ENGLISH CLERGYMEN AND THE NICENE THEOLOGY. To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."
SIR,—I venture to think that there is a slight but important mistake in your comment upon the letter of " A Yorkshire Incum- bent" in last Saturday's Spectator. You say "That such a view should be sincerely held by any clergyman of our Church, and held, as he believes, in common-with a considerable number of clergy- men, is a strange testimony to the value of our present subscrip- tions." In the clause I have marked, I imagine that you refer to the passage in the letter beginning, " For my own part, as one clergyman among many, I do not at all apprehend an extensive denial that Jesus was the Son of God.' Renan's book will leave most of us where it found us." But, as I understand him, the writer is here simply saying that he speaks for himself, and not that he represents " many " clergymen. Amongst fifteen or twenty thousand persons there is room for so much variety and uncertainty of opinion that it would not be safe to affirm that the most startling and unaccountable views may not be held even by more than one. But I would not believe without proof that there is a single other clergyman who would deliberately make the same profession of faith as the " Yorkshire Incumbent." I do not judge him, to his own Master he stands or falls. We know that a course of proceeding may commend itself to one conscientious mind as compatible with veracity and piety which would not commend itself similarly to any other. And I am quite certain that there is no "considerable number of clergymen" who could minister regularly in the Church whilst holding the opinions expressed by
your correspondent.—I am, your obedient servant, J. LI. D.
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