Untitled - Electric Scotland

i86i-66] THE COLONIAL CHURCHES 329
and even in some sense a guarantee of orthodoxy, among
the scattered Colonial Churches, that he repeatedly urged
the need of caution in accepting the bold proposals which
and others. He
were made by Bishop Gray of Capetown
was, in consequence, held up to frequent obloquy as an
opponent of missionary progress, and it may be well
therefore to quote his own words in explanation of his
attitude. Speaking in Convocation on June 22, 1859
I have expressed my opinion," he said,
"
as to the many
difficulties which lie in the way of the scheme, as I understood it
was to be launched without any very competent authority, but
this by no means would prevent me from giving my cordial
assent if it should, after careful consideration, prove to be a
desirable thing. . . . The plan, as I understand it,
is this that
under the Metropolitan of the African division of our Colonial
Church a Bishop should be consecrated for missionary work by
himself and his two Suffragans, the person so to be consecrated
being nominated by the Metropolitan, a very serious change in
what has hitherto been the universal practice of the Church of
England, whether colonial or at home. It is further proposed,
as I understand, that these Bishops should be consecrated
without the Royal Mandate, the reading of the Royal Mandate,
according to the order of the Book of Common Prayer, being at
of the Consecration Service. . . . These difficulties
present a part
occur to me as very serious. I have thought also that there has
not been a sufficient consideration of this very important pointwhether,
after all, this plan of appointing Bishops at the head of
merely inchoate churches is authorised by any ancient ecclesi
astical usage, whether the system of the universal Church has not
from the earliest times been this that the Church shall be
formed first and the Bishop shall come afterwards. . . . The
great missionaries who spread Christianity in this country St.
Augustine, for example did not come as Bishops, but as presby
ters. There are difficult questions connected with the history
and the laws of the Church, respecting which it would be most
important to have a full l
inquiry."
Chronicle of Convocation, June 22, 1859, p. 15.