to hold the “whole cycle” of Roman doctrine in the English Church.  Mr. Ward’s view was that he was loyally doing the best he could for “our Church,” not only in showing up its heresies and faults, but in urging that the only remedy was wholesale submission to Rome.  To the University authorities this was taking advantage of his position in the Church to assail and if possible destroy it.  And to numbers of much more sober and moderate Churchmen, sympathisers with the general spirit of the movement, it was evident that Mr. Ward had long passed the point when tolerance could be fairly asked, consistently with any respect for the English Church, for such sweeping and paradoxical contradictions, by her own servants, of her claims and title.  Mr. Ward’s manner also, which, while it was serious enough in his writings, was easy and even jocular in social intercourse, left the impression, in reality a most unfair impression, that he was playing and amusing himself with these momentous questions.

A Committee of the Board examined the book; a number of startling propositions were with ease picked out, some preliminary skirmishing as to matters of form took place, and in December 1844 the Board announced that they proposed to submit to Convocation without delay three measures:—­(1) to condemn Mr. Ward’s book; (2) to degrade Mr. Ward by depriving him of all his University degrees; and (3) whereas the existing Statutes gave the Vice-Chancellor power of calling on any member of the University at any time to prove his orthodoxy by subscribing the Articles, to add to this a declaration, to be henceforth made by the subscriber, that he took them in the sense in which “they were both first published and were now imposed by the University,” with the penalty of expulsion against any one, lay or clerical, who thrice refused subscription with this declaration.

As usual, the Board entirely mistook the temper of the University, and by their violence and want of judgment turned the best chance they ever had, of carrying the University with them, into what their blunders really made an ignominious defeat.  If they had contented themselves with the condemnation, in almost any terms, of Mr. Ward’s book, and even of its author, the condemnation would have been overwhelming.  A certain number of men would have still stood by Mr. Ward, either from friendship or sympathy, or from independence of judgment, or from dislike of the policy of the Board; but they would have been greatly outnumbered.  The degradation—­the Board did not venture on the logical consequence, expulsion—­was a poor and even ridiculous measure of punishment; to reduce Mr. Ward to an undergraduate in statu pupillari, and a commoner’s short gown, was a thing to amuse rather than terrify.  The personal punishment seemed unworthy when they dared not go farther, while to many the condemnation of the book seemed penalty enough; and the condemnation of the book by these voters was weakened by their