e
as regards the Creeds.... If those who live in an atmosphere of
intellectual criticism become incapable of such sincere public
profession of belief as the Creed contains, the Church must look to
recruit her ministry from classes still capable of a more simple and
unhesitating faith.'[37] And, again, in his most recent book: 'I have
taken occasion before now to make it evident that, as far as I can
secure it, I will admit no one into this diocese, or into Holy Orders,
to minister for the congregation, who does not _ex animo_ believe the
Creeds.'[38] Dr. Gore has not spared to stigmatise as morally dishonest
those who desire to serve the Church as its ministers while harbouring
doubts about the physical miracle known as the Virgin Birth, and one of
his clergy was a few years ago induced to resign his living by an
aspersion of this kind, to which the Bishop gave publicity in the daily
press.

Now it has been generally supposed that the Anglican clergy are bound to
declare their adhesion not only to the Creeds, but to the Thirty-nine
Articles, and to the infallible truth of Holy Scripture. Bishop Gore,
however, holds that when a new deacon, on the day of his ordination,
solemnly declares that he 'assents to the Thirty-nine Articles,' and
that he 'believes the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the
word of God,' he 'can no longer fairly be regarded as bound to
particular phrases or expressions in the Articles.'[39] And further,
when the same new deacon expresses his 'unfeigned belief in all the
canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,' 'that expression of
belief can be fairly and justly made by anyone who believes heartily
that the Bible, as a whole, records and contains the message of God to
man in all its stages of delivery and that each one of the books
contains some element or aspect of this revelation.'[40]

The Bishop himself has affirmed his personal belief that some narratives
in the Old Testament are probably not historical. It may fairly be asked
on what principle he is prepared to evade the plain sense and intention
of a doctrinal test in two cases while stigmatising as morally
flagitious any attempts to do the same in a third. For it is
unquestionable that a general assent to the Articles does not mean that
the man who gives that assent is free to repudiate any 'particular
phrases or expressions' which do not please him. A witness who admitted
having signed an affidavit with this intenti