12 MARCH 1864, Page 2

Dr. Pusey and Mr. Maurice have had a short controversy

in the Times about the new subscription which the Record and the Oxford bigots are pressing upon the clergy of the Church of England. Mr. Maurice says that the declaration is susceptible of exactly the same ambiguities as the words of Scripture from which it is taken, and that the attempt in it to give a meaning to the word "inspiration," when applied to the Scriptures, different in kind from that given to it by the 13th Article, where it is said to be the sine gud non of all " good works," is an attempt to put the inspiration of " life " below the inspiration of Biblical literature. Dr. Pusey rejoined yesterday that he does wish to distinguish two kinds of inspira- tion—the "ordinary," which works in all good men ; and the extra- ordinary, which worked only in the writers of Scripture. We, for our parts, should deny the specific existence of the latter altogether. Inspiration, of the same kind as that which is necessary to all good works, though greater in degree, possessed the prophets and apostles, no less in their lives than in their writings, probably even more in their lives than in their writings, which were but the reflex image of their lives ; but in a strictly literary inspiration existing in the chroniclers as chroniclers, guiding the writer of the book of Nehemiah, for instance, to accurate history, or of the Proverbs to infallible worldly wisdom, we do not believe, and are sure that the Church of England does not ask her clergy to believe.