And it was not only for their want of learning, manifest all through the controversy, that they were to blame. Their most telling charge against the Tractarians, which was embodied in the censure of No. 90, was the charge of dishonesty. The charge is a very handy one against opponents, and it may rest on good grounds; but those who think right to make it ought, both as a matter of policy and as a matter of conscience, to be quite assured of their own position. The Articles are a public, common document. It is the differing interpretations of a common document which create political and religious parties; and only shallowness and prejudice will impute to an opponent dishonesty without strong and clear reason. Mr. Newman's interpretation in No. 90,--new, not in claiming for the Articles a Catholic meaning, but in _limiting_, though it does not deny, their anti-Roman scope, was fairly open to criticism. It might be taken as a challenge, and as a challenge might have to be met. But it would have been both fair and wise in the Heads, before proceeding to unusual extremities, to have shown that they had fully considered their own theological doctrines in relation to the Church formularies. They all had obvious difficulties, and in some cases formidable ones. The majority of them were what would have been called in older controversial days frank Arminians, shutting their eyes by force of custom to the look of some of the Articles, which, if of Lutheran origin, had been claimed from the first by Calvinists. The Evangelicals had long confessed difficulties, at least, in the Baptismal Service and the Visitation Office; while the men most loud in denunciation of dishonesty were the divines of Whately's school, who had been undermining the authority of all creeds and articles, and had never been tired of proclaiming their dislike of that solemn Athanasian Creed to which Prayer Book and Articles alike bound them. Men with these difficulties daily before them had no right to ignore them. Doubtless they all had their explanations which they _bona fide_ believed in. But what was there that excluded Mr. Newman from the claim to _bona fides_? He had attacked no foundation of Christianity; he had denied or doubted no article of the Creed. He gave his explanations, certainly not more far-fetched than those of some of his judges. In a Church divided by many conflicting views, and therefore bound to all possible tolerance, he had adopted one view which certainly was unpopular and perhaps was dangerous. He might be confuted, he might be accused, or, if so be, convicted of error, perhaps of heresy. But nothing of this kind was attempted. The incompatibility of his view, not merely with the Articles, but with morality in signing what all, of whatever party, had signed, was asserted in a censure, which evaded the responsibility of specifying the point which it condemned. The alarm of treachery and conspiracy is one of the most maddening of human impulses. The Heads of Houses, instead of moderating and sobering it, with the authority of instructed and sagacious rulers, blew it into a flame. And they acted in such a hurry that all sense of proportion and dignity was lost. They peremptorily refused to wait even a few days, as the writer requested, and as was due to his character, for explanation. They dared not risk an appeal to the University at large. They dared not abide the effect of discussion on the blow which they were urged to strike. They chose, that they might strike without delay, the inexpressibly childish step of sticking up at the Schools' gates, and at College butteries, without trial, or conviction, or sentence, a notice declaring that certain modes of signing the Articles suggested in a certain Tract were dishonest. It was, they said, to protect undergraduates; as if undergraduates would be affected by a vague assertion on a difficult subject, about which nothing was more certain than that those who issued the notice were not agreed among themselves.