, or allow
to be done, for the church while yet in alliance with it?'

The Gorham case was this: a bishop refused to institute a clergyman to a
vicarage in the west of England, on the ground of unsound doctrine upon
regeneration by baptism. The clergyman sought a remedy in the
ecclesiastical court of Arches. The judge decided against him. The case
then came on appeal before the judicial committee of the privy council,
and here a majority with the two archbishops as assessors reversed the
decision of the court below. The bishop, one of the most combative of
the human race, flew to Westminster Hall, tried move upon move in
queen's bench, exchequer, common pleas; declared that his archbishop had
abused his high commission; and even actually renounced communion with
him. But the sons of Zeruiah were too hard. The religious world in both
of its two standing camps was convulsed, for if Gorham had lost the day
it would or might have meant the expulsion from the establishment of
calvinists and evangelicals bag and baggage. 'I am old enough,' said the
provost of Oriel, 'to remember three baptismal controversies, and this
is the first in which one party has tried to eject the other from the
church.' On the other hand the sacramental wing found it intolerable
that fundamental doctrines of the church should be settled under the
veil of royal supremacy, by a court possessed of no distinctly church
character.

THE JUDGMENT

The judgment was declared on March 8 (1850), and Manning is made to tell
a vivid story about going to Mr. Gladstone's house, finding him ill with
influenza, sitting down by his bedside and telling him what the court
had done; whereon Mr. Gladstone started up, threw out his arms and
exclaimed that the church of England was gone unless it relieved itself
by some authoritative act. A witty judge once observed in regard to the
practice of keeping diaries, that it was wise to keep diary enough at
any rate to prove an _alibi_. According to Mr. Gladstone's diary he was
not laid up until several days later, when he did see various people,
Manning included, in his bedroom. On the black day of the judgment,
having dined at the palace the night before, and having friends to dine
with him on this night, he records a busy day, including a morning spent
after letter-writing, in discussion with Manning, Hope, and others on
the Gorham case and its probable consequences. This slip of memory in
the c