with self-contradiction.  “If indeed we said” (argued he) “that God is three in the same sense as that in which He is one, that would be self-refuting; but we hold Him to be three in one sense, and one in another.”  It crossed my mind very forcibly, that, if that was all, the Athanasian Creed had gratuitously invented an enigma.  I exchanged thoughts on this with an undergraduate friend, and got no fresh light:  in fact, I feared to be profane, if I attempted to understand the subject.  Yet it came distinctly home to me, that, whatever the depth of the mystery, if we lay down anything about it at all, we ought to understand our own words; and I presently augured that Tillotson had been right in “wishing our Church well rid” of the Athanasian Creed; which seemed a mere offensive blurting out of intellectual difficulties.  I had, however, no doubts, even of a passing kind, for years to come, concerning the substantial truth and certainty of the ecclesiastical Trinity.

When the period arrived for taking my Bachelors degree, it was requisite again to sign the 39 Articles, and I now found myself embarrassed by the question of Infant Baptism.  One of the articles contains the following words, “The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained, as most agreeable to the institution of Christ.”  I was unable to conceal from myself that I did not believe this sentence; and I was on the point of refusing to take my degree.  I overcame my scruples by considering, 1.  That concerning this doctrine I had no active dis-belief, on which I would take any practical step, as I felt myself too young to make any counterdeclaration:  2.  That it had no possible practical meaning to me, since I could not be called on to baptize, nor to give a child for baptism.  Thus I persuaded myself.  Yet I had not an easy conscience, nor can I now defend my compromise; for I believe that my repugnance to Infant Baptism was really intense, and my conviction that it is unapostolic as strong then as now.  The topic of my “youth” was irrelevant; for, if I was not too young to subscribe, I was not too young to refuse subscription.  The argument that the article was “unpractical” to me, goes to prove, that if I were ordered by a despot to qualify myself for a place in the Church by solemnly renouncing the first book of Euclid as false, I might do so without any loss of moral dignity.  Altogether, this humiliating affair showed me what a trap for the conscience these subscriptions are:  how comfortably they are passed while the intellect is torpid or immature, or where the conscience is callous, but how they undermine truthfulness in the active thinker, and torture the sensitiveness of the tenderminded.  As long as they are maintained, in Church or University, these institutions exert a positive influence to deprave or eject those who ought to be their most useful and honoured members.