Untitled - Electric Scotland

1841] "I WOULD
DO IT AGAIN 87
portance of the truths subscribed to does not affect the question ;
I am merely speaking of the utter perversion of language shown
in the Tract, according to which a man may
subscribe to an
article when he holds the very opposite opinions, believing
what it denies, and denying what it affirms. Believe me to be,
dear Sir, very truly yours, T. ARNOLD."
More than one of Tait s correspondents warns him
against the temptation to put himself unduly forward.
Speaking
in after life of the accusation that he had done
so, he used to say that it was impossible for him,
holding the opinions he did, not to come forward. His
position in the University required it of him. Though he
was not yet thirty years old, he had for several years been
the Senior Tutor in what was admittedly, by this time,
the foremost College in Oxford. He was known to lay
great stress upon the responsibilities of the University
teachers (whether Tutors or Professors) in religious
matters, and he had never scrupled to declare his dis
trust of the teaching which had now found expression
in No. 90.
" Were it all to happen again," he said in
1880, "I think I should, in the same position, do exactly
as I did then."
But having, with his three colleagues, come forward
where others who agreed with him held back, he was
perfectly willing to leave to older, more experienced, or
more authoritative men the actual conduct of the contro
versy. He never had any love, or any particular capacity,
for the public discussion of the deeper doctrinal questions.
His Protest, as he was always careful to remind his
friends, had been raised rather against what he deemed
a disingenuous and dangerous mode of treating formularies
to which the writers had subscribed, than against the
doctrinal system of the Tractarians. With that system
he had always avowed his disagreement, but what he
objected to still more strongly, both then and in after