The Archbishop rose to his feet, and raising the presentation Bible high over his head brought it down upon the table with a bang. Then instantaneously conceiving his mistake, he laid his hands over it in the act of blessing.
"Never!" he said firmly and solemnly, with ever deepening inflection of tone, "never! never!"
"It is a measure that might be avoided," conceded the Prime Minister. "The alternative is before you. We have made you our offer."
"You have offered," said the Archbishop, "an alternative which I am not able to discuss. Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism in alternate doses is the price you ask us to pay. The Church of Jingalo will accept neither the Triple Crown nor an untriune Divinity as its guide." He drew himself to his full height. "That, sir, is her answer."
"So you really think," inquired the Prime Minister, "that yours and the Church's voice are one?"
"The blood of her martyrs," said the Archbishop, "has stained the very steps of that throne from which under divine Providence I am commissioned to speak with authority. I call on them to witness that never in her hour of need shall the Church surrender her divine mission to preach only pure doctrine and to defend the faith committed to the saints."
"I thought," said the Prime Minister, "that, officially at least, you did not invoke the dead."
"Sir, we have no need. Their record is our inheritance. It is they who invoke us from an imperishable past."
"Our discussion, then, seems to be at an end. We have gone back into the middle ages."
The Prime Minister, having got very much the answer he expected, here rose and began buttoning his coat. "Well, Archbishop," said he, as he thus trimmed himself to give a neat finish to the discussion, "before we part I will put the question quite frankly: Is it to be peace or war?"
"I am a servant of the Church Militant," answered his Grace.
And then they compared notes and settled dates as to when war was to be declared. Jingalo was about to exhibit to the world the continuity of her institutions, and with her mind thus carried back to ancient times modern controversy was an anachronism.
It was on those historic grounds that they arranged their armistice; but Recording Angels are more truthful than Archbishops or Prime Ministers; and the Recording Angel, having listened to their conversation, was led to set down upon his tables this notable memorandum--that on no account were popular pageantry or trade interests to be disturbed during so golden an opportunity as the Silver Jubilee. While that was going on defense of Church and State must be relegated to obscurity.