not so easy for any of the parties in the Church to
give a clear and consistent answer, as that the matter ought at once to
have been carried out of the region of discussion. The Articles were the
Articles of a Church which had seen as great differences as those
between the Church of Edward VI and the Church of the Restoration. Take
them broadly as the condemnation--strong but loose in expression, as,
for instance, in the language on the "five, commonly called
Sacraments"--of a powerful and well-known antagonist system, and there
was no difficulty about them. But take them as scientific and accurate
and precise enunciations of a systematic theology, and difficulties
begin at once, with every one who does not hold the special and
well-marked doctrines of the age when the German and Swiss authorities
ruled supreme. The course of events from that day to this has shown
more than once, in surprising and even startling examples, how much
those who at the time least thought that they needed such strict
construing of the language of the Articles, and were fierce in
denouncing the "kind of interpretation" said to be claimed in No. 90,
have since found that they require a good deal more elasticity of
reading than even it asked for. The "whirligig of time" was thought to
have brought "its revenges," when Mr. Newman, who had called for the
exercise of authority against Dr. Hampden, found himself, five years
afterwards, under the ban of the same authority. The difference between
Mr. Newman's case and Dr. Hampden's, both as to the alleged offence and
the position of the men, was considerable. But the "whirligig of time"
brought about even stranger "revenges," when not only Mr. Gorham and Mr.
H.B. Wilson in their own defence, but the tribunals which had to decide
on their cases, carried the strictness of reading and the latitude of
interpretation, quite as far, to say the least, as anything in No. 90.

Unhappily Tract 90 was met at Oxford, not with argument, but with panic
and wrath.[94] There is always a sting in every charge, to which other
parts of it seem subordinate. No. 90 was charged of course with false
doctrine, with false history, and with false reasoning; but the emphatic
part of the charge, the short and easy method which dispensed from the
necessity of theological examination and argument, was that it was
dishonest and immoral. Professors of Divinity, and accomplished
scholars, such as there were in Oxford, might very wel