Dr. Pusey has addressed a remarkable letter to the Wesleyan
Conference, praying that body. to assist the Church in resisting Mr. Coleridge's Bill for the abolition of University Tests. That Bill, he says, will legitimize the strife between Orthodoxy and Socinianism within the University itself, and compel the clergy to seek elsewhere for their education, as the Roman clergy do in France. He would to avoid such a calamity found out of college revenues colleges for each creed, preferring rather "that Socinianism should be endowed than to allow that all colleges should become Soeinian, sceptical, deistic, atheistic." Dr. Pusey is always entitled to respect, but his arguments are not always ; and his argument in this letter comes to this. If Deism and Christianity are to fight out their quarrel within the same walls Deism will win. But if Deism is taught within one set of walls, and Christianity within another, then Christianity will either win
or receive no hurt ! We can conceive the policy of excluding Deism altogether from Oxford, though that would be most unjust to Deists, who have their share in the national right over the Uni- versities; but the policy of allowing it in the colleges and not in the University is to us wholly imperceptible. Thought is a very rarified fluid. The Conference declined to discuss Dr. Pusey's letter, and as the Dissenters generally are sure to refuse to be " labelled " by admission only to certain colleges, the effort has been useless, except indeed to show that Dr. Pusey values Christianity above Churchmanship,- and that lie despairs of keeping up any but the broadest lines of demarcation among creeds.
