Even old friends left him, among them Frederick Denison
Maurice, who, when himself under the ban of heresy, had been
defended by Colenso. Nor was Maurice the only heretic who turned
against him; Matthew Arnold attacked him, and set up, as a true
ideal of the work needed to improve the English Church and people,
of all books in the world, Spinoza's _Tractatus_. A large part of the
English populace was led to regard him as an "infidel," a
"traitor," an "apostate," and even as "an unclean being"; servants
left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart were let
loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period
among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of
light ribaldry against him.[[353]]
In the midst of all this controversy stood three men, each of whom
has connected his name with it permanently.
First of these was Samuel Wilberforce, at that time Bishop of
Oxford. The gifted son of William Wilberforce, who had been
honoured throughout the world for his efforts in the suppression of
the slave trade, he had been rapidly advanced in the English
Church, and was at this time a prelate of wide influence.
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