of conscience, to be
quite assured of their own position. The Articles are a public, common
document. It is the differing interpretations of a common document which
create political and religious parties; and only shallowness and
prejudice will impute to an opponent dishonesty without strong and clear
reason. Mr. Newman's interpretation in No. 90,--new, not in claiming for
the Articles a Catholic meaning, but in _limiting_, though it does not
deny, their anti-Roman scope, was fairly open to criticism. It might be
taken as a challenge, and as a challenge might have to be met. But it
would have been both fair and wise in the Heads, before proceeding to
unusual extremities, to have shown that they had fully considered their
own theological doctrines in relation to the Church formularies. They
all had obvious difficulties, and in some cases formidable ones. The
majority of them were what would have been called in older controversial
days frank Arminians, shutting their eyes by force of custom to the look
of some of the Articles, which, if of Lutheran origin, had been claimed
from the first by Calvinists. The Evangelicals had long confessed
difficulties, at least, in the Baptismal Service and the Visitation
Office; while the men most loud in denunciation of dishonesty were the
divines of Whately's school, who had been undermining the authority of
all creeds and articles, and had never been tired of proclaiming their
dislike of that solemn Athanasian Creed to which Prayer Book and
Articles alike bound them. Men with these difficulties daily before them
had no right to ignore them. Doubtless they all had their explanations
which they _bona fide_ believed in. But what was there that excluded Mr.
Newman from the claim to _bona fides_? He had attacked no foundation of
Christianity; he had denied or doubted no article of the Creed. He gave
his explanations, certainly not more far-fetched than those of some of
his judges. In a Church divided by many conflicting views, and therefore
bound to all possible tolerance, he had adopted one view which certainly
was unpopular and perhaps was dangerous. He might be confuted, he might
be accused, or, if so be, convicted of error, perhaps of heresy. But
nothing of this kind was attempted. The incompatibility of his view, not
merely with the Articles, but with morality in signing what all, of
whatever party, had signed, was asserted in a censure, which evaded the
responsibility of specifying the