1692
This morn I attended divine service at Saint John’s, as is expected of one in polite society, though my mind was less incline’d to devotion than to thought. The church, a structure of grave antiquity, seemed to labour under the burden of its own holiness: the stone vaults blackened by the smoke of generations, the air close with damp and the breath of many. I sat amongst a curious company—ladies in brocade and feathered hair beside tradesmen’s wives, pale from labour; their children clutching one another in the crush of the pews. The scent of their garments mingled strangely, perfume and poverty in one sighing cloud.
The vicar, a diligent man much devoted to his own authority, mounted the pulpit and surveyed his congregation as one might a field awaiting seed. His voice, deep but wearisome, rolled through the nave with practiced menace: repent, obey, believe. Each phrase fell like the toll of some dull bell, long cracked by over‑use. I listened—out of civility, not conviction—and found his words empty of discovery. He spoke of salvation as a bargain, of damnation as the natural tax of curiosity. It occurred to me, most wickedly, that his sermon was less a light to reveal truth than a chain to keep thought from straying.
All about me the people fidgeted, their minds perhaps wandering toward their own dinners as mine fled toward philosophy. A child whispered that she was cold, and an old woman beside her murmured, “Hush, the Lord hears all.” I wondered then if Heaven truly delights in such obedience, or if this notion be but another invention of men who profit by our submission. Faith here seems neither wild nor consoling—it is habit, stitched into manners, worn like lace that has lost its bloom.
Once I confess I found comfort in the solemn order of worship. Now I feel only the stillness of minds too long silenced. It is not God I doubt, but the noise that men have made in His name. These rites of ours, so rigid and rehearsed, seem less to praise the Creator than to parade our conformity. Were a woman to stand in that pulpit but once—to speak of grace, or reason, or the inward soul’s liberty—I think the stones might breathe again, and the air taste of life rather than decay.
What would they call me, should such a thought be known? A heretic, no doubt; or worse, a woman meddling in intellect. Yet it is clear to me that virtue cannot depend upon ignorance. If there is a God—and I hope there is—He must dwell nearer the heart of understanding than in these Gothic shadows filled with repetition.
So I sit, I rise, I kneel, as custom directs; yet my spirit wanders beyond the pews, seeking an unseen light that owes no obedience to creed. Perhaps I am vain, perhaps ungrateful, but I begin to think the truest worship is to ask, not to bow.
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