergy of the Church of England. ”

“ Again, sir, if you are a Protestant, and have thoroughly cast Popery from your heart, you must necessarily be a loyal man and a good subject; but if you refuse to prosecute him, you can be neither the one nor the other, but a Papist and an impostor, and I've done with you. If Mr. M'Clutchy knew, sir, that you refused to prosecute a priest for such a violent outrage upon your person, I imagine you would not long hold the situation of bailiff under him. ”

“ We would include the priest in the indictment as accessory, but that might be attended with personal danger—and the less real danger we incur the better for ourselves.”
“Faith and honor, father, that doctrine's worthy of an oracle—as, indeed, most of what you say is.”
“But mark me, Phil; our object is simply his ruin, not his death. Let us beggar M'Loughlin and him, and drive them out of the country. No—no—not the death of either of them; on the contrary, I should wish them to live, if it was only that they might feel my revenge—and that I knew they felt it. ”

“ It is the act, and not the heart, that the law deals with. The purity of her motives, her repentance, are nothing to the law; but the law is everything to the person in whom they operate; because, although the heart may be innocent, the individual person must be punished. A penitent heart, or a consciousness of the pardon of God, are not fit considerations for a jury-box. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, when I reflect that it may be only the result of a reaction in principle, proceeding from a latent conviction that all is not right within, and that we reject the tribunal because we are conscious that it must condemn us—abjure the authority of the court because we have violated its jurisdiction; yes, when I reflect upon this, it is then that these visitations of gloom and wretchedness sometimes agonize my mind until it becomes dark and heated, like hell, and I curse both myself and my creed. ”

“ You, the first cause, the original author of my shame; you, to whose iniquitous avarice and vulgar ambition I fell a sacrifice, as much as I did to the profligacy and villany of Thomas Gourlay. But I care not—I have my ambition; it is a mother's, and more natural on that account. I have also my vengeance to gratify; for, father, we are your children, and vengeance is the family principle. Father, you must assist us—you must join us—you must lend us your perjury—supply us with false oaths, with deceitful accounts, with all that is necessary ”

“ Upon my honor and conscience, things is come to a pretty pass when a man—a magistrate—like me, must be lectured by his own son! Isn't it too bad, Catherine?”
“I am no politician, you know, but I think he doesn't mean to lecture you, papa; perhaps you ought to say to reason or remonstrate with—”
“Raison! remonstrate! And what right has he aither to raison or remonstrate with a man—or rather a magistrate—such as I am known by the government to be. He calls that paragraph gross and barefaced flattery, and myself a staryrayotype! ”

“ This is a point, on which I have never been able to satisfy myself.—The only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly, mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,—and those no farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge. The inclination of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen the guilt of an act sinful in itself, but cannot be detached from the act; it being understood that a perfectly voluntary and self-imposed oath is itself a sin. ”

“ At least I shall take care that the law will make you do so.”
“Sir Thomas Gourlay, I beg you to understand that there is a law beyond and above your law—the law of God—the law of Christian duty; and that you shall never force me to transgress. The man who robbed you in a moment of despair and madness, repented him of the crime; and the knowledge of that crime, and its consequent repentance were disclosed to me in one of the most holy ordinances of our religion.” ”

“ But I dare say every man feels them. What are they, after all, but the superstitious operations of conscience—of that grim spectre which is conjured up by the ridiculous fables of the priest and nurse? Conscience! Why, its fearful tribunal is no test of truth. The wretched anchorite will often experience as much remorse if he neglect to scourge his miserable carcass, as the murderer who sheds the blood of man—or more. Away with it! I am but a fool for allowing it to disturb me at all, or mar my projects. ”

“ This will be reported to thee and do thou send for him and bespeak him gently and say to him, “O thou that strivest for thine own destruction, what moveth thee to blame us among our subjects? Verily, thou deservest present death at our hands; but the ancients say, ‘Clemency is of the attributes of the noble.’ Know that our delay in answering thy master’s letter arose not from neglect on our part, but from our much business and lack of leisure to look into thine affair and write a reply to thy king.” ”

“ God knows the cause of all these disorders, as well as of the factions which now embroil this kingdom, and when the enemies of the Cardinal have reached the height of their iniquities, He will know how to justify the innocent and punish the guilty. ”

“ I am no theologian, sir; but without any reference to your priestly cant, I simply say, that the man who is cognizant of another's crime against the law, either of God or man, and who will shield him from justice, is particeps criminis, and I don't care a fig what your obsolete sacerdotal dogmas may assert to the contrary. ”

“ Sleep on, poor sufferer—and let those whose crimes have placed thy distracted head upon that cold and unnatural pillow, reflect that they have a judge to meet, who will, in another life, not overlook the deeds done in this. Who is there who would, even in this thy most pitiable destitution, exchange thy innocent, but suffering spirit, for M'Clutchy's heart, or the dark crimes which it festers. ”

“ There is nothing so brave and fearless as innocence. Her youth, the majesty of her beauty, and the pathos of her expressions, absolutely flooded the court with tears. The judge wept, and hardened old barristers, with hearts like the nether millstone, were forced to put their handkerchiefs to their eyes ”

“ When brought before the tribunal he might profess the most unbounded submission to the decisions of the Holy See, the strictest adherence to orthodox doctrine, the freest readiness to subscribe to whatever was demanded of him,{401} and yet be secretly a Catharan or a Vaudois, fit only for the stake. Few, indeed, were there who courageously admitted their heresy when brought before the tribunal, and to the conscientious judge, eager to destroy the foxes which ravaged the vineyard of the Lord, the task of exploring the secret heart of man was no easy one. ”

“ Sins unrepented of, mercy slighted, and the day of grace ending.—They look forward, and nothing presents itself but the righteous Judge, the dreadful tribunal, and a most solemn reckoning.———They roll around their arighted eyes on attending friends. If accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their anguish, to consider this further aggravation of their guilt that they have not finned alone, but drawn others into the snare. ”

“ After recommending him to a higher tribunal, and impressing upon him the necessity of repentance, and seeking peace with God, he sentenced him to be hanged by the neck on the fourth day after the close of the assizes, recommending his soul, as usual, to the mercy of his Creator. ”

“ To judge who, for heresy or scandal, shall be punished by the sword, belongeth to none but the magistrate in his own dominions: as to judge who shall have communion or be excommunicated from the church, belongeth, as aforesaid, to the pastors. And the said magistrate hath first as a man his own judgment of discerning what is heresy, and who of his subjects are guilty of it, in order to his public governing judgment. ”

“ No, sir; we never shield the criminal from his just punishment. God has promised mercy to him who repents, and we merely administer it without any reference to the operation of the law. It often happens, Sir Thomas Gourlay, that a person who has repented and made restitution, is taken hold of by the law and punished. ”

“ In referring the detection of the perjured to the judgment of God, the doom pronounced upon the convicted,—in vindication of the just and holy laws instituted by the gracious clemency of our holy father,—it hath been adjudged that the respondents be awarded the benefit of knight champions, who for the love and sustenance of truth, in devotion to the holy mother church, shall offer, in willing submission, their bodies with arms for the decision of the question at issue, using their utmost exertion in skillful encounter, that the perjured may suffer merited punishment. ”

“ The circumstances, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, which have brought the prisoner before you this day, involve a long catalogue of crimes that as far transcend, in the hideousness of their guilt, the offences of a common felon as his rank and position in life do that of the humblest villain who ever stood before a court of justice. ”

“ Much as I wish to see my children, I feel now a resignation to wait His time, and a cheerful willingness to submit all my wrongs to that impartial tribunal which alone is able to award a righteous verdict. Why should we, weak mortals, presume to invoke vengeance on an erring fellow mortal? ”

“ You were not only independent in your own circumstances, but you possessed great wealth; and why you should shape yourself such an awful course of crime can only be attributed to a heart naturally fond of persecution and blood. I cannot, any more than the learned Attorney-General, suffer the privileges of rank, wealth, or position to sway me from the firm dictates of justice. ”

“ Receive thou the cause of thine unworthy servant, and send them a writ or a notice immediately—sending into their conscience, and summoning them to consider what they are doing. O, frighten them with a summons from thy court, until they come and bow in contrition at thy feet; and take from their hands every revengeful weapon, and make them deliver up every gun of scandal, and every sword of bitter words, and every spear of slanderous expressions, and surrender them all at thy cross. ”

“ You have nothing to hope for, either from my weakness or your cunning, even if a miracle could be worked in your favour, and the costly expedient succeed of bribing some Italian rogue to personate 'the false friend,' to declare your crime his own and endure the punishment of it,--even although the notary, who could establish your identity and the drawing up of the deed, were dead,---even then you could never hope to escape the punishment for mail-robbery! ”

“ It is for such men that the offer of pardon and reward which appears after a murder is intended. They are indemnified, remunerated and despised. The very magistrate who avails himself of their assistance looks on them as more contemptible than the criminal whom they betray. ”

“ If then the probationer for the clerical profession was under some bias in his first investigation, how must it be expected to be with him, when he has already taken the vow, and received ordination? Can he with a calm and unaltered spirit contemplate the possibility, that the ground shall be cut away from under him, and that, by dint of irrefragable argument, he shall be stripped of his occupation, and turned out naked and friendless into the world? ”

“ Sir, these letters are very suspicious, and would well justify the detention of the bearer. But I must ask some more questions. What seek you with Messieurs de Soubise and Rohan, two noblemen in arms against their sovereign?"
"My lord cardinal, my business with them is private. Those letters are suspicious or not, as they may be viewed: they are not criminal; and though, as you shall determine, they may perhaps justify my detention, yet I assure you once again I knew not their contents until this moment. You must be the judge of your own conduct. ”

“ Government requires you to treat the enemy with great delicacy, consideration, clemency, and forbearance.”
“Sir,” says Captain Carton, “I am an English officer, commanding English Men, and I hope I am not likely to disappoint the Government’s just expectations. But, I presume you know that these villains under their black flag have despoiled our countrymen of their property, burnt their homes, barbarously murdered them and their little children, and worse than murdered their wives and daughters?”
“Perhaps I do, Captain Carton,” answers Pordage, waving his hand, with dignity; “perhaps I do not. ”