Untitled - Electric Scotland

1860-64] MEMORANDUM ON THE CONTROVERSY 325
for safety or honest advance, during these heated disputa
tions :-
" The folly of the publication of Essays and Reviews, and,
still more, of Stanley s ill-judged defence of them in the Edin
burgh Review, and then the madness of Bishop Colenso ; these
things have so effectually frightened the clergy that I think
there is scarcely a Bishop on the Bench, unless it be the Bishop
of St. David s, that is not useless for the purpose of prevent
men. . . . Mean
ing the widespread alienation of intelligent
while I feel my own vocation clear, greatly as I sympathise
with the Evangelicals, not to allow them to tyrannise over the
Broad Churchmen ; and to resist that tendency which is at present
strong in them to coalesce with the High Church party for the
mere purpose of exterminating those against whom the cry is
now loudest. I deeply deplore, and indeed execrate, the spirit
of much of the Essays and Reviews. I have lately read over
again with the utmost care Wilson s and Williams essays before
writing my memorandum for the judgment of their cases before the
Privy Council. Williams spirit seems to me even worse than I
thought it on the former perusal. I do not wonder at the out
cry and alarm, but what are bishops appointed for except to
direct the clergy in times of alarm ? I pray that I may never fall
into the snare
diocese. . .
of following rather than leading the clergy of
. is wanted is a deeply religious liberal
my What
party, and almost all who might have formed it have, in the
alarm, deserted. . . . The great evil is that the liberals are
deficient in religion, and the religious are deficient in liberality.
Let us pray for an outpouring of the very Spirit of Truth."