ld be stopped;
second, that the church of England does not make assent to the
proceedings of the Reformation a term of communion; and third, that
before even judicial proceedings in one direction, due consideration
should be had of what judicial proceedings in another direction
consistency might entail, if that game were once begun. As Ward himself
had virtually put it, 'Show me how any of the recognised parties in the
church can subscribe in a natural sense, before you condemn me for
subscribing in a non-natural.'[192] The end was a concordat between
editor and contributor, followed by an immense amount of irksome
revision, mutilation, and re-revision, reducing the argument in some
places 'almost to tatters'; but the writer was in the long run satisfied
that things were left standing in it which it was well to plant in a
periodical like the _Quarterly Review_.

We have a glimpse of the passionate agitation into which this great
controversy, partly theologic, partly moral, threw Mr. Gladstone:--

_Feb. 6._--Breakfast at Mr. Macaulay's. Conversation chiefly on
Aristotle's politics and on the Oxford proceedings. I grew hot, for
which _ignoscat Deus_. _Feb. 13._--Oxford 1-5. We were in the
theatre. Ward was like himself, honest to a fault, as little like
an advocate in his line of argument as well could he, and strained
his theology even a point further than before. The forms are
venerable, the sight imposing; the act is fearful [the degradation
of Ward], if it did not leave strong hope of its revisal by law.

To Dr. Pusey he writes (Feb. 7):--

Indignation at this proposal to treat Mr. Newman worse than a dog
really makes me mistrust my judgment, as I suppose one should
always do when any proposal seeming to present an aspect of
incredible wickedness is advanced. _Feb. 17._--I concur with my
whole heart and soul in the desire for repose; and I fully believe
that the gift of an interval of reflection is that which would be
of all gifts the most precious to us all, which would restore the
faculty of deliberation now almost lost in storms, and would afford
the best hope both of the development of the soundest elements that
are in motion amongst us, and of the mitigation or absorption of
those which are more dangerous.

In the proceedings at Oxford against Ward (February 13, 1845), Mr.
Gladstone voted in the minority both again