456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The decision of the court, as finally rendered by the Lord 

 Chancellor, virtually declared it to be no part of the duty of the 

 tribunal to pronounce any opinion upon the book ; that the court 

 only had to do with certain extracts which had been presented. 

 Among these was one adduced in support of a charge against 

 Mr. Wilson that he denied the doctrine of eternal punishment. 

 On this the court decided that it did "not find in the formularies 

 of the English Church any such distinct declaration upon the 

 subject as to require it to punish the expression of a hope by a 

 clergyman that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked who are 

 condemned in the day of judgment may be consistent with the 

 will of Almighty God." While the Archbishops dissented from 

 this judgment, Bishop Tait united in it with the Lord Chancellor 

 and the lay judges. 



And now the panic broke out more severely than ever. Con- 

 fusion became worse confounded. The earnest-minded insisted 

 that the tribunal had virtually approved Essays and Reviews; 

 the cynical remarked that it had " dismissed hell with costs." An 

 alliance was made at once between the more zealous High and 

 Low Church men, and Oxford became its headquarters ; Dr. Pusey 

 and Archdeacon Denison were among the leaders, and an impas- 

 sioned declaration was posted to every clergyman in England and 

 Ireland, with a letter begging him " for the love of God " to sign 

 it. Thus it was that in a very short time eleven thousand signa- 

 tures were obtained. Besides this, deputations claiming to repre- 

 sent one hundred and thirty-seven thousand laymen waited on 

 the Archbishops to thank them for dissenting from the judg- 

 ment. The Convocation of Canterbury also plunged into the fray, 

 Bishop Wilberforce being the champion of the older orthodoxy, 

 and Bishop Tait of the new. Caustic was the speech made by 

 Bishop Thirlwall, in which he declared that he considered the 

 eleven thousand names, headed by that of Pusey, attached to the 

 Oxford declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded by a 

 decimal point, so that, however far the series may be advanced, it 

 never can rise to the value of a single unit." 



In spite of all that could be done, the act of condemnation was 

 carried in Convocation. 



The last main echo of this whole struggle against the newer 

 mode of interpretation was seen when the Chancellor, referring 

 to the matter in the House of Lords, characterized the ecclesias- 

 tical act as "simply a series of well-lubricated terms a sentence 

 so oily and saponaceous that no one can grasp it ; like an eel, it 

 slips through your fingers, and is simply nothing." 



The word "saponaceous" necessarily elicited a bitter retort 

 from Bishop Wilberforce ; but perhaps the most valuable judg- 

 ment on the whole matter was rendered by Bishop Tait, who de- 



