The Session would have been dull and leaden save for a debate with which the Peers diverted the town in the dog days. On the 15th of July Lord Houghton, in the House of Lords, protested against Convocation issuing a synodical condemnation of a now forgotten book entitled “Essays and Reviews,” in which seven clever clergymen discoursed with mild and timorous heterodoxy on seven burning theological questions. Current views were challenged in the light of modern German research and criticism, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had acquitted two of the authors who had been prosecuted for heresy.[217] Convocation, however, issued a synodical condemnation of the book which created a considerable sensation at the time, as it was the first occasion during a century and a half on which the Church of England asserted her claim to pronounce authoritatively in controversies of faith. Lord Houghton challenged the legality of the condemnation, and pressed the Government to take action in the matter. Lord Chancellor Westbury disposed of the subject in a provokingly contemptuous statement. There [Illustration: OLIVER KING’S CHANTRY, ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.] were, he said, three modes of dealing with Convocation. The first was to take no notice of its proceedings when they were harmless; the second was, when it was likely to do mischief, to prorogue it and put an end to its power; the third was to bring its members to the bar of justice. To pass such a judgment as had been pronounced on “Essays and Reviews,” Lord Westbury held was technically a usurpation of the prerogative of the Crown as the head of the Anglican Church. Hence members of Convocation had rendered themselves liable to the penalties of _præmunire_, and to appear as penitents in sackcloth and ashes. Something like £40,000 in fines, he declared, might be exacted from them, but still the Government in the circumstances meant to take no action. _Solvuntur risu tabulæ._ Westbury’s mincing sneering tones would have sufficed to stir the old Adam in militant ecclesiastics, but it happened that in describing a synodical judgment he directed a personal attack with biting wit and bad taste against the Bishop of Oxford. Such a sentence could not conveniently be dealt with, said Westbury, because “it was a set of what he might call well-lubricated words, but it was a sentence so oily, so absurd, and so saponaceous[218] that no one could grasp it, but, like an eel, it slipped through the fingers. It must mean something or nothing, and he was glad to be able to tell his noble friend (Lord Houghton) that it had literally no signification whatever.” Wilberforce [Illustration: MR. LOWE (AFTERWARDS LORD SHERBROOKE).]