The chief counsel for the promoters, Sir Wilfrid Marsh, made a calm, almost a conciliatory opening. He was a man of middle height, with a large, clean-shaven face, a domed head and smooth straight hair, still jetty black. He wore a look of quiet assurance and was clearly a man of all the virtues; possessing a portly wife and a tribe of daughters. His speech was marked in all its earlier sections by a studied liberality and moderation. "I am not going to appeal, sir, for that judgment in the promoters' favour which I confidently claim, on any bigoted or obscurantist lines. The Church of England is a learned Church; she is also a Church of wide liberties." No slavish submission to the letter of the Articles on the Liturgy was now demanded of any man. Subscription had been relaxed; the final judgment in the _Essays and Reviews_ case had given a latitude in the interpretation of Scripture, of which, as many recent books showed, the clergy--"I refer now to men of unquestioned orthodoxy"--had taken reasonable advantage; prayer-book revision "within the limits of the faith," if constantly retarded by the divisions of the faithful, was still probable; both High Churchmen and Broad Churchmen--here an aside dropped out, "so far as Broad Churchmen still exist!"--are necessary to the Church. But there are limits. "Critical inquiry, sir, if you will--reasonable liberty, within the limits of our formularies and a man's ordination vow--by all means! "But certain things are _vital_! With certain fundamental beliefs let no one suppose that either the bishops, or convocation, or these Church courts, or Parliament, or what the defendants are pleased to call the nation" [one must imagine the fine gesture of a sweeping hand] "can meddle." The _animus imponentis_ is not that of the Edwardian or Elizabethan legislation, it is not that of the Bishops! it is that of the Christian Church itself!--handing down the _deposition fidei_ from the earliest to the latest times. "_The Creeds, sir, are vital_! Put aside Homilies, Articles, the judgments and precedents of the Church Courts--all these are, in this struggle, beside the mark. _Concentrate on the Creeds_! Let us examine what the defendants in these suits have made of the Creeds of Christendom." The evidence was plain. Regarded as historical statement, the defendants had dealt drastically and destructively with the Creeds of Christendom; no less than with the authority of "Scripture," understanding "authority" in any technical sense. It was indeed the chief Modernist contention, as the orator showed, that formal creeds were mere "landmarks in the Church's life," crystallizations of thought, that were no sooner formed than they became subject to the play, both dissolvent and regenerating, of the Christian consciousness. "And so you come to that inconceivable entity, a Church without a creed--a mere chaos of private opinion, where each man is a law unto himself."