Note 2 — EPILOGUE

Within the last two months the theological faculties of Oxford and Cambridge, and the examining chaplains (of various bishops) resident in those universities, have addressed a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury praying him to absolve candidates for Ordination of the necessity of avowing that “they believe unfeignedly in the whole of the Old and New Testaments,” because so many competent and well-qualified students are thereby deterred from taking holy orders. The Archbishop would, it seems, make the individual clergyman’s conscience the sole judge (to the exclusion of the Bishop of Croydon) of the propriety of his retaining his orders in spite of his rejection of this and that tradition or dogma. That is at least a sign that opinion is on the move. ↑