Besides having these
qualifications for leadership, he had fervid devotion, enlarged
acquaintance with life and men, and an "unequalled gift of
administration;" though a priest, he was essentially a statesman, and
had at one time contemplated a political career. He was Mr. Gladstone's
most trusted counsellor and most intimate friend.
The cause, or rather occasion for these secessions from the Church of
England to the Church of Rome, is thus related: "An Evangelical
clergyman, the Rev. G.C. Gorham, had been presented to a living in the
diocese of Exeter; and that truly formidable prelate, Bishop Phillpotts,
refused to institute him, alleging that he held heterodox views on the
subject of Holy Baptism. After complicated litigation, the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council decided, on March 8, 1850, that the
doctrine held by the incriminated clergyman was not such as to bar him
from preferment in the Church of England. This decision naturally
created great commotion in the Church. Men's minds were rudely shaken.
The orthodoxy of the Church of England seemed to be jeopardized, and the
supremacy of the Privy Council was in a matter touching religious
doctrine felt to be an intolerable burden.
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