Untitled - Electric Scotland

494 1 IKE
OF AKCHIMSHOl TAIT H. xvn.
in which they do not believe, and the moment that occurs all
honest and right-minded men will, if they have any sense of
Christian morality, leave the Church." "These
said Archdeacon Wordsworth,
subscriptions,"
"
are a protection to the conscience
against the arbitrary, the tyrannical usurpation of the popedom of
private judgment installed in the 17,000 pulpits of the Church of
England."
A Committee of the Lower House made a report
upon the matter, 2 but it was felt that the laymen who
were interested ought also to have a voice in any changes
which might be proposed, and the Government consented,
on the solicitation of Bishop Tait and others, to the
appointment of a Royal Commission 3 to inquire into the
whole subject of Clerical Subscription and to report
whether any changes were desirable. It was a Commis
sion of no less than twenty-seven members, eleven of
whom were laymen, and, strange to say, notwithstanding
the heat of the previous controversy, the Commissioners
were able to agree upon a unanimous recommendation
that the relief which had been asked for should be granted,
and the subscription reduced to a simpler and much less
stringent form. Their unanimity
took the Church and
the country by surprise, but it made the issue very easy.
On May 19, 1865, Lord Granville introduced a Govern
ment Bill to give legislative effect to the proposals, and,
though debated at some length in the House of Commons,
it became law before the close of the session. 4
In lieu
of expressing in several successive sets of words his "un
feigned assent and consent to all and everything
1 Chronicle of Convocation, 1863, pp. I2II, 1359.
"
within
Ibid., 1864, p. 1433.
3 Among the Commissioners were the four Archbishops, the Bishops of
London, Winchester, St. David s, and Oxford ; Lords Stanhope, Harrowby,
Lyttelton, Cranworth, and Ebury ; the Dean of Ely, and the Rev. H.
Venn.
4 28 and 29 Victoria, cap. 122.