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REMARKS
UPON THE
RECENT PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE
OF
ROBERT LORD BISHOP OF CAPETOWN
AND
METROPOLITAN
AT HIS PRIMARY METROPOLITICAL VISITATION OF
THE DIOCESE OF NATAL.
BY THE RIGHT REV.
JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D.
BISHOP OF NATAL.
LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN.
1864.
�LONDON
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND 00.
NEW-STBBET SQUARE
�CONTENTS.
—♦—
PAGE
.
Occasion of these Remarks............................................................................ 1
Proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown at Durban
....
Proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown at Maritzburg
The Bishop’s Charge; his claim of Jurisdiction
2
...
10
....
15
The Bishop of Capetown’s threatened Secession from the Church of
England
....................................................................................................... 21
The Bishop of Capetown’s stronglanguage............................................. 27
The Bishop of Capetown’sown religious teaching
33
....
The Bishop charges the Bishop of Natal with reckless haste in
publishing...................................................................................................... 38
The Bishop’s personal observations upon the Bishop of Natal
.
.
40
List of Books prepared by the Bishop of Natal for the use of Missionary
Students and Native Scholars................................................................ 46
Another view of the charge of dishonesty............................................. 57
Appendix.
1. Extracts from the Bishop of Natal’s Books .
.
.
.64
(i) On the Fear of Death, from the Commentary on St. Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans, p. 144-7............................................. 64
(ii) On the Reading of the Scriptures, from the Pentateuch
Critically Examined, Part III, p.628-32
...
66
2. Opinions of various 'Writers in the Church of England respecting
the Authorship of the Pentateuch............................................. 69
3. Extracts from the Fathers and others, shewing their views as
to the limitation of our Lord’s knowledge as the Son of Man
79
4. Correspondence of the Bishop of Natal with the Bishop of
Oxford and the -Bishop of Capetown............................................. 81
5. Letters from native converts, received by the Bishop of Natal
while in England......................................................................... 86
6. Proposed alteration of the Supreme Court of Appeal
.
.
94
��REMARKS
^c.
Occasion of these Remarks.
I regret very much that it should be necessary for me to draw
attention again in this way to the proceedings of the Bishop of
Capetown. My respect for his personal character, — no less
than my sense of duty to the high office which he fills,—would
assuredly, under any ordinary circumstances, have constrained
me to keep silence, even though suffering from acts (as it seems
to me) of undue hastiness and precipitancy on his part. But
the present is no ordinary occasion; and the course of conduct
which Bishop Gray has pursued is so strange, that I can only
regard it as a striking instance of the disturbing effect, on the
purest mind, of strong religious and ecclesiastical prejudices.
As the circumstances which have transpired during the last
two months in my distant diocese, though partially reported
from a partizan point of view in certain journals, are probably
unknown to the great mass of English Churchmen,—are cer
tainly unknown to them in their naked simplicity,—and, as
those circumstances are such as to justify fully to my own mind
the present publication,—I have thought it right to place on
record the main facts of the late Metropolitical Visitation of the
Diocese of Natal, as I have gathered them from the colonial
journals, from published documents, and from private com
munications.
It will thus be seen that not merely my own personal interests
are here concerned, but that far graver issues have been raised,
B
�2
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
of vital consequence to the whole National Church,—in fact,
no less than this, whether Her Majesty’s Supremacy shall any
longer be maintained, in matters ecclesiastical affecting the
Clergy of the Church of England, within the Province of Cape
town, and, by inevitable consequence, within the other colonies
of the British Empire, if not, ultimately, within the mother
country itself.
Proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown at Durban.
The following extract from the Natal Mercury of May 3,
1864, will inform the reader as to the circumstances attending
the Bishop of Capetown’s arrival in the colony on this Visita
tion. I may premise that Natal contains, at the present time,
an European population of 13,990 (by the last Blue Booty, of
whom about 10,000 are English. There are only tw.o towns—
Durban, on the coast, which, regarded as a port, is known
commonly as Port-Natal, with a white population of 2,567, and
Maritzburg in the interior, the capital city and seat of govern
ment, with a population of 3,118, and a very small cathedral,
consisting merely of a nave and chancel, and capable of holding,
comfortably seated, about 250 persons. The remainder of this
small European population is scattered about the colony, in
separate farms or small villages, over 18,000 square miles of
country—an area about one-third the size of England and Wales.
Bishop Gray landed at Durban on April 27, and the Mer
cury reports as follows:—
On Sunday last, the 1st of May, the Bishop of Capetown, as Metropolitan
of the Church of England in South Africa, carried out in St. Paul’s Church,
Durban, his expressed intention of ‘deposing ’ the Bishop of Natal from his
office, and of prohibiting him from the exercise of his functions in the
(Metropolitan Province of South Africa.’
As his Lordship’s views were generally understood after his arrival on
Wednesday, and as a large number of Churchmen in Durban held strong
opinions (wholly irrespective of Dr. Colenso’s theological views) regard
ing the illegality of the position taken up by Bishop Gray, as opposed to
Her Majesty’s Letters Patent, the following protest was sent in on Saturday:—
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
3
‘ To the Wardens of St. Paul’s Church, Durban.
April 29, 1864.
‘Gentlemen,—We, the undersigned members of St. Paul’s Church,
Durban, having heard that the Bishop of Capetown intends to pronounce
“ sentence ” or “ judgment ” against the Bishop of Natal, beg most empha
tically to protest against any proceedings which interfere with the authority
of the Bishop of Natal (pending the decision of the Queen in Council),
and tend to disturb the peace and quiet of our Church.
