Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/191

Rh On these passages the accusation was grounded—1. That the preacher departed, and that knowingly, from the teaching of St. Paul on the fall of Adam. 2. That he denied the fact of the resurrection of our Lord. 3. That he claimed for the teachers of to-day to correct the teaching of the apostles, and of the Church on various other points.

It is true that three of the six doctors whom the vice-chancellor considered himself bound by the statute to appoint to inquire into the complaint could not bring themselves to pronounce Mr. Fletcher's teaching as free from the charge of being "dissonant or contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England as publicly received"; and that he was acquitted only by the casting vote of the vice-chancellor. But not only was the feeling of both residents and non-residents, of all shades of opinion, strongly adverse to the proceeding, but (we quote from the journal which represents the more conservative and clericalist side of university opinion) "an opinion to this effect was conveyed to Mr. Ffoulkes (the delator) in a letter signed by a number of those whose judgment might be supposed likely to have weight with him"; and it is added, "Mr. Ffoulkes's action is entirely his own." We may add that a certain sense of incongruity is imparted to the proceeding by the fact that Mr. Ffoulkes was himself for some time the holder of views within the Church of England which led him to become for some years a Roman Catholic. But the prevalent feeling has been that expressed by Trajan about persecution, "Non nostri sæculi est." As Mr. Fletcher says in the preface to his published sermon: "It is so incongruous with the ideas of our time that, even in serious people, it excites a sense of humor. It is like fighting with bows and arrows after the invention of cannon. Let us hope it will have the historical interest of being the last instance of its kind; the last flickering, expiring flame of a fire which once burned so fiercely, and nowhere more so than in Oxford." This feeling is shared by religious persons generally. It may rightly be said that almost any opinion, if put forward with sincere conviction and in a becoming spirit, will be allowed an unprejudiced hearing; and that, whether in the university or in the Church generally, prosecutions for matters of opinion are very unlikely to be repeated.

This conviction arises from the fact that this aversion from prosecution is not an isolated fact. It is connected with a spirit of tolerance which is wide-spread and well-grounded. Meetings like the Church Congress and the Diocesan Conferences have made the clergy and their adherents know and esteem one another, and Church parties have not the bitter antagonism they once had. In clerical circles this tolerance as yet hardly extends to Nonconformists; the clergy still to a great extent hold theories, and still more entertain exclusive feelings, which separate them and those attached to their teaching from co-operation in all spiritual things with dissenters. But there