Untitled - Electric Scotland

336 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xm.
use the Ordination Service of the Church of England, in
which the truth of the Bible is assumed. He admitted in
a footnote that the decision just delivered in the Court of
Arches upon Essays and Rev^e^vs had led him to modify
his original resolve that he must resign his Episcopal
office, but the general tenor of his Preface remained the
same. 1
"
I
appeal," he said,
"
to the strong, practical
love of truth in my fellow-countrymen, whether clergy or
laity," for the promotion
of such measures of reform in
the system of the Church, that it may not become "
neces
sary for me, or for those who think with me, to leave the
Church of England voluntarily, and abandon the work to
which we have devoted ourselves for life." The volume
containing this Preface was published in October 1862,
and was followed, three months afterwards, by a second
volume with a further Preface, in which the Bishop de
clared it to be impossible for him conscientiously to use
the Baptismal
the Deluge. 3
Service on account of its clear allusion to
Already the alarm was beginning to spread. At one of
the private meetings of the Bishops in May 1862, when
only the Commentary on the Romans had been pub
of a letter
lished, it had been proposed, on the strength
from Bishop Gray, then on his way to England,
that the
Bishops should discuss the question of a synodical con
demnation of the book. According to the account given
1 The passage in question is as follows :
"
For myself, if I cannot find
the means of doing away with my present difficulties, I do not see how I
can retain my Episcopal office, in the discharge of which I must require
from others a solemn declaration that they unfeignedly believe all the
Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, which, with the evi
dence now before me, it is impossible wholly to believe." (Part I. p. xii.) In
a footnote he adds: "This was written before the recent decision in the
Court of Arches, by which, of course, the above conclusion is materially
affected." But in subsequent pages of the Preface (pp. xxiv-xxxv) he
reiterates his first contention,
judgment."
"
notwithstanding Dr. Lushington s recent
z lb. pp. xviii-xxxv.
3 Part II. p. xxi.