"What is your order?" smoothly inquired his Grace.
"My order is the representative system, which voices the popular will."
"Mine," said the Archbishop in richly reverberating tones, "is divine revelation, which voices the will of God."
"You claim a closer acquaintance with that Authority than I," remarked the Prime Minister. "Yet I, too, have faith in the efficacy of its workings."
"We base our faith differently," retorted his Grace. "I have my principles; you, as you have just boasted, have your opportunity. I do not think that opportunities are of the same eternal character as principles. To-morrow your opportunity which now seems to give you power, may disappear. My principles will remain."
"I shall always respect them, in their proper place. As an adornment to the Church I am sure they will continue to shine. In the State they have become an excrescence and an impediment."
"You are pushing your definition of impediments rather far when you plan a new thoroughfare, giving strangers the entrée to church premises."
"It is really your definition of 'premises,'" said the Prime Minister, "over which we are chiefly at issue. What right has the Church to regard as strangers any who are baptized Christians?"
The Archbishop seized his advantage exultingly. "I will only remind you," said he, "of the Church Government Act--a measure of no ancient date--by which Parliament forced the Church to expel from benefice those who would not accept her discipline in matters of outward observance. You yourself voted for that measure."
The Prime Minister had to acknowledge the stroke; but he made light of it. "I think that measure has already become obsolete. It was not put very thoroughly into practice even at the beginning."
"Let Parliament, then, admit its error," said the Archbishop, "and abolish the act and the principle which it enshrines before proceeding with other acts diametrically opposed to it. While the law claims a hold over the Church, the Church claims to hold by existing law."
"I may possibly, then, satisfy your Grace," insinuated the Premier, "if presently I propose the restoration of certain Free Church ministers by episcopal consecration to the fold from which they were expelled."