hy Name
Thou hast magnified Thy Word.' Now, if this be so--if God hath set up
His Word over all His Name--the very highest part of Himself--how dare
any assemblage of men to gainsay it? What then of these indulgences and
licences to sin, which the Popes set forth? what of their suffering them
to wed whom God has forbidden, and forbidding it to priests to whom God
has suffered it? Surely this is the very thing which God points at,
`teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'"

"But, Joan," said I, "my dear heart, did not our Lord say, `Whatsoever
ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven?' Surely that
authorises the Church to do as she will."

"Contrary unto God's Word? It may give her leave to do her will within
the limits of the Word: I trow not contrary thereto. When the King
giveth plenipotentiary powers to his Keeper of the Great Seal, his own
deposing and superseding, I reckon, are not among them. `All things are
subject unto Christ,' saith Paul; `doubtless excepting Him which did
subject all things unto Him.' So, if God give power of loosing and
binding to His Church, it cannot be meant that she shall bind Himself
who thus endowed her, contrary to His own will and law."

I answered nought, again, for a little while. At last I said, "Joan,
there is a word that troubles me, and religious folks are always quoting
it. `If a man hate not his father and his mother'--and so forth--he
cannot be our Lord's disciple. I think I have heard it from one or
another every week since I came here. What say these new doctrine folks
that it means?"

"Ours are old doctrines, Mother dear," saith she; "as old as the
Apostles of Christ. What means it? Why, go forth to the end, and you
will see what it means: he is to hate his own soul also. Is he then to
kill himself, or to go wilfully into perdition? Nay, what can it mean,
but only that even these dearest and worthiest loves are to be set below
the worthier than them all, the love of the glory of God? That our Lord
never meant a religious person should neglect his father and mother, is
plainly to be seen by another word of His, wherein he rebukes the
priests of His day, because they taught that a man might bestow in
oblation to God what his father's or his mother's need demanded of him.
Here again, he reproves them, because they rejected the command of God
in order to keep their own tradition. You see, therefore, that when the
Church doth this, it is not