Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/85

73 1865, the following mode of dealing with the question of the Conscience Clause:—

"We cannot help thinking that if Dissenters were aware how little effect the mere Catechism has in the creation of Church people, they would not make such a fuss about a Conscience Clause; and we are quite certain that, unless our dogmatic teaching is to be of a very different kind in future' from what it has been heretofore, we may just as well save ourselves the trouble and odium of struggling against its imposition."

Then follows a quarter of a column of particular doctrines which one is astonished to learn go to make up what is meant, and what I suppose Archdeacon Denison means, by the "one faith." But the argument is that all these doctrines can be taught, as I cheerfully concede that they can, apart from the Church Catechism, for they certainly could not be derived from it; and the inference apparently intended is precisely that which it has been the main business of this paper to assert, that the effect of the Conscience Clause in Church of England schools is confined to exemption from the Church Catechism (or part of it) and from the other distinctive formularies (so far as they are so), but does not further limit the Scripture lesson as such. After this, who shall say that an agreement between the Government and the Church—even the Church of East Brent—is a hopeless dream?

But I have done. I conclude by reiterating the appeal which I have already made—an appeal to which one who has known how to stand aloof from his own party when the welfare of the Church at large seemed to him to be imperilled, ought not to be insensible. Regarding the Conscience Clause as the direct if unconscious summons of the civil power to the Church to bethink her of her true character, and to render her utmost efforts to heal the breaches of long theological conflict, and by