"But in the Papistical Church they be no idols, Master Tremayne!" interposed Blanche eagerly. "Therein lieth the difference betwixt Popery and Paganism." "What should you say, Mistress Blanche, if you wist that therein lieth _no_ difference betwixt Popery and Paganism? The old Pagans were wont to say the same thing. [Note 1.] They should have laughed in your face if you had charged them with worshipping wood and stone, and have answered that they worshipped only the thing signified. So much is it thus, that amongst some Pagan nations, they do hold that their god cometh down in his proper person into the image for a season (like as the Papists into the wafer of the sacrament), and when they account him gone, they cast the image away as no more worth. Yet hark you how God Himself accounteth of this their worship. `He maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto IT, and worshippeth IT, and prayeth unto IT, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god.' And list also how He expoundeth the same:--`A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?' [Isaiah 44, verses 17, 20.] There should be little idolatry in this world if there were no deceived hearts." Blanche twisted her handkerchief about, in the manner of a person who is determined not to be convinced, yet can find nothing to say in answer. "Tell me, Mistress Blanche,--for I think too well of your good sense to doubt the same,--you cannot believe that Christ Himself is in a piece of bread?" In her inmost heart she certainly believed no such thing. But it would never do to retreat from her position. In Blanche's eyes, disgrace lay not in being mistaken, but in being shown the mistake. "Wherefore may it not be so?" she murmured. "'Tis matter of faith, in like manner as is our Lord's resurrection." "In like manner? I cry you mercy. You believe the resurrection on the witness of them that knew it--that saw the sepulchre void; that saw Christ, and spake with Him, and did eat and drink with Him, and knew Him to be the very same Jesus that had died. You can bear no witness either way, for you were not there. But in this matter of the bread, here are you; and you see it for yourself not to be as you be told. Your eyes tell you that they behold bread; your hands tell you that they handle bread; your tongue tells you that it tasteth bread. The witness of your senses is in question: and these three do agree that the matter is bread only." "The senses may be deceived, I reckon?"