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The ‘controversy’ to which Ruskin refers at Notebook M2 p.140 is the Gorham case. Final judgement was given in March 1850 and presumably this is what Ruskin read about in Galignani. In 1847 the Calvinist, Evangelical Rev. George Gorham, was offered a living in the Exeter diocese but the High Church bishop, Henry Phillpotts, refused to institute him because he considered Gorham’s view on infant Baptism heretical. For Phillpotts baptism was a means of spiritual regeneration; for Gorham it was a conditional symbol of regeneration. Ruskin seems to agree with Gorham that it is conditional, dependant on the faith of those involved (priest, parents, sponsors, congregation: Notebook M2 pp.141-9). Gorham took his case to the Anglican Court of Arches which upheld Phillpotts’ views, but he then appealed and the decision was reversed by the Judicial Committee of her Majesty’s Privy Council meeting on 8th March1850. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London attended the Council as non-voting advisers. The Archbishops but not the Bishop approved its findings.
There was enormous interest in this case, and this suggests that Ruskin’s responses in Notebook M2 p.140 would have been impossible in 1851, the date given in the heading of M2. The British Museum holds a collection of 200 books and pamphlets written in 1850-51 on the Gorham Judgement (Ralls (1988) p.126). It was the first of several cases in which the secular courts were seen to interfere in religious matters. The ruling may have increased the Tractarian/ Evangelical divide and led to more High Anglicans converting to Catholicism, but it was also responsible for allowing a wide spectrum of individual belief within the Anglican Church.
See Works, 12.lxxv-lxxviii for a summary of the Gorham case, and Works, 12.573 for the essay on Baptism published by Cook and Wedderburn, though unpublished by Ruskin.
Parsons,G., ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment: The Experience of Victorian Anglicanism’ in Parsons,G. ed, 1988. Religion in Victorian Britain Vol. I Traditions, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. pp.2-11
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]