against the old system of the
University was thought much of by its author and his friends. A warning
note was at once given that its significance was perceived and
appreciated. Mr. Newman, in acknowledging a presentation copy, added
words which foreshadowed much that was to follow. "While I respect," he
wrote, "the tone of piety which the pamphlet displays, I dare not trust
myself to put on paper my feelings about the principles contained in it;
_tending, as they do, in my opinion, to make ship-wreck of Christian
faith_. I also lament that, by its appearance, the first step has been
taken towards interrupting that peace and mutual good understanding
which has prevailed so long in this place, and which, if once seriously
disturbed, will be succeeded by discussions the more intractable,
because justified in the minds of those who resist innovation by a
feeling of imperative duty." "Since that time," he goes on in the
_Apologia_, where he quotes this letter, "Phaeton has got into the
chariot of the sun."[55] But they were early days then; and when the
Heads of Houses, who the year before had joined with the great body of
the University in a declaration against the threatened legislation, were
persuaded to propose to the Oxford Convocation the abolition of
subscription at matriculation in May 1835, this proposal was rejected by
a majority of five to one.

This large majority was a genuine expression of the sense of the
University. It was not specially a "Tractarian" success, though most of
the arguments which contributed to it came from men who more or less
sympathised with the effort to make a vigorous fight for the Church and
its teaching; and it showed that they who had made the effort had
touched springs of thought and feeling, and awakened new hopes and
interest in those around them, in Oxford, and in the country. But graver
events were at hand. Towards the end of the year (1835), Dr. Burton, the
Regius Professor of Divinity, suddenly died, still a young man. And Lord
Melbourne was induced to appoint as his successor, and as the head of
the theological teaching of the University, the writer who had just a
second time seemed to lay the axe to the root of all theology; who had
just reasserted that he looked upon creeds, and all the documents which
embodied the traditional doctrine and collective thought of the Church,
as invested by ignorance and prejudice with an authority which was
without foundation, and which was mi