criticism. It was a crisis in which much might
have been usefully said, if there had been any one
to say it; much too, to make any one feel, if he was
competent to feel, that he had a good deal to think
about in his own position, and that it would be well
to ascertain what was tenable and what untenable in
it. But it seemed as if the opportunity must not
be lost for striking a blow. The Tract was published
on 27th February. On the 8th of March four Senior
Tutors, one of whom was Mr. H.B. Wilson, of St.
John’s, and another Mr. Tait, of Balliol, addressed
the Editor of the Tract, charging No. 90 with suggesting
and opening a way, by which men might, at least in
the case of Roman views, violate their solemn engagements
to their University. On the 15th of March, the
Board of Heads of Houses, refusing to wait for Mr.
Newman’s defence, which was known to be coming,
and which bears date 13th March, published their judgment
They declared that in No. 90 “modes of interpretation
were suggested, and have since been advocated in other
publications purporting to be written by members of
the University, by which subscription to the Articles
might be reconciled with the adoption of Roman Catholic
error.” And they announced their resolution,
“That modes of interpretation, such as are suggested
in the said Tract, evading rather than explaining
the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, and reconciling
subscription to them with the adoption of errors which
they are designed to counteract, defeat the object,
and are inconsistent with the due observance of the
above-mentioned statutes."[95]
It was an ungenerous and stupid blunder, such as men
make, when they think or are told that “something
must be done,” and do not know what. It
gave the writer an opportunity, of which he took full
advantage, of showing his superiority in temper, in
courtesy, and in reason, to those who had not so much
condemned as insulted him. He was immediately
ready with his personal expression of apology and
regret, and also with his reassertion in more developed
argument of the principle of the Tract; and this was
followed up by further explanations in a letter to
the Bishop. And in spite of the invidious position
in which the Board had tried to place him, not merely
as an unsound divine, but as a dishonest man teaching
others to palter with their engagements, the crisis
drew forth strong support and sympathy where they
were not perhaps to be expected. It rallied to
him, at least for the time, some of the friends who
had begun to hold aloof. Mr. Palmer, of Worcester,
Mr. Perceval, Dr. Hook, with reserves according to
each man’s point of view, yet came forward in
his defence. The Board was made to feel that they
had been driven by violent and partisan instigations
to commit themselves to a very foolish as well as
a very passionate and impotent step; that they had
by very questionable authority simply thrown an ill-sounding
and ill-mannered word at an argument on a very difficult