p. 10With regard then to the animus in question. Surely in the first place we may say this; that it is not settled adversely to sound doctrine, because not involved in, this decision itself, whatever it may be. The Judges in the present trial would I imagine, even though using to guide them in their judgment contemporary documents, and even contemporary opinions to elucidate the language of the formularies, yet themselves admit, that to decide the animus with which those formularies were originally drawn up, is beside the point they have had to try: that it suffices for them to declare the ambiguity if they find it in the words; but that it is foreign to the matter in hand to settle whether such ambiguity be accidental or intentional. Of course I am not saying they would deny the intention of comprehensiveness. On the contrary they would probably appear as a matter of course to infer it; and may even make mention of what they suppose the intention of the Church to have been: but still they will not rule the animus, as a part of their judgment. As to mere legal consequences indeed, I presume they will necessarily so far imply the intention to have been according to the judgment they deliver, as fully to give the benefit of their construction to the appellant in the cause: but yet this intention is to be distinguished, as a different point from any which they have had to try, which has surely been merely what is in the words of the formularies, not how it came to be there. But even should the court proceed so far as to say it gives its judgment on the latitudinarian side, expressly on the ground that it believes the Church in drawing up her formularies intended such comprehension, even that declaration would have no judicial authority to impose itself on any man as the truth. p. 11The grounds of a judge’s sentence are a different thing from the sentence itself; and, I think all those “learned in the law” will bear me out in saying, form no part of it. It is not an impossible nor an unheard of case for a judge to give a right judgment, yet upon wrong grounds. The grounds are merely his opinion which challenge no authority beyond their intrinsic weight, and which any man may canvas; the judgement is authoritative, and of course in a court from which there is no appeal, is assumed ex necessitate rei, to be sound. Let us then next proceed with one or two considerations which may be of service in determining for ourselves what animus we shall attribute to the Church in drawing up those of her formularies which bear upon the doctrine of baptism.