Lord Lyttelton's audacity called up Archdeacon Denison, who was evidently
horror-struck. He thought the Church should yield nothing, make no sort of change in her creeds, or services, or anything else, should not even have power to deal with her own formulas ; but should stand still, and call out to the Dissenters, "You mast come to me ; I cannot stir to come to you." " Alter the Church to suit the times !" said the Archdeacon, "why, the next thing will be to alter the Bible to suit the times, which is what Dr. Colenso is attempting." As it seems to us, Dr. Coleus() is only trying to understand what the Bible says, and where it is inspired and where it is not, which is clearly not altering it, but altering our inferences from it. And that is precisely what the Church,—if a fallible human insti- tution,—should try to do, as its knowledge of the Bible and the Universe enlarges. Archdeacon Denison wished to reform not for- wards, but backwards, to throw the Church right back "upon the practice of the first century,"—including, we suppose, its deficiency in critical knowledge. But even so, why is the Archdeacon so
deeply in love with the AthanaRian Creed—an invention, is it mot, of the eleventh century ?—certainly irreconcilable by any --doctrine of development with the earlier creeds?
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