Untitled - Electric Scotland

i866-68] A NEW BISHOP FOR NATAL? 367
for argument s sake that the Church in South Africa is perfectly
free of all connection with the Royal Supremacy. A dispute has
arisen in that Church, which has found its way to the highest
civil courts, just as a dispute between Wesleyan Methodists
might, and the Supreme Court, while repudiating all coercive
jurisdiction on the part of the Bishop of Capetown over the
Bishop of Natal, has also given judgment on the terms of the
as it would
voluntary compact which existed between them, just
on the compact between various parties in a dispute of Methodists,
and this judgment has been to the effect that no such power as
that claimed by the Bishop of Capetown, of deposing his suffragan,
existed by compact. The case in this view is like that of a Free
Church minister who lately appealed in Scotland to the Civil
Courts to say whether the compact by which he entered the
Free Church has been violated by his deposition.
"
Certainly this view of the Natal Privy Council judgment is
widely taken, and any who take it would consider the consecra
tion of a new Bishop, without some fresh legal authority to do
so, a flying in the face of the law.
"
I know you will excuse my writing so fully and freely, and
attribute it to my wish that your Grace should be fully informed
of the views of various bodies of attached churchmen who have
no sympathy with Colenso, but deprecate hasty steps against him
as likely to injure the Church. Yours faithfully and dutifully,
"
A. C. LONDON."
The Archbishop, however, took a different view. He
seems, at this stage, to have encouraged rather than
dissuaded Bishop Gray, and the arrangements for a fresh
election in Natal went briskly forward. A conference of
those clergy and laity of the diocese who supported the
Metropolitan was held on October 25th, 1866, and the
Rev. William Butler, Vicar of Wantage, 1 was elected to
be
"
Bishop over the Church in Natal." The Bishop-elect
consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop
of Oxford as to whether he should accept the nomina
tion. These prelates recommended caution and delay
and further inquiry. 1 Now Dean of Lincoln.