the proposal itself was vindicated and enforced in a pamphlet by Dr. Hampden by a definite and precise theory which stopped not short of the position that all creeds and formularies—­everything which represented the authority of the teaching Church—­however incidentally and temporarily useful, were in their own nature the inventions of a mistaken and corrupt philosophy, and invasions of Christian liberty.  This was cutting deep with a vengeance, though the author of the theory seemed alone unable to see it.  It went to the root of the whole mutter; and if Dr. Hampden was right, there was neither Church nor doctrine worth contending for, except as men contend about the Newtonian or the undulatory theory of light.

No one ought now to affect, as some people used to affect at the time, that the question was of secondary importance, and turned mainly on the special fitness of the Thirty-nine Articles to be offered for the proof of a young man’s belief.  It was a much more critical question.  It was really, however disguised, the question, asked then for the first time, and since finally decided, whether Oxford was to continue to be a school of the Church of England; and it also involved the wider question, what part belief in definite religion should have in higher education.  It is speciously said that you have no right to forestall a young man’s inquiries and convictions by imposing on him in his early years opinions which to him become prejudices.  And if the world consisted simply of individuals, entirely insulated and self-sufficing; if men could be taught anything whatever, without presuming what is believed by those who teach them; and if the attempt to exclude religious prejudice did not necessarily, by the mere force of the attempt, involve the creation of anti-religious prejudice, these reasoners, who try in vain to get out of the conditions which hem them in, might have more to say for themselves.  To the men who had made such an effort to restore a living confidence in the Church, the demand implied giving up all that they had done and all that they hoped for.  It was not the time for yielding even a clumsy proof of the religious character of the University.  And the beginning of a long and doubtful war was inevitable.

A war of pamphlets ensued.  By the one side the distinction was strongly insisted on between mere instruction and education, the distinctly religious character of the University education was not perhaps overstated in its theory, but portrayed in stronger colours than was everywhere the fact; and assertions were made, which sound strange in their boldness now, of the independent and constitutional right to self-government in the great University corporations.  By the other side, the ordinary arguments were used, about the injustice and mischief of exclusion, and the hurtfulness of tests, especially such tests as the Articles applied to young and ignorant men.  Two pamphlets had more than a passing interest:  one, by a then unknown