Untitled - Electric Scotland

i86i-66] CONVOCATION PROCEEDINGS 349
and was about to bring his Suffragan to trial. From the
decision to be arrived at in that trial, some appeal, urged
Bishop Tait, must surely lie, and the Archbishop, he
thought, was now being called upon to take part in pre
judging the very issue he might hereafter have to try.
"
"
I will never believe," he continued, that it was the intention
of the letters patent, or whatever it is that clothes the Bishop of
Capetown with authority, to make him so irresponsible that there
should be no earthly appeal from his decision. . . . The Bishop
of Oxford has very properly said that Bishops cannot be silent
and express no opinion about the grievous errors that are brought
before them. Of course we must express our opinion, but there
on matters
is a very great difference between expressing opinions
of doctrine, in
fulfilling our common Episcopal functions by
preaching the Word of Truth and pointing it out to our clergy,
and, on the other hand, sitting here in a judicial, or something
very like a judicial, capacity. ... If in our desire to warn
people we hurry into any decision now, we may perhaps destroy
our ability to afford them that future and most effectual warning
which it may be in our power to give them if we wait till the
matter is brought before a properly constituted tribunal." 1
The debate was adjourned, and next day, in the Bishop
of London s absence, a long resolution was proposed by
Bishop Sumner of Winchester, and carried, to the effect
that while the book did, in the judgment of the Bishops,
"
involve errors of the gravest and most dangerous char
acter," they declined to take further action in the matter,
inasmuch as the book was
"
shortly
the judgment of an Ecclesiastical Court"
to be submitted to
It was already in process of being so submitted. On
April nth, 1863, Bishop Gray landed at Capetown, and
immediately announced that he was ready to do his duty
by citing the Bishop of Natal to appear before him for
trial. Formal
k
Articles of Accusation were in the next
-
Chronicle of Convocation, May 19, 1863, p. 1166.
Ibid. May 20, 1863, p. 1205.