The volume was denounced by the
Bishops, and in 1862 two of the contributors, who were beneficed
clergymen and thus open to a legal attack, were prosecuted and tried in
the Ecclesiastical Court. Condemned on
[207] certain points, acquitted on others, they were sentenced to be
suspended for a year, and they appealed to the Privy Council. Lord
Westbury (Lord Chancellor) pronounced the judgment of the Judicial
Committee of the Council, which reversed the decision of the
Ecclesiastical Court. The Committee held, among other things, that it is
not essential for a clergyman to believe in eternal punishment. This
prompted the following epitaph on Lord Westbury: "Towards the close of
his earthly career he dismissed Hell with costs and took away from
Orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of everlasting
damnation."
This was a great triumph for the Broad Church party, and it is an
interesting event in the history of the English State-Church. Laymen
decided (overruling the opinion of the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York) what theological doctrines are and are not binding on a clergyman,
and granted within the Church a liberty of opinion which the majority of
the Church's representatives regarded as pernicious. This liberty was
formally established in 1865 by an Act of Parliament, which altered the
form in which clergymen were required to subscribe the Thirty-nine
Articles.
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