“Sir, it does.”
“Well, being an Anglican Christian I have no wish to martyr anyone. Mr Thomas, since Mr Prince will not or cannot oblige me, will you?”
Mr Thomas did.
The discipline of St David’s College was meant to be tighter than at the old English universities but the staff were tolerant former Oxford and Cambridge men who let through most students who paid their fees and subscribed to the thirty-nine articles ratified by the English Protestant parliament of 1571. Other students came to admire Prince and join him and Rees in private prayer meetings. This offended nobody at first.
One evening the Principal presided at a dinner where wine was served. Conversation grew louder, laughter more raucous, Prince and Rees remained the only students whose gravity was not impaired. At last the Principal rose to his feet and called for attention. Waiters deftly, assiduously topped up wine glasses in the silence and short speech that followed.
“The Epicureans among you may have noticed that our dinner this evening was perhaps more to their taste than usual, hey? A little more lavish, hey?” — (there were murmurs of “Yes yes”, “Indeed”, “Hear hear”) — “I cannot pretend not to know that rumour has spread the reason for this festivity. Yes. This morning my wife presented me with a little daughter and I am pleased to inform you that the infant and her excellent mother are in the pink of condition. She is to be christened Maria Augusta Ollivant. Are your glasses fully primed? Then please be upstanding, gentlemen, to drink a health to Maria Augusta Ollivant.”
Everyone but Prince stood up, glass in hand. Rees, staring open mouthed at Prince, slowly put his wine glass down. Others took longer to notice Prince, the Principal being last. He stared hard at the seated figure then said softly but distinctly, “Mr. . Mr, er. . Mr Prince, will you not drink my daughter’s health sir?”
“Dr Ollivant,” said Prince loudly, “I would rather pray for your daughter’s soul. I will gladly go down on my knees to do so here and now! Yes, here and now!”
He pushed his chair back and knelt on the floor with hands clasped on table edge and chin resting on them, then jerked his head back and cried, “I call upon the rest of you to join me! I really think it will be best.”
The company stared and buzzed at each other. Rees, torn between normal manners and Prince’s example, compromized by sitting down. After an astonished moment the Principal again spoke quietly but distinctly.
“Mr Prince, we said grace at the start of our meal. It would be impious to mingle prayers with our wine.”
“That was not Christ’s opinion, Dr Ollivant.”
There were murmurs and cries of “Shame!” and “O come now!” until the Principal said fiercely, “Stand up sir and tell me why you refuse to drink my daughter’s health.”
Prince stood and waited for silence before saying, “I have a low opinion of what the world calls good health, sir. As a doctor I have watched at the bedside of many dying sinners. In a few cases their last moments were their holiest. I have often been very ill, and have lost blood in a painful operation, and I know that nothing in this world is dependable except an abject faith in God. That is why I wish to be a clergyman. I find that as my health improves I grow proud, carnal, independent. The flesh becomes mighty in me, I feel I will never die. Tonight most of us here — perhaps you too Dr Ollivant — have forgotten you are going to die. You forget that the eye of an angry God is upon you, following you with a vengeance that you can never escape! Yet you are training to be priests or are priests already! Will you not join me in praying for the soul of a newborn child? Yes, and for the soul of every one of us?”
He knelt down as before — Rees also knelt down — while a murmur of protest that began near the end of his speech became an uproar. The Principal silenced it by announcing, “You are excused this company, Mr Prince, and so is anyone else who cannot reconcile Christianity with the friendly customs of English gentlemen.”
Prince stood up, bowed to the Principal and walked out. Rees and four others followed. George Thomas, a dandy student who had hitherto been foremost in joking about Henry James Prince and his followers, caused most astonishment by muttering an inarticulate apology and hurrying out after. The Principal said dryly, “There seems to be a little college inside our college.”
But Anglican tolerance was such that the careers of students in Prince’s meetings in no way suffered, for in due course those who attended were, like others at St David’s College, free to promote their kind of Protestant Christianity among the lower classes around Lampeter where Methodism had a strong foothold and Roman Catholicism a feeble one.
22: DIARY EXTRACTS
BR. PRINCE’S JOURNAL;44
OR,
AN ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL IN THE HUMAN SOUL,
BY THE
LORD JESUS CHRIST,
THROUGH THE GOSPEL.
____
“For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” — 1. JOHN iii. 8.
____
LONDON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE PROPRIETOR BY
ARTHUR HALL, VIRTUE, AND CO.,
25, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1859.
1836
May 7th — Glory be to Thee, O God! A day to be much remembered. The 7th May two years ago (1834) the Lord in Mercy delivered me from the bondage of Satan at half past four in the evening after many months of dreadful suffering under the conviction of sin and the temptations of Satan. When I deemed I had committed the unpardonable sin, in an hour of extreme agony Christ was revealed to me by faith, and my soul found peace in an instant.
Was enabled this day to declare my religious principles boldly before the college. The —— had given wine to drink his infant’s birth. Speeches were made. I called upon them all to unite in prayer for the child’s spiritual happiness. Afterwards pride strove hard for establishment; a day of darkness, deep darkness. I am far from God and in deep misery. Was much helped in exposition to my little congregation.
June 14th45 — A strong east wind was blowing today which always exerts a pestilential influence upon my flesh, but I had to visit a poor woman half dead in body and wholly so in spirit. My appearance alarmed her at first and even the announcement of my name, which she had heard from Arthur Rees, failed to reassure her. Gasping for breath she said her husband was not at home and asked if I could not wait till evening. I examined the sputum in a bowl beside her chair, felt her pulse, asked her to breathe deep while listening to her chest. I then asked if she knew she was dying of consumption. Between coughs she nodded agreement. I asked if she was not afraid. She said no, she knew that Christ would save her. I asked how she knew that. She said, because she felt comfortable in herself. She knew she was a sinner but thought she was not a very bad one. The Reverend Mr Griffiths had spoken to her so she did not need me. I said, “Your priest has made you comfortable in your self and you think this the work of God?”
She said, “Yes I’m at peace sir. Thank you for calling but I don’t need you.”
I told her what the Scriptures say about false peace: From the prophet even unto the priest everyone dealeth falsely. For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying “Peace! Peace!” where there is no peace. I told her Jeremiah was speaking about clergy who lead their flocks to Hell by dealing slightly with their conscience. I said I had come to deal with her hardly. She stared at me and said, “I will not go to Hell sir! I am not afraid to die!”