and inferences from Scripture, by the hundred or the thousand, but no one certain and authoritative one; none that warranted an organised Church, much more a Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded on the assumption of this interpretation being the one true faith, the one truth of the Bible.  The point was brought out forcibly in a famous pamphlet written by Mr. Newman, though without his name, called “Elucidations of Dr. Hampden’s Theological Statements.”  This pamphlet was a favourite object of attack on the part of Dr. Hampden’s supporters as a flagrant instance of unfairness and garbled extracts.  No one, they said, ever read the Bampton Lectures, but took their estimate of the work from Mr. Newman’s quotations.  Extracts are often open to the charge of unfairness, and always to suspicion.  But in this case there was no need of unfairness.  Dr. Hampden’s theory lay on the very surface of his Hampton Lectures and pamphlet; and any unbiassed judge may be challenged to read these works of his, and say whether the extracts in the “Elucidations” do not adequately represent Dr. Hampden’s statements and arguments, and whether the comments on them are forced or strained.  They do not represent his explanations, for the explanations had not been given; and when the explanations came, though they said many things which showed that Dr. Hampden did not mean to be unorthodox and unevangelical, but only anti-scholastic and anti-Roman, they did not unsay a word which he had said.  And what this was, what had been Dr. Hampden’s professed theological theory up to the time when the University heard the news of his appointment, the “Elucidations” represent as fairly as any adverse statement can represent the subject of its attack.

In quieter times such an appointment might have passed with nothing more than a paper controversy or protest, or more probably without more than conversational criticism.  But these wore not quiet and unsuspicious times.  There was reason for disquiet.  It was fresh in men’s minds what language and speculation like that of the Bampton Lectures had come to in the case of Whately’s intimate friend, Blanco White.  The unquestionable hostility of Whately’s school to the old ideas of the Church had roused alarm and a strong spirit of resistance in Churchmen.  Each party was on the watch, and there certainly was something at stake for both parties.  Coupled with some recent events, and with the part which Dr. Hampden had taken on the subscription question, the appointment naturally seemed significant.  Probably it was not so significant as it seemed on the part at least of Lord Melbourne, who had taken pains to find a fit man.  Dr. Hampden was said to have been recommended by Bishop Copleston, and not disallowed by Archbishop Howley.  In the University, up to this time, there had been no authoritative protest against Dr. Hampden’s writings.  And there were not many Liberals to choose from.  In the appointment there is hardly sufficient ground to blame Lord Melbourne.  But