Untitled - Electric Scotland

314 MFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. XII,
who should have been its champions, and that the Bishops
at home were apathetic and indifferent at the least.
As the time for delivering judgment drew near, the
Bishop of London received a series of long
and earnest
letters from Dr. Pusey, pointing out the evil consequences
that must follow should the essayists be acquitted :
"
I am afraid of lawyers/ he said, "and so I have ventured to
write to your Lordship in what is a great crisis of the Church.
. . . Day
by day, since I heard the rumour of the impending
judgment, the thought of it has haunted me. It is the greatest
crisis the Church of England fias ever gone through. For I, at
least, see no way out of it, except that the Court must either
affirm what has been a part of the faith from the first, or, if it
makes the doctrines an open question, must tamper with words
in a way which will throw uncertainty on every man s meaning,
and sanction unbounded hypocrisy. Your Lordship remembers
well the general indignation when Mr. Ward proclaimed that he
held the Articles in non-natural senses and justly. For there is
an end of all faith in each other, of all trust in man, if our hearts
do not believe what in their plain meaning our tongues profess.
... If the highest Court of Appeal allows our clergy to take the
word everlasting in a sense contrary to its known English
meaning, . . . how can our people
believe that wre
mean anything
which we say ? ... I do not see what would be left us. And
it would be the highest Court of Jurisdiction which would be
teaching the clergy and people to be thus dishonest with words.
. . . Your Lordship will, I know, forgive my troubling you with
this. I know how many are praying in regard to the issue, and I
yet hope that God will hear us, and that He will incline the hearts
of the judges not to allow His truth to be denied, or our people
to be taught to mistrust all which we teach in His name for their
salvation."
As one of those before whom the case was heard, the
Bishop could say no more in reply than that a most care
ful and deliberate decision would be given by the Court
upon
the facts before it.
"At last," to quote the words of Dean Stanley, "the