Repercussion
Despite this alignment of pro-evolution scientists and Unitarians with liberal churchmen, two of the authors were indicted for heresy and lost their jobs by 1862. They appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and in 1864 it overturned the judgment, "dismissing hell with costs", to the fury of Wilberforce. One hundred and thirty-seven thousand laity signed a letter of thanks to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for voting against the Committee, and a declaration in favour of biblical inspiration and eternal torments was drawn up at Oxford and circulated to the 24,800 clergy, being signed by eleven thousand of them. Wilberforce went to the Convocation of Canterbury and in June obtained "synodical condemnation" of Essays and Reviews.
Today the essay topics and conclusions may seem innocuous, but at the time, the essays were described by their opponents as heretical, and the essayists were called "The Seven Against Christ."
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Famous quotes containing the word repercussion:
“The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.”
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