"Persecution—nonsense! You mean 'propaganda.' I understand Meynell's defence will proceed on totally new lines. He means to argue each point on its merits?"
"Yes. The Voysey judgment gave him his cue. You will remember, Voysey was attacked by the Lord Chancellor of the day—old Lord Hatherley—as a 'private clergyman,' who 'of his own mere will, not founding himself upon any critical inquiry, but simply upon his own taste and judgment' maintained certain heresies. Now Meynell, I imagine, will give his judges enough of 'critical inquiry' before they have done with him!"
Norham shrugged his shoulders.
"All very well! Why did he sign the Articles?"
"He signed them at four-and-twenty!" said Flaxman hotly. "Will you maintain that a system which insists upon a man's beliefs at forty-four being identical with his beliefs at twenty-four is not condemned ipso facto!"
"Oh I know what you say!—I know what you say!" cried Norham good-humouredly. "We shall all be saying it in Parliament presently—Good heavens! Well, I shall look into the court to-morrow, if I can possibly find an hour, and hear Meynell fire away."
"As Home Secretary, you may get in!"—laughed Flaxman—"on no other terms. There isn't a seat to be had—there hasn't been for weeks."
The trial came on. The three suits from the Markborough diocese took precedence, and were to be followed by half a dozen others—test cases—from different parts of England. But on the Markborough suits everything turned. The Modernist defendants everywhere had practically resolved on the same line of defence; on the same appeal from the mind of the sixteenth century to the mind of the twentieth; from creeds and formularies to history; from a dying to a living Church.
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."