The covenant - James A. Michener [110]
'I like his sense of order,' the marquis said.
'Where would you fit in?' his priest asked.
'Certainly not a doctor. I'm a stupid man, really. I could never learn Greek, let alone Hebrew. And I'd not be pastor, that's certain.' When he shrugged his shoulders, the priest laughed, recalling the scrapes this handsome man had engineered.
'I don't think I'd like to be an elder,' the marquis continued. 'The women, you know. I'm not intended to be a watchdog of other people's morals. But I could be a deacon. I could work for the welfare of a system like Calvin's.' He paused to reflect upon the fact that for most of his life he had been just this, a man trying to help where needed. 'Yes,' he said loudly, 'I could be a deacon.' Then he burst into laughter. 'But I'd want to be very careful who the elders were. I don't want to enforce the rules of some damned snoop-snoot.'
When the Abbe Desmoulins returned the Institutes to the marquis he was deeply worried: 'The four orders we spoke about I understand. They're needed to ensure civil tranquillity and order in the church. But the doctrine that even prior to birth all men are divided between the few who are saved and the many who are perpetually damned . . . That's very unCatholic.'
'I knew you'd have trouble with that,' the marquis said eagerly. 'I did myself.'
He led the priest to a corner of the garden, where under branching trees beside a low stone wall erected some three hundred years earlier the two men analyzed this fundamental doctrine of the burgeoning religion, and the marquis offered the bald, simplified interpretation of Calvin's thought that was gaining currency among non-theological groups: 'It conforms to human experience, Abbe. In this village you and I can name men who were saved from birth and others who were doomed from the moment the womb opened. Such men are damned. God has put his thumb upon them and they are damned, and you know it and so do I.'
'Yes,' the priest said slowly, 'they are damned, and proof of their damnation is visible. But by faith they can be saved.'
'No!' the marquis said sharply. 'There is to be no more of this salvation by faith.'
'You speak as if you'd accepted the teachings of Calvin.'
'I think I have. It's a man's religion. It's a religion for all of us who want to move forward. There are the saved who do the work of the world. There are the damned who stumble through life headed only for a waiting grave.'
'And you're one of the saved?'
'I am.'
'How do you know?'
'Because God has given signs. This vineyard. My castle. My high position in this village. Would He have given me these if He did not intend to assign me to some great task?'
But when the abbe studied the Institutes with his background of religious speculation, he found that Calvin had preached no such fatalistic doctrine. Only God in the secrecy of His wisdom and compassion knew who was saved and who not, and high estate on earth was unrelated to one's ultimate estate in heaven. All children were to be baptized, because all had an equal hope for salvation: 'But I judge that most will not be saved, according to Dr. Calvin.'
An assignment which would encourage the marquis to believe that he was among the saved was at hand, for when the king in Paris heard of the growth of Calvinism in the towns along the Flemish border, he dispatched a Catholic general at the head of twelve hundred stout Catholic yeomen, and they lashed about the countryside, maiming and killing, and leading errant Protestants back