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