Note 94 — PRELIMINARY REMARKS (continued 2)

Take a few as a specimen:—"A great restraint is supposed to be imposed upon the Clergy by reason of their subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. Yet it is more difficult than might be expected, to define what is the extent of the legal obligation of those who sign them; and in this case, the strictly legal obligation is the measure of the moral one. Subscription may be thought even to be inoperative upon the conscience by reason of its vagueness. For the act of subscription is enjoined, but its effect or meaning nowhere plainly laid down; and it does not seem to amount to more than an acceptance of the Articles of the Church as the formal law to which the subscriber is in some sense subject. What that subjection amounts to, must be gathered elsewhere; for it does not appear on the face of the subscription itself."—(p. 181. See down to page 185.) Can equivocation such as this be read without a sense of humiliation and shame, as well as of disgust and abhorrence?