But in October, 1860, appeared in the _Westminster Review_ an
article exulting in the work as an evidence that the new critical
method had at last penetrated the Church of England. The
opportunity for defending the Church was at once seized by no less
a personage than Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, the same who a few
months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his
attacks on Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first onslaught
was made in a charge to his clergy. This he followed up with an
article in the _Quarterly Review_, very explosive in its rhetoric,
much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to
Darwin. The bishop declared that the work tended "toward
infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been "guilty
of criminal levity"; that, with the exception of the essay by Dr.
Temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and scepticisms."
He was especially bitter against Prof. Jowett's dictum, "Interpret
the Scripture like any other book"; he insisted that Mr.
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