Goodwin's
treatment of the Mosaic account of the origin of man "sweeps
away the whole basis of inspiration and leaves no place for the
Incarnation"; and through the article were scattered such
rhetorical adornments as the words "infidel," "atheistic," "false,"
and "wanton." It at once attracted wide attention, but its most
immediate effect was to make the fortune of _Essays and Reviews_,
which was straightway demanded on every hand, went through edition
after edition, and became a power in the land. At this a panic
began, and with the usual results of panic--much folly and some
cruelty. Addresses from clergy and laity, many of them frantic with
rage and fear, poured in upon the bishops, begging them to save
Christianity and the Church: a storm of abuse arose: the seven
essayists were stigmatized as "the seven extinguishers of the seven
lamps of the Apocalypse," "the seven champions _not_ of
Christendom." As a result of all this pressure, Sumner, Archbishop
of Canterbury, one of the last of the old, kindly, bewigged
pluralists of the Georgian period, headed a declaration, which was
signed by the Archbishop of York and a long list of bishops,
expressing pain at the appearance of the book, but doubts as to the
possibility of any effective dealing with it.
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