Untitled - Electric Scotland

jSS LIFE OK ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xvn.
clergy at their Ordination certain tests and subscriptions
to the Church s formularies. The formal subscription, it
was urged, had become both harassing and ineffectual, and
if its total abolition was undesirable, it might at least, said
the reformers, be redrafted and curtailed.
But the proposal, as was to be expected, met with
strenuous opposition. August 24, 1862, was the bicen
tenary of the Black Bartholomew s Day, when Charles
II. s Act of Uniformity became law. The occasion was
naturally seized by Nonconformists and their friends, and
by many of the liberal clergy, to call attention to the whole
subject of exclusive and protective tests, and, as usual in
such controversies, the language used by the hot pro
moters of reform served to aggravate the indignation and
alarm of. their Conservative opponents. In the House of
Lords Lord Ebury became the mouthpiece of those who
desired to modify the form of clerical subscription, but the
Bill he introduced was withdrawn for further consideration
upon the urgent appeal of Bishop Tait, who, to the wrath
of some of his Episcopal colleagues, and especially of
Bishop Wilberforce, expressed his general concurrence in
Lord Ebury s endeavour to simplify and reduce the for
midable array of compulsory clerical declarations. 1
custom had made men familiar with the burden,
Though
it was
certainly formidable enough when plainly stated. Every
man ordained to an ordinary curacy had to make seven-
or, as some expressed it, ten distinct declarations of
assent, or promises of obedience ; while an incumbent, on
institution to a benefice, added four more, making,
as it
was sometimes put, fourteen separate subscriptions.-
Many of these were of course mere repetitions, but they
were none the less burdensome and cumbrous.
1
Hansard, May 27, 1862, p. 18.
2 For a precise list of these and their history see Report of the Royal
Commission of 1864-5, P- 9-