Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/16

12 And I say for myself, and I believe for most other Church people, "any manner of Conscience Clause," because no alteration in its terms can possibly affect its substance, nor alter what is intended by it, and what it enables to be done. And I had proposed to move the Resolution in this shape; but it has been suggested to me that it is better not to expose it to the plausible objection that it would be in this shape rather the assertion of an abstract principle than of an actual grievance. I think this suggestion a wise one, and the form in which I have given notice of it, and now read it, answers every purpose. Now in all the discussions, public and private, that I have had on the matter, I have never found but one man who defended the "Conscience Clause" as it stands, and I thought him the boldest man I had ever come across. However, he was in a more intelligible position than some friends of mine who won't have "Conscience Clause" at all as it stands, but think they can mend it, and so make it unobjectionable. It is to be observed that no two of them agree in their amendments. But what I press is this, that they lose sight altogether of the real question which is raised by "Conscience Clause;" that is, of the question of turning the parish school into a place for secular teaching only. These are the men, I say it with much personal regard for them, and with a full sense of their many merits, who do all the mischief. I have never been afraid of opponents who have opposite principles to my own respecting the defence of the Church. The men I am afraid of are those friends who say that their principles are the same, and, saying this, maintain them with their left hand, and surrender them with their right. Now these men see the difficulties and the dangers of the case, but they won't meet them. They want to get out of them. But you cannot get out of them by any such process. They don't see that they are shifting, or rather trifling with, a difficulty which is not a difficulty of degree at all, but a difficulty of principle, and as such not admitting of any such treatment. My good friend the Dean of Ely has published a letter in which he tries his hand at framing