on would cut a poor figure
in a law court. And it is difficult to see how adhesion to the
antiquated theory of inspiration could be demanded more stringently than
by the form of words which was drawn up, as none can doubt, to secure
it. These things being so, either the accusation of bad faith applies to
the treatment which the Bishop justifies in the case of the Articles and
the Bible, or it should not be brought against those who apply to one
clause in their vows the principle which is admitted and used in two
others.

There are some honourable men who have abstained from entering the
service of the Church on account of these requirements. But there are
many others who recognise that knowledge grows and opinions change,
while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider
that, so long as their general position is understood by those among
whom they work, it would be overscrupulous to refuse an inward call to
the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal
assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago. Dr. Gore
himself would probably have been refused ordination fifty years ago on
the ground of his lax views on inspiration; and the Bishops who approved
of the condemnation of Colenso, who condemned 'Essays and Reviews,' and
who would have condemned 'Lux Mundi,' were more 'honest' to the tests
than their successors. But an obstinate persistence in that kind of
honesty would have excluded from the ministry all except fools, liars,
and bigots. Again, it might have been supposed that the laity also, who
at their baptism and confirmation made the same declaration of belief in
'all the articles' of the Apostles' Creed, and who are bidden by the
Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as
the clergy. But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction. 'The
responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the
layman,' but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of
the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one. The Church of
England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the
clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds is as integral a part
of the baptismal as of the ordination vows.

No loyal Christian wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely
the life of the Redeemer as the account of His miraculous conception,
which appears, in our texts, in two books of the Ne