"Is it any plainer to you now, than when Sir Wilfrid began, what authority—if any—there is in the English Church; or what limits—if any—there are to private judgment within it?"
Dornal hesitated.
"My answer, of course, is Sir Wilfrid's. We have the Creeds."
They walked on in silence a moment. Then the first speaker said:
"A generation ago would you not have said—what also Sir Wilfrid carefully avoided saying—'We have the Scriptures.'"
"Perhaps," said Dornal despondently.
"And as to the Creeds," the other resumed, after another pause—"Do you think that one per cent of the Christians that you and I know believe in the Descent into Hell, or the Resurrection of the Body?"
Dornal made no reply.
Cyril Fenton also walked home with a young priest just ordained. Both were extremely dissatisfied with the later portions of Sir Wilfrid's speech, which had seemed to them tainted in several passages with Erastian complacency toward the State. Parliament especially, and a possible intervention of Parliament, ought never to have been so much as mentioned—even for denunciation—in an ecclesiastical court.
"Parliament!" cried Fenton, coming to a sudden stop beside the water in St. James' Park, his eyes afire, "What is Parliament but the lay synod of the Church of England!"