Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/34

32, the lawyer,—of the Christian in short, in whatever capacity he is placed. This view is so obviously just, that, though it places no slight impediment in the way of the reviewer's argument, he does not directly impugn it. He says, "though contrary to all academical precedent, we have certainly no objection to the innovation." Admitting, therefore, that this peculiarity is to be retained, we have now only to consider it so far as it offers difficulties to our dissenting brethren at that stage of the academical career which we are now considering. And this it does, because as religion is made an essential part of the general education in the faculty of Arts, so an examination in religion is an essential part of the inquiry that is made into the proficiency of the student before he is admitted to his degree in that faculty. Supposing then, (and we must remember that this is as yet a mere supposition,) some satisfactory means to have been devised for the admission of the Dissenter up to this point, the difficulty here meets us in the form of the question, "How is he to pass this examination in divinity?" The reviewer, indeed, disposes of this difficulty very summarily. He says, "the only change required will be, not to make the thirty-nine Articles a necessary subject of examination at Oxford." Specious words! but what do they mean? If they mean merely that a knowledge of the text of the thirty-nine Articles need not be required, of their historical meaning, of the