This is for
you and for those who come after you to do,--I, Felix Bonpre, shall
not be here to see the change so wrought, for I shall have gone from
hence to answer for my poor stewardship,--God grant I may not be
found altogether wanting in intention, though I may have been
inadequate in deed! And so with my earnest prayer for your health
and long continuance of life I bid you farewell, asking you nothing
for myself at all but a reasonable judgment,--unprejudiced and calm
and Christlike,--which will in good time persuade you that it would
be but a cruelty to carry out your indignation against me by
depriving me of that diocese where all my people know and love me,--
simply because I have befriended a child, and because having once
befriended him I refuse to desert him. But if your mind should
remain absolutely fixed to carry out your intentions I can only bow
my head to your will and submit to the stroke of destiny, feeling it
to be my Master's wish that I should suffer something for His sake,
and knowing from His words that if I 'offend one of these little
ones,' such as this friendless boy, 'it were better for me that a
millstone were hung about my neck and I myself drowned in the depths
of the sea!' Between the Church doctrine and Christ's own gospel, I
choose the gospel; between Rome's discipline and Christ's command I
choose Christ's command,--and shall be content to be glad or
sorrowful, fortunate or poor, as equally to live or die as my
Master, and YOUR Master, shall bid.
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