An agitation was set on
foot, and several influential Anglicans, with Manning at their
head, drew up and signed a formal protest against the Gorham
judgment. Mr. Gladstone however, proposed another method of
procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be avoided at
all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing
procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who
believed that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act
of Parliament to take no steps in any direction, nor to announce
their intention of doing so, until a given space of time had
elapsed. Mr. Gladstone was hopeful that some good might come of
this--though indeed he could not be sure. 'Among others,' he
wrote to Manning, 'I have consulted Robert Wilberforce and Wegg-
Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my proposal. It
might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is like a
cork.'
The proposal was certainly not favoured by Manning. Protests and
procrastinations, approving Wegg-Prossers and cork-like Lord
Feildings--all this was feeding the wind and folly; the time for
action had come. 'I can no longer continue,' he wrote to Robert
Wilberforce, 'under oath and subscription binding me to the Royal
Supremacy in Ecclesiastical causes, being convinced:
(1) That it is a violation of the Divine Office of the Church.
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