bove arithmetical errors, and give up the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, he thinks we should remove at one stroke some of the main
difficulties of the Mosaic narrative.[219]

But Stanley has exposed his Broad Church sympathies more in a late
review article than in any formal volume.[220] It is a discussion of the
judicial proceedings in connection with two authors of the _Essays and
Reviews_. His theme permits a wide range, and he therefore dwells at
length upon the whole question of ministerial teaching. He considers the
final acquittal of the essayists one of the most gratifying events of
the day. According to him, the questions raised by the work are, with
few exceptions, of a kind altogether beside and beyond the range over
which the formularies of the Church extend. No passage in any of the
five clerical essayists contradicts any of the formularies of the Church
in a degree at all comparable to the direct collision which exists
between the High Church party and the Articles, or the Low Church party
and the Prayer-Book; on the points debated in the _Essays and Reviews_
the Articles and Prayer-Book are alike silent. Stanley rejoices that of
the thirty-two charges presented against Mr. Wilson and Dr. Williams all
were dismissed but five, and that for these "there was no heavier
penalty than a year's suspension." He is in ecstacy that the judgment in
the case of these two men has established the legal position of those
who have always claimed the right of free inquiry and latitude of
opinion equally for themselves and for both the other sections of the
Church. By the issue of the litigation, he claims that great victories
have been won, that henceforth ample freedom is left to all detailed
criticism of the Sacred Text, so long as the canonicity of no canonical
book is denied, and that the questions whether there be "one Isaiah or
two, two Zechariahs or three, who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
who wrote the Pentateuch, whether Job and Josiah be historical or
parabolical, whether the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah or the Second
Psalm be directly or indirectly prophetic, what are the precise limits
of the natural and practical, what is the weight of internal and
external evidence, whether the Apocalypse refers to the Emperor Nero or
to the Pope of Rome; are to be settled according to the individual
opinion of every clergyman of the Established Church." Stanley sneers at
the Declaration of the Oxford Committee