vital truths of
Christianity was proclaimed to be a real service to the church. The
reader will thus see the lie of the land, what it meant to be member for
a university, and why Mr. Gladstone thought the seat the highest of
electoral prizes.

THE CONTEST

A circular was issued impugning his position on protestant grounds. 'I
humbly trust,' wrote Mr. Gladstone in reply (July 26), 'that its writers
are not justified in exhibiting me to the world as a person otherwise
than heartily devoted to the doctrine and constitution of our reformed
church. But I will never consent to adopt as the test of such doctrine,
a disposition to identify the great and noble cause of the church of
England with the restraint of the civil rights of those who differ from
her.' Much was made of Mr. Gladstone's refusal to vote for the
degradation of Ward. People wrote to the newspapers that it was an
admitted and notorious fact that a sister of Mr. Gladstone's under his
own influence had gone over to the church of Rome.[200] The fable was
retracted, but at once revived in the still grosser untruth, that he
habitually employed 'a Jesuitical system of argument' to show that
nobody need leave the church of England, 'because all might be had there
that was to be enjoyed in the church of Rome.' Maurice published a
letter to a London clergyman vigorously remonstrating against the
bigoted spirit that this election was warming into life, and fervently
protesting against making a belief in the Nicene creed into the same
thing as an opinion about a certain way of treating the property of
unitarians. 'One artifice of this kind,' said Maurice, 'has been
practised in this election which it makes me blush to speak of. Mr. Ward
called the reformation a vile and accursed thing; Mr. Gladstone voted
against a certain measure for the condemnation of Mr. Ward; therefore he
spoke of the reformation as a vile and accursed thing. I should not
have believed it possible that such a conclusion had been drawn from
such premisses even by our religious press.'

The worthy Mr. Round, on the other hand, was almost impregnable. A
diligent scrutiny at last dragged the dark fact to the light of day,
that he had actually sat on Peel's election committee at the time of
catholic emancipation in 1829, and had voted for him against Inglis. So
it appears, said the mocking Gladstonians, that the protestant Mr. Round
'was willing to lend a helping hand to th