Glaring as were the intellectual faults of the Oxford movement, it was at any rate a recognition in a very forcible way of the doctrine that spiritual matters are not to be settled by the dicta of a political council.  It acknowledged that a man is answerable at his own peril for having found or lost the truth.  It was a warning that he must reckon with a judge who will not account the status quo, nor the convenience of a cabinet, a good plea for indolent acquiescence in theological error.  It ended, in the case of its most vigorous champions, in a final and deliberate putting out of the eyes of the understanding.  The last act of assertion of personal responsibility was a headlong acceptance of the responsibility of tradition and the Church.  This was deplorable enough.  But apart from other advantages incidental to the tractarian movement, such as the attention which it was the means of drawing to history and the organic connection between present and past, it had, we repeat, the merit of being an effective protest against what may be called the House of Commons’ view of human life—­a view excellent in its place, but most blighting and dwarfing out of it.  It was, what every sincere uprising of the better spirit in men and women must always be, an effective protest against the leaden tyranny of the man of the world and the so-called practical person.  The man of the world despises catholics for taking their religious opinions on trust and being the slaves of tradition.  As if he had himself formed his own most important opinions either in religion or anything else.  He laughs at them for their superstitious awe of the Church.  As if his own inward awe of the Greater Number were one whit less of a superstition.  He mocks their deference for the past.  As if his own absorbing deference to the present were one tittle better bottomed or a jot more respectable.  The modern emancipation will profit us very little if the status quo is to be fastened round our necks with the despotic authority of a heavenly dispensation, and if in the stead of ancient Scriptures we are to accept the plenary inspiration of Majorities.

It may be urged that if, as it is the object of the present chapter to state, there are opinions which a man should form for himself, and which it may yet be expedient that he should not only be slow to attempt to realise in practical life, but sometimes even slow to express,—­then we are demanding from him the performance of a troublesome duty, while we are taking from him the only motives which could really induce him to perform it.  If, it may be asked, I am not to carry my notions into practice, nor try to induce others to accept them, nor even boldly publish them, why in the name of all economy of force should I take so much pains in forming opinions which are, after all, on these conditions so very likely to come to naught?  The answer to this is that opinions do not come to naught, even if the man who holds them