dinal Newman) entirely broke with
Christianity, and in his book he describes the mental process by which
he came to abandon the beliefs he had once held. Perhaps the most
interesting point he makes is the deficiency of the New Testament
teaching as a system of morals. Greg was a Unitarian. He rejected dogma
and inspiration, but he regarded himself as a Christian. Sir J. F.
Stephen wittily described his position as that of a disciple "who had
heard the Sermon on the Mount, whose attention had not been called to
the Miracles, and who died before the Resurrection."

[204]

There were a few English clergymen (chiefly Oxford men) who were
interested in German criticism and leaned to broad views, which to the
Evangelicals and High Churchmen seemed indistinguishable from
infidelity. We may call them the Broad Church--though the name did not
come in till later. In 1855 Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol)
published an edition of some of St. Paul's Epistles, in which he showed
the cloven hoof. It contained an annihilating criticism of the doctrine
of the Atonement, an explicit rejection of original sin, and a
rationalistic discussion of the question of God's existence. But this
and some other unorthodox works of liberal theologians attracted little
public attention, though their authors had to endure petty persecution.
Five years later, Jowett and some other members of the small liberal
group decided to defy the "abominable system of terrorism which prevents
the statement of the plainest fact," and issued a volume of Essays and
Reviews (1860) by seven writers of whom six were clergymen. The views
advocated in these essays seem mild enough to-day, and many of them
would be accepted by most well-educated clergymen, but at the time they
produced a very painful impression. The authors were called the "Seven
against Christ." It was

[205] laid down that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other book.
"It is not a useful lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture
principles which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make
formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think of
reconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into double
meanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers and
Commentators as real knowledge." It is suggested that the Hebrew
prophecies do not contain the element of prediction. Contradictory
accounts, or accounts which can only be reconciled by conjecture, ca