Yet as the weeks went by, and his first resentment cooled, Mr. Buxton's
arguments more and more sank home, for they had touched the very point
where Anthony had reckoned that his own strength lay. He had never before
heard Nationalism and Catholicism placed in such flat antithesis. In
fact, he had never before really heard the statement of the Catholic
position; and his fierce contempt gradually melted into respect. Both
theories had a concrete air of reality about them; his own imaged itself
under the symbols of England's power; the National Church appealed to him
so far as it represented the spiritual side of the English people; and
Mr. Buxton's conception appealed to him from its very audacity. This
great spiritual kingdom, striding on its way, trampling down the barriers
of temperament and nationality, disregarding all earthly limitations and
artificial restraints, imperiously dominating the world in spite of the
world's struggles and resentment--this, after all, as he thought over it,
was--well--was a new aspect of affairs. The coming of the Jesuits, too,
emphasised the appeal: here were two men, as the world itself confessed,
of exceptional ability--for Campion had been a famous Oxford orator, and
Persons a Fellow of Balliol--choosing, under a free-will obedience, first
a life of exile, and then one of daily peril and apprehension, the very
thought of which burdened the imagination with horror; hunted like
vermin, sleeping and faring hard, their very names detested by the
majority of their countrymen, with the shadow of the gallows moving with
them, and the reek of the hangman's cauldron continually in their
nostrils--and for what? For Mr.
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