uch more sober and moderate Churchmen,
sympathisers with the general spirit of the movement, it was evident
that Mr. Ward had long passed the point when tolerance could be fairly
asked, consistently with any respect for the English Church, for such
sweeping and paradoxical contradictions, by her own servants, of her
claims and title. Mr. Ward's manner also, which, while it was serious
enough in his writings, was easy and even jocular in social intercourse,
left the impression, in reality a most unfair impression, that he was
playing and amusing himself with these momentous questions.

A Committee of the Board examined the book; a number of startling
propositions were with ease picked out, some preliminary skirmishing as
to matters of form took place, and in December 1844 the Board announced
that they proposed to submit to Convocation without delay three
measures:--(1) to condemn Mr. Ward's book; (2) to degrade Mr. Ward by
depriving him of all his University degrees; and (3) whereas the
existing Statutes gave the Vice-Chancellor power of calling on any
member of the University at any time to prove his orthodoxy by
subscribing the Articles, to add to this a declaration, to be henceforth
made by the subscriber, that he took them in the sense in which "they
were both first published and were now imposed by the University," with
the penalty of expulsion against any one, lay or clerical, who thrice
refused subscription with this declaration.

As usual, the Board entirely mistook the temper of the University, and
by their violence and want of judgment turned the best chance they ever
had, of carrying the University with them, into what their blunders
really made an ignominious defeat. If they had contented themselves with
the condemnation, in almost any terms, of Mr. Ward's book, and even of
its author, the condemnation would have been overwhelming. A certain
number of men would have still stood by Mr. Ward, either from friendship
or sympathy, or from independence of judgment, or from dislike of the
policy of the Board; but they would have been greatly outnumbered. The
degradation--the Board did not venture on the logical consequence,
expulsion--was a poor and even ridiculous measure of punishment; to
reduce Mr. Ward to an undergraduate _in statu pupillari_, and a
commoner's short gown, was a thing to amuse rather than terrify. The
personal punishment seemed unworthy when they dared not go farther,
while to many the condemnat