‘ Edward W. Holland
‘ And a number of others.’
To this document [which was handed to him by the Churchwardens]
the Bishop made the following reply :—•
‘Gentlemen,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of the documents placed
in my hand late on Saturday night. I regret that, when you found that
any members of the Church were disturbed in their minds about the publica
tion of the Sentence delivered in Capetown during Divine Service, you did
not at once communicate with me, and that, when I was anxious, even at
the late hour at which I received the memorial, to discuss the matter, they
declined to accept my invitation. The publication of the Sentence in the
diocese is a mere matter of form; but I am advised that it is essential to its
completeness and validity. It will be published to-day in all the diocese.
I could not revoke the order which I have given as regards St. Paul’s
Church, on the grounds which Dr. Colenso’s friends suggest, without
stultifying my whole proceedings, and acknowledging the right of appeal
to the Privy Council, which I formally repudiated. The appeal to Canter
bury, provided for by the Letters Patent, and which I did recognize, I am
informed by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury has never been made.
I have already mentioned to you that the Sentence is not one of excom
munication of Dr. Colenso, as one of you informed me was widely believed
to be the case. It is simply the notifying the fact, that the Bishop has not
retracted the opinions which have been condemned, and that the Sentence
of Deprivation, therefore, takes effect. The Judgment itself requires that
this should be done.
‘ It is to me a source of very great regret that any misunderstanding should
have arisen. I have come here at the earnest request of the clergy, who
have all determined never to recognize Dr. Colenso again as their Bishop,
and to take charge, as my office of Metropolitan requires me to do, of a
vacant, distracted diocese, which, as I believe you well know, is rapidly
sinking into a lifeless condition. I am ready to receive your assurance that
very few of the subscribers sympathise with Dr. Colenso’s views : but you
have candidly admitted that the document fbrwarded to me has been got up
by those who have alas! through him been led into unbelief. It is clear
that the subscribers will, unless they disclaim the imputation, be generally
and fairly considered as having adopted the views of those who have been.
B 2
�4
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
forward in the matter. I need scarcely say that it deeply grieves me that,
coming as I do with a sincere desire to help you, and to revive a languishing
Church, my efforts should, as far as your parish is concerned, be greatly
hindered by the misunderstanding which has arisen.
11 remain, Gentlemen,
1 Durban: Sunday morning, May 1st, 1864.’ (Signed) 'R. Capetown.’
On Sunday morning St. Paul’s Church was crowded,—a large number of
attendants of other Churches [i.e. members of other religious bodies] in town
being attracted by the novelty of the proceedings. After the Nicene Creed
was read by the minister of the parish, the Rev. A. W. L. Rivett, the
reverend gentleman proceeded to read the following document. No sooner,
however, had he begun, than several gentlemen (the number of whom is
varyingly stated at from fifteen to forty) got up and left the Church.
*
[Then follows a formal notice, ending with these words :—
'Now, therefore, we do hereby adjudge and decree the sentence so pro
nounced on the Sixteenth of December, One thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, to be of full force, virtue, and effect, from and after this date;
and we do, accordingly, decree and sentence the said Bishop of Natal to be
deposed from the said office as such Bishop, and prohibited from the exercise
of any divine office within any part of the Metropolitical Province of Cape
town.
' In testimony whereof, &c.
R. Capetown.’]
After the service was over, his Lordship delivered a sermon, which is
variously spoken of by many who heard it, concluding with a vehement ex
hortation upon the unhappy state of things existing in the Church of England
in this diocese.
This Sentence of Deposition will be disregarded by a large body of the
Church of England in this colony, and it is believed that the authorities
will not recognize its validity. This attitude has reference to the civil aspect
of proceedings only, and does not necessarily involve any concurrence in’ the
theological opinions avowed by Bishop Colenso.
There are some points in the above letter of the Metro
politan which may be noticed.
* An anonymous correspondent of the ‘ Guardian ’ states that ‘ a few, who had
come to church in order to leave it when the Bishop entered the pulpit, did so,’
whereas, in fact, they left because the officiating clergyman began to read the
Sentence of Deposition. He speaks also of ‘ home ideas of Church and State
perplexing many minds,’ and of ‘some having prayed his Lordship, the night
before, to stay the Sentence,’ whereas a number of the Laity had ‘ most emphatically
protested' against the Bishop’s proceedings. It will be seen, as we proceed, that
these are but instances of the suppress™ veri, which characterises the communi
cation of this correspondent throughout.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
5
(i) It is not easy to see how the protesters could be quieted
by being told that the publication of the ‘Sentence’ was ‘a
mere matter of form,’ and yet that it was ‘ essential to its com
pleteness and validity.''
(ii) The Bishop says that he had ‘ recognized the appeal to
Canterbury, provided for by the Letters Patent.’ But it must
be observed that he did not recognize it as a right which the
Patent distinctly allowed, but only vouchsafed it as a favour,—
‘ in this particular case, which is in itself novel, and of great importance to
the whole Church.’ See my Letter to the Laity, p.2.
*
(iii) It is impossible to avoid observing the undue pressure,
here put upon the subscribers to the Durban protest,-—which
expressed no more than a simple desire on their parts to await,
as loyal subjects, ‘the decision of the Queen in Council,’—by
the intimation that, if they did not openly ‘ disclaim the im
putation ’ of sympathising with my views, they would be
‘ generally and fairly considered as having adopted them.’
(iv) It was also, as it seems to me, not worthy of the present
grave occasion, to have stigmatized the gentlemