Now it has been generally supposed that the Anglican clergy are bound to declare their adhesion not only to the Creeds, but to the Thirty-nine Articles, and to the infallible truth of Holy Scripture. Bishop Gore, however, holds that when a new deacon, on the day of his ordination, solemnly declares that he 'assents to the Thirty-nine Articles,' and that he 'believes the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the word of God,' he 'can no longer fairly be regarded as bound to particular phrases or expressions in the Articles.'[39] And further, when the same new deacon expresses his 'unfeigned belief in all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,' 'that expression of belief can be fairly and justly made by anyone who believes heartily that the Bible, as a whole, records and contains the message of God to man in all its stages of delivery and that each one of the books contains some element or aspect of this revelation.'[40] The Bishop himself has affirmed his personal belief that some narratives in the Old Testament are probably not historical. It may fairly be asked on what principle he is prepared to evade the plain sense and intention of a doctrinal test in two cases while stigmatising as morally flagitious any attempts to do the same in a third. For it is unquestionable that a general assent to the Articles does not mean that the man who gives that assent is free to repudiate any 'particular phrases or expressions' which do not please him. A witness who admitted having signed an affidavit with this intention would cut a poor figure in a law court. And it is difficult to see how adhesion to the antiquated theory of inspiration could be demanded more stringently than by the form of words which was drawn up, as none can doubt, to secure it. These things being so, either the accusation of bad faith applies to the treatment which the Bishop justifies in the case of the Articles and the Bible, or it should not be brought against those who apply to one clause in their vows the principle which is admitted and used in two others.