"You very well know," I exclaimed with some warmth, "that not to be my meaning, or what I suppose his should be. Our priests do constantly crave for public disputations touching religion, albeit they eschew secret ones, which their adversaries make a pretext of to spread reports of their inability to defend their faith, or willingness to abandon it. But heaven forbid I should anyways prejudge this question; and if with a safe conscience--and with no other I am assured will he do it--my father doth subscribe to this condition, then God be praised for it!" "But you will move him to it, Mistress Constance?" he said. "If I am so happy," I answered, "as to get speech with him, verily I will entreat him not to throw away his life, so precious to others, if so be he can save it without detriment to his conscience." "Conscience!" Hubert exclaimed, "methinks that word is often misapplied in these days." "How so?" I asked, investigating his countenance, for I misdoubted his meaning. Lady Surrey likewise seemed desirous to hear what he should say on that matter. "Conscience," he answered, "should make persons, and mostly women, careful how they injure others, and cause heedless suffering, by a too great stiffness in refusing conformity to the outward practices which the laws of the country enforce, when it affects not the weightier points of faith, which God forbid any Catholic should deny. There is often as much of pride as of virtue in such rash obstinacy touching small yieldings as doth involve the ruin of a family, separation of parents and children, and more evils than can be thought of." "Hubert," I said, fixing mine eyes on him with a searching look he cared not, I ween, to meet, for he cast his on a paper he had in his hand, and raised them not while I spoke, "'sit is by such reasonings first, and then by such small yieldings as you commend, that some have been led two or three times in their lives, yea, oftener perhaps, to profess different religions, and to take such contradictory oaths as have been by turns prescribed to them under different sovereigns, and God each time called on to witness their perjuries, whereby truth and falsehood in matters of faith shall come in time to be words without any meaning." Then he: "You do misapprehend me, Mistress Constance, if you think I would counsel a man to utter a falsehood, or feign to believe that which in his heart he thinketh to be false. But, in heaven's name, I pray you, what harm will your father do if he listens to a minister's discourse, and suffers it to be set forth he doth ponder thereon, and in the meantime escapes to France? whereas, if he refuses the loophole now offered to him, he causeth not to himself alone, but to you and his other friends, more pain and sorrow than can be thought of, and deprives the Church of one of her servants, when her need of them is greatest."