"You do not understand what you are talking about," replied I; "Luther never made himself the head of the Church; neither are the kings of England at the head of religion. Both the Lutherans and the Anglicans acknowledge no other head than Jesus Christ. He, as St. Paul asserts, is the sole Head of the Church. And for this reason, my dear canon, that a Church does not mean a body of priests or bishops, but a people and congregation of believers. It is very well that the bishops should have authority over the priests, and among all the bishops one must be the chief: in the Latin Church, the first, the head of the other bishops, is the patriarch of Rome; in the Greek Church it is the patriarch of Constantinople; in the Anglican Church there are two primates, who for the government of the Church, as regards worship, depend altogether on the king and the parliament. What do you consider objectionable in this?" "That the king and the parliament," replied the other canon, "can understand nothing at all about ecclesiastical matters, as the bishops do; that the king of England and the parliament have never been addressed in the character or person of Peter, in the words, 'Feed my sheep;' that the king and the parliament have no apostolic succession--they do not belong to the hierarchy--consequently are not invested with any spiritual authority whatever." "Allow me," I rejoined, "to make a few comments on your observations. You say, the kings of England and the parliament do not understand ecclesiastical matters. You imagine that the Protestant sovereigns are as uninformed in Church affairs, as the rulers of Roman Catholic countries, who require to consult their theologians on such points, (and these now-a-days are invariably Jesuits.) The sovereigns of England, of Prussia, of Hanover, of Wittemburgh, and other Protestant dominions in Germany, understand quite as much about religion as the pope and his cardinals.[60] The first study of Protestants, is the study of their Bible, in which they are all well read. In the British parliament there are men learned in every department of science; there are even bishops and their primates: in cases of difficulty it resolves itself into a council, in which religious questions, like others, are rationally argued, and brought to a settlement. No one among them pretends to infallibility; if the question before them is not made sufficiently clear in a first sitting, it is argued in a second, or in a third, until they are agreed upon it. There are no oracles in England or in Germany; these are for the benefit of Rome only: there are only believers; who, however are possessed of true Christian knowledge, and are under the guidance of the Lord. Now, it was to the believers that the words of Christ were spoken: 'Feed my sheep.' 'Peter' is not intended to denominate the person (his true name indeed was Simon), but it is an appellative; as when, for instance, I call you 'canon.'