Untitled - Electric Scotland

i i8 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP T AIT [CH. xn.
clergy, who may be called latitudinarians, and that section of the
laity who may be termed freethinkers."
On March i6th a deputation waited on the two Arch
bishops at Lambeth Palace to present an address signed,
it was said, by 137,000 lay members of the Church of
England, who desired to thank the primates for the course
they had pursued.
No small number of the promoters of this u thank-
offering," as it was called, wrote at the same time to
Bishop Tait ; some in wrathful remonstrance, some in
"
sadness of heart," and some in earnest entreaty that he
would
"
Pusey called the
had concurred.
even now express his repudiation
"
soul-destroying judgment
"
of what Dr.
in which he
In the course of a correspondence with Mr. Gladstone,
arising out of the Bishop s published sermons, he ex
plained his position with some care :-
T/ie Bishop of London to the Rig/it Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
LONDON HOUSE, April 2%th, 1864.
" MY DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, ... I feel greatly obliged to
you for writing to me so fully and candidly your opinion on the
judgment of the Privy Council. Notwithstanding what you
say, however, I almost feel that had you been on the Court,
considering the nature of the issue ultimately referred to us,
you could scarcely have come yourself to any other decision.
. . . The
fact is, that when such works as Essays and Reviews
come before a Court of Law they must be judged not according
to their general tenor, but by the force of particular extracts,
and when these extracts are exhibited in their naked legal aspect
they assume a very different character from that which they
perhaps presented when, viewing them in a popular and general
1 This sentence from the Record is adopted with approval by the Quarterly
Review, April 1864, p. 561.