Untitled - Electric Scotland

3 88 I, IKK OK ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xiv.
its opinion. Believe me to be, my dear Lord, yours very
faithfully, A. C. LONDON."
This letter rendered the prosecution of Bishop Gray s
plan impossible. His Biography gives a vivid picture of
the hurried consultations which took place the telegrams
and journeys between Cuddesdon and London - - the
resolution arrived at to revert, if possible, to the plan of
consecrating in Scotland the successive consent, recon
sideration, and refusal by the Scottish Bishops the un
successful endeavour to obtain after all a mandate from
the Crown - - and the ultimate resolve that there was
nothing
for it but to hold the consecration in South
Africa. 1 The following extracts from the innumerable
letters which have been preserved, and from the Convo
cation Debates, will give a sufficient idea of the line
adhered to by Bishop Tait throughout the stormy and
complicated controversy. He received from Bishop Gray
a long reply 2 to the public letter of January 2Oth, quoted
above. In the course of it Bishop Gray wrote :-
" You have asked me, in the name of the Church of England,
a question, to which in this letter I give my answer. In return
I venture, in the name of the same Church, and in my own, as
Metropolitan of a province which you have deeply and grievously
wounded by your whole course of proceedings in this matter, as
I have shown in my published Statement, to ask you whether
you do hold communion with Dr. Colenso, or not? Whether
you regard him as the representative Bishop
of the Church of
England in Natal, or not? Whether he is entitled, in his char
acter of teacher, to speak in the name of this great
and ancient
Church, or not? Vague phrases about disapproving of his
teaching evade the question, and do not meet the necessities of
we received
this crisis. The issue at stake is simply this : Have
1
Bishop Gray s Life, vol. ii. pp. 384-443.
2 This letter, which afterwards formed the body of a pamphlet, was the
joint handiwork of Bishops Gray, Hamilton, Wilberforce, Cotterill, and
others. See Bishop Gray s Life, vol. ii. p. 385.