"It is not 'crumbs' that you are seeking," said the Archbishop with asperity. "From our chairs of theology we dispense to the Church the bread of wisdom from which she draws sustenance; and you ask us to let that source of her intellectual life become infected with microbes,—at a time when latitudinarian doctrines are sapping the unity of the Church and weakening her discipline, to allow their establishment as a principle in our centers of learning and in our seats of divinity! What claim to denounce heresy and schism will be left to the Church if in her very government heretics and schismatic teachers receive posts of influence, emolument, and authority? To what extremes may not the minds of our students be led, to what destruction of ecclesiastical discipline?"
"If you will admit free teaching in the Universities," explained the Prime Minister, "we shall not seek to touch your theological seminaries, or to invade your orders by an infusion of fresh blood."
"Invade our orders?" cried the Primate. "That you cannot do; no Bishop's hands would bestow them!" and he drew back his own with a declamatory gesture. "You yourself are not a Churchman, and you do not perhaps know what to us the Church means. We hold in sacred trust the power of the Keys—if we surrender those we surrender everything."
"They are in a good many hands already," remarked the Prime Minister blandly. "Episcopal power is not limited to the Church of Jingalo." And then for the first time, as a pawn in the political game, the Archimandrite was mentioned. The Archbishop could not believe his ears. "You would not dare," he said.
"I am sorry," replied the other, "that you should be under any such misapprehension. Let me remind you that only a year ago you yourself recommended him for an honorary benefice—a church that had not a parish."
"Yes, honorary; not with administrative powers."
"Yet I fancy it was devised in order that at a later date you might employ him—merely by accident as it were—for confirming the validity of your orders."
"While your device," said the Archbishop, "is to use him as a means for placing schismatics in a position of control and authority. Sir, I say to you that you would not dare. The nation will not allow it."
"Time will show," replied the other smoothly.
"Ah!" cried the Archbishop passionately; "you trust to time; I to the power of the Eternal. If such an attempt is made to violate the body of our Mother Church then I pronounce sentence of excommunication upon all who take part in it."