England is quite at liberty to believe that Regeneration does not
invariably take place when an infant is baptised.

The blow fell upon no one with greater violence than upon
Manning. Not only was the supreme efficacy of the sign of the
cross upon a baby's forehead one of his favourite doctrines, but
up to that moment he had been convinced that the Royal Supremacy
was a mere accident--a temporary usurpation which left the
spiritual dominion of the Church essentially untouched. But now
the horrid reality rose up before him, crowned and triumphant; it
was all too clear that an Act of Parliament, passed by Jews,
Roman Catholics, and Dissenters, was the ultimate authority which
decided upon the momentous niceties of the Anglican faith. Mr.
Gladstone also, was deeply perturbed. It was absolutely
necessary, he wrote, to 'rescue and defend the conscience of the
Church from the present hideous system'. An agitation was set on
foot, and several influential Anglicans, with Manning at their
head, drew up and signed a formal protest against the Gorham
judgment. Mr. Gladstone however, proposed another method of
procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be avoided at
all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing
procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who
believed that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act
of Parliament to take no steps in any direction, nor to announce
their intention of doing so, until a given space of time had
elapsed. Mr. Gladstone was hopeful that some good might come of
this--though indeed he could not be sure. 'Among others,' he
wrote to Manning, 'I have consulted Robert Wilberforce and Wegg-
Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my proposal. It
might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is like a