"Archdeacon Jolly: Well, then, her Majesty the Queen, whom the church admits to be 'supreme' in all causes, spiritual as well as temporal?
"Dean Critical could not forget that her Majesty, in whom they recognized a model of every Christian virtue, frequented, indifferently, Presbyterian meeting-houses and the churches of their own communion. If, therefore, as the law appeared to admit, the authority of the Anglican Church resided in her royal person, it followed that the Westminster Confession and the Thirty-nine Articles were equally true, and that every Anglican was also a Presbyterian.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'How about the Privy Council? If it be the ultimate judge of doctrine, must it not be the authority for which you are seeking?'
"Dean Critical thought not, because in fact, the sum of its decisions amounted to this—that the Church of England taught nothing and denied nothing, which was equivalent to saying that she believed nothing. A tribunal which decided in every case of disputed doctrine, as the privy council invariably did, that both the plaintiff and defendant were right, was a judicial curiosity that could hardly be said to afford the litigant parties much assistance in bringing their cause to an issue. The privy council might be an authority over the Church of England, whose decisions the latter was obliged to receive; but no one could seriously maintain that it was an authority to which any Anglican, of whatever party in the church, professed to submit his conscience in matters of faith.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Will you accept convocation as your authority?' (Loud laughter, with cries of 'shame' from Dean Pompous.)
"Dean Critical regretted that he could not accept convocation in the character of an Anglican Holy See: because, to say nothing of the general feeling of the country, and the malicious comments of the public press, which appeared to treat them with derision, and talked of their 'dancing round a may-pole,' his own observation of the proceedings of that assembly dissuaded him from any such view. Much experience had brought him to the sorrowful conviction that convocation was only a clerical debating-club, of which every member took himself for the pope, and the church for his pupil.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Might it be permitted to suggest the formularies?'
"Dean Critical: So supple and elastic in their nature as to be sworn to with equal facility both by those who claim to 'hold all Roman doctrine' and those who protest against it.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Well, there are still the thirty-nine articles.'