Untitled - Electric Scotland

330 MFF OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xm.
And again, on June 2ist, 1861 :-
" What
we desire to do," he said,
"
is to strengthen, by the
bonds of love and of mutual kindness, the connection subsisting
between the several branches of the Church. . . . When this
matter concerning missionary Bishops first came before us, I felt
in their full force all the difficulties which now present themselves
to my mind, and one of those difficulties which I always felt was
that a missionary Bishop stood so much by himself, that if in the
course of time he happened to be a man of eccentric modes of
proceeding, he might, upon his own responsibility, compromise
both the Church at home and the Church in the Colonies, and
yet have no authority to represent the one or the other. At the
same time, neither the Church of England nor the Colonial
Church near which he was labouring would have the power of
applying to him any sort of restraint ; and, in point of fact, you
might in the course of time have Bishops of the most unsound
opinions representing the Church of England, and carrying on in
apostolic succession, it might even be, an altogether heretical
Church. Such a thing exists at the present moment in the cor
rupt Churches of Asia, and might come to exist in other parts of
the world namely, an heretical sect, headed by the Bishop or
Bishops who derived their consecration from the Church of
England. That is an evil which I felt to be so great that I was
very anxious that we should pause before we took any steps in
the matter. ... I look with a little alarm to the time when these
Australian and African Churches may on important matters get
into a different position from that which they now occupy, and
when that unity of the Church, which we all desire to see main
tained in every branch of the Church of England, may be im
paired. ... I can conceive a provincial Synod throwing itself
so completely into a mediaeval view of the Church as to make it
very different from that wide and tolerant and wise system which
we have inherited from our forefathers. I can conceive that diffi
culty increased by the circumstances in which these Churches find
themselves. ... I therefore am very desirous that no rules
should be adopted by these Churches in the Colonies which
should alter them so as to make them different from our Church
at home, either on the side of greater exclusiveness or greater
reliance on mediaeval traditions, and so on. Nor, on the other
hand, do I wish that any change should be made on the other