Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/37

35 at this stage of the proceedings, on account of any erroneous tenets he may himself hold. And if this be so, the examination might possibly be conducted on the same system, even were Dissenters admitted. But though this sounds plausible in theory, I am afraid that in practice it would be found beset with difficulties, and replete with evils. How difficult it would prove to draw the line between opinions and knowledge—what endless cavillings and disputes would arise when any person was rejected in whose case it might be alleged that, while ignorance was the pretext, erroneous tenets were the cause—what phials of wrath would be by some parties poured out on the heads of examiners, who had been the just, but not unsuspected, instruments of disgrace to a dissenting student! And it must at all events be allowed, that to conduct examinations on this footing satisfactorily, would require a degree of judgment and temper on the part of the examiners beyond what it is fair to require from any body of men.

I mention this, therefore, not as a plan which I myself would adopt, but rather with the view of showing that I do not overlook it.

It might, perhaps, be more feasible, while we conducted the examinations precisely as at present for the members of our own church, to allow Dissenters, on producing properly authenticated certificates of their belonging to some other Christian denomination, to claim an exemption from examina-