Untitled - Electric Scotland

354 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xm.
But he offered no *
defence of any kind, and admitted
without reserve the publication of the incriminated pass
ages. The speeches of the prosecutors lasted for five
days, 1 and on December i6th Bishop Gray delivered formal
judgment, deposing the Bishop of Natal from his office as
such Bishop, and prohibiting him from the exercise of any
divine office within any part of the Metropolitical Province
of Capetown. On a further protest by Bishop Colenso s
agent against the legality of the proceedings, Bishop Gray
replied,
"
I cannot recognise any appeal, except to his
Grace the Archbishop of* Canterbury, and I must require
that appeal to be made within fifteen days from the
present time."
This was exactly what Bishop Tait had anticipated
might happen. The only appeal recognised
was to the
Archbishop in his personal capacity, not in his Court,
and Archbishop Longley had already, by his formal
inhibition, prejudged the case. Bishop Colenso, accord
ingly, refused to have recourse to a tribunal,
fell back
upon the law, and claimed to be put in the same position
as any other accused clergyman.
Looking back upon the controversy now, after the
lapse of a quarter of a century, most critics who are at
the pains to examine what it was that Dr. Colenso really
said, will doubt whether to marvel more at the alarm his
words aroused, or at the arguments employed in answer
to them, 2 either in the Capetown Judgment
or elsewhere.
But it would be a simple anachronism were we to criticise
Bishop Gray s action in the light
of what would now be
the general opinion of Churchmen. Whatever men s views
as to the fairness or wisdom shown by the Metropolitan,
there were few, of any party, who did not join in the desire
1 Nov. 17-21, 1863.
2 Some amazing specimens of these are collected by Bishop Colenso in
the Preface to the Second Part of his Pentateuch, pp. xii, xix, etc.