In another section may be comprised those who desire improvement in many things relating to the spiritual affairs of our Church. Some have openly expressed this desire; a far larger number cherish it in silence. They who have spoken out have strongly stated their conviction, that a Church, without the means of even entering upon deliberation as to our general improvement in its spiritual concerns, is in a false and unscriptural position. With respect to the Forms of Subscription and the interpretation of the Articles, some have formally requested a change, or rather an authoritative solution of the many doubts and uncertainties which now embarrass the question. Thus while we perceive the variety of opinion prevailing amongst these several sections—a variety which, were it not impeded by subscription, would find a harmless or beneficial vent in a free inquiry after Scriptural truth—we see also that from all of them, more or less, Subscription is requiring that which, in the ordinary affairs of life, high-minded men would abstain from; namely, the necessity for qualifying the plain and straight-forward use of language. Is this a condition favourable to the reputation of teachers of truth; and is it too strong a conclusion, at least from some parts of the above account, to affirm, that Subscription is the disgrace of the English Church? 5. It may be well to look at the result of such a state of things under another view. The differences above mentioned are now rendered notorious by innumerable publications. The laxity as to truth, that is with respect to the Articles, which they display, will be learnt and adopted. It will be justified by the example of clergymen who are indeed at one time censured by persons high in ecclesiastical station, yet by others in the same station applauded or defended, and never authoritatively censured or restrained. In another age a new set of opinions may arise equally differing from the literal sense of our Articles and Formularies. And who, with the precedent of these days before him, could proceed with confidence against the authors and abettors? The errors of a Socinian or an Arian may be of a more deadly character; but neither the one nor the other, in affixing his own interpretation to the Articles, or in subscribing with such doctrinal views, would depart a jot further from the true meaning of words than the author and the defenders of Tract No. 90. If that tract has driven one reader to such a conclusion, a conclusion which he states with pain and sorrow, it may encourage hundreds to the same; and, ere long, an Arian or Socinian subscription may be as common as in times past perhaps they were, with this lamentable aggravation, that in an age of better religious feeling, “men of piety and talent,” so publicly designated by Bishops of the Church, have taught the way to justify the deed.