Proposed Surrender of the Prayer-Book and Articles of the Church of England

This work consists of a letter to the Lord Bishop of London by William Josiah Irons on professor Stanley's views of Clerical and University Subscription. William Josiah Irons (1812–1883) was a priest in the Church of England and a theological writer. Irons's chief work is the Analysis of Human Responsibility, 1869, written at the request of the founders of the Victoria Institute. Iron starts the letter to the Lord Bishop with, "If twenty years ago, soon after a few of the clergy had asserted their "claim to hold all Roman doctrine," a proposal had been made to abolish Subscription to the English Formularies, it would surely have been thought to indicate very grave disloyalty to our Church. And now, when others have asserted the right to unfettered "free-thinking" within her pale, and endeavoured to vindicate that right in our Courts of Law, can we help being struck at the intrepidity of the demand to sweep away at once the sober restraints of orthodoxy to which Churchmen have been so long accustomed?"