ey it, but he is not required to
approve of the law as just. The Prayer-Book and the Thirty-nine
Articles, so far as they are made obligatory by Act of Parliament, are
as much laws as any other statute. They are a rule to conduct; it is not
easy to see why they should be more; it is not easy to see why they
should have been supposed to deprive clergymen of a right to their
opinions, or to forbid discussion of their contents. The judge is not
forbidden to ameliorate the law which he administers. If in discharge of
his duty he has to pronounce a sentence which he declares at the same
time that he thinks unjust, no indignant public accuses him of
dishonesty, or requires him to resign his office. The soldier is asked
no questions as to the legitimacy of the war on which he is sent to
fight; nor need he throw up his commission if he think the quarrel a bad
one. Doubtless, if a law was utterly iniquitous--if a war was
unmistakably wicked--honourable men might feel uncertain what to do, and
would seek some other profession rather than continue instruments of
evil. But within limits, and in questions of detail, where the service
is generally good and honourable, we leave opinion its free play, and
exaggerated scrupulousness would be folly or something worse. Somehow or
other, however, this wholesome freedom is not allowed to the clergyman.
The idea of absolute inward belief has been substituted for that of
obedience; and the man who, in taking orders, signs the Articles and
accepts the Prayer Book, does not merely undertake to use the services
in the one, and abstain from contradicting to his congregation the
doctrines contained in the other; but he is held to promise what no
honest man, without presumption, can undertake to promise--that he will
continue to think to the end of his life as he thinks when he makes his
engagement.

It is said that if his opinions change, he may resign, and retire into
lay communion. We are not prepared to say that either the Convocation of
1562, or the Parliament which afterwards endorsed its proceedings, knew
exactly what they meant, or did not mean; but it is quite clear that
they did not contemplate the alternative of a clergyman's retirement. If
they had, they would have provided means by which he could have
abandoned his orders, and not have remained committed for life to a
profession from which he could not escape. If the popular theory of
subscription be true, and the Articles are articles