Note (1) — Chapter XXIV

“But,” she continued, “Christianity is something more than a belief in a God. Do you also believe in all that the Catholic church declares to be essential to salvation? Do you believe that”—— And here she added a name too sacred, and accompanied with terms too awful, to be expressed in pages so light as these(1). “I believe it all—I know it all,” answered Melmoth, in a voice of stern and reluctant confession. “Infidel and scoffer as I may appear to you, there is no martyr of the Christian church, who in other times blazed for his God, that has borne or exhibited a more resplendent illustration of his faith, than I shall bear one day—and for ever. There is a slight difference only between our testimonies in point of duration. They burned for the truths they loved for a few moments—not so many perchance. Some were suffocated before the flames could reach them,—but I am doomed to bear my attestation to the truth of the gospel, amid fires that shall burn for ever and ever. See with what a glorious destiny yours, my bride, is united! You, as a Christian, would doubtless exult to see your husband at the stake,—and amid the faggots to prove his devotion. How it must ennoble the sacrifice to think that it is to last to eternity!”