"It would have no legal effect," said the Prime Minister. "You miss the point in dispute. We have not to discuss matters of faith and doctrine, but only of government. If you prefer--if you will give us your co-operation and consent--we are ready at any time to offer you the alternative of disestablishment. It is a solution which for the moment I do not press; but undoubtedly it would leave the spiritualities of the Church more free. Your real fear, I have gathered, is that it would prepare the way for extremes of doctrine, which you yourself cannot countenance. The Church Triumphant, I am told, would run the risk of a larger recognition than is allowed to it under present forms; and the limitations imposed by a State connection are your most hopeful means of retarding doctrinal development. Is not that so?" "We have not to discuss matters of doctrine," countered the Archbishop stiffly, "but only of government. Our concern is not with the Church's teachings but with her powers for enforcing them upon her own members." "Including," commented the Prime Minister, "what you have called 'the power of the Keys.' That power you seek to extend over temporalities to which we claim access; and to retain it you have in the past used political means; we are using them to deprive you of that power. I recognize that had your Grace occupied to-day the position of advantage which is now mine, you would have used it--and with justification--for the strengthening of your order; from the popular verdict you would have had authority to deliver sentence against me. Upon the same ground I now take the only sure means that are open to me to strengthen my own order and to safeguard its future liberty." "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 entree 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?"