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pupils,—and I have tried diligently to teach them,—that they are to reverence the convictions of all men of all sects and schools, and to show them sympathy, I have done what I should not have been encouraged to do, or have thought it safe to do, if I had not taken these Articles as my own teachers and helpers, and if I had not considered that it was my duty, as far as I could. to impregnate those who would afterward be ministers in the Church with their spirit.
Once more, the fact that I had accepted these Articles and had bound myself to teach according to them, made me comparatively indifferent about the question, whether my view of the right method of education was the same with that of my superior for the time being. I had announced over and over again in various forms of language, that I did not look upon our Articles as marking out a close and narrow line between two opposite schools, and as authorising us to denounce both; but as announcements of a higher truth, which should lead us to deal fairly with the strongest assertions of both. I could not lecture on Church History without telling my pupils that Creeds and Articles do not and cannot stifle opinions, seeing that the decrees of the Nicene Council were the beginning, not the end, of the Arian controversy, and that the proclamation of James I. against discussions upon Election and Predestination, was the signal for the most furious war between Calvinists and Arminians ever waged. The Principal of King's College had, I believe, declared himself the conservator of a via media; he probably expects results from Articles which I should consider most undesirable, even if they were not unattainable. But if, in