speculation, both in theology and history, began to attract attention.
And at Cambridge was growing, slowly and out of sight, a mind and an
influence which were to be at once the counterpart and the rival of the
Oxford movement, its ally for a short moment, and then its earnest and
often bitter enemy. In spite of the dominant teaching identified with
the name of Mr. Simeon, Frederic Maurice, with John Sterling and other
members of the Apostles' Club, was feeling for something truer and
nobler than the conventionalities of the religious world.[12] In Oxford,
mostly in a different way, more dry, more dialectical, and, perhaps it
may be said, more sober, definite, and ambitious of clearness, the same
spirit was at work. There was a certain drift towards Dissent among the
warmer spirits. Under the leading of Whately, questions were asked about
what was supposed to be beyond dispute with both Churchmen and
Evangelicals. Current phrases, the keynotes of many a sermon, were
fearlessly taken to pieces. Men were challenged to examine the meaning
of their words. They were cautioned or ridiculed as the case might be,
on the score of "confusion of thought" and "inaccuracy of mind"; they
were convicted of great logical sins, _ignoratio elenchi,_ or
_undistributed middle terms;_ and bold theories began to make their
appearance about religious principles and teaching, which did not easily
accommodate themselves to popular conceptions. In very different ways
and degrees, Davison, Copleston, Whately, Hawkins, Milman, and not
least, a brilliant naturalised Spaniard who sowed the seeds of doubt
around him, Blanco White, had broken through a number of accepted
opinions, and had presented some startling ideas to men who had thought
that all religious questions lay between the orthodoxy of Lambeth and
the orthodoxy of Clapham and Islington. And thus the foundation was
laid, at least, at Oxford of what was then called the Liberal School of
Theology. Its theories and paradoxes, then commonly associated with the
"_Noetic_" character of one college, Oriel, were thought startling and