hority of the Pope? Very well.
Whose, then, do you accept?"

"The authority of Christ, committed to His Church."

"Oh, la, la, la! . . . I should have said, Whose authoritative
interpretation of Christ's authority?"

"The Church's."

"Aye? Through whose mouth? We shall get at something definite in
time. . . . I'll put it more simply. You, sir, are a plain priest in
holy orders, and it's conceivable that on some point of use or
doctrine you may be in error. Just conceivable, hey? At all events,
you may be accused of it. To whom, then, do you appeal? To the
King?--Parliament?--the Court of Arches, or any other Court? Not a
bit of it. Well, let's try again. Is it to the Archbishop of
Canterbury? Or to your own Diocesan?"

"I should appeal to the sanction of the Church Catholic as given in
her ancient Councils."

"And again--as nowadays interpreted by whom? Let us pass a hundred
possible points on which no Council bothered its head, and on which
consequently it has left no decision. Who's the man, anywhere, to
take you by the scruff of the neck and chastise you for an error?"

"Within the limits of conscience I should, of course, bow to my
Diocesan."

"Elastic limits, Mr. Colt! and, substituting Brother Warboise's
conscience for yours, precisely the limits within which Brother
Warboise bows to you! Anarchy will obey anything 'within the limits
of conscience'--that's precisely what anarchy means; and even so and
to that extent will you obey Bishop or Archbishop. In your heart you
deny their authority; in speech, in practice, you never lose an
occasion of flouting them and showing them up for fools. Take this
Education Squabble for an example. The successor to the Chair of
Augustine, good man--he's, after all, your Metropolitan--runs around
doing his best to discover a way out, to patch up a 'concordat,' as
they call it? What's the effect, upon any Diocesan Conference?
Up springs subaltern after subaltern, fired with zeal to give his
commander away. 'Our beloved Archbishop, in his saintly
trustfulness, is bargaining away our rights as Churchmen'--all the
indiscipline of a middle-class private school (and I know what that
is, Mr. Colt, having kept one) translated into the sentimental
erotics of a young ladies' academy!"

Mr. Colt gasped.

"And so, believe me, sir," concluded Brother Copas, snapping down
the lid of his snuff-box, "this country of ours did not get rid of
the Pope in order to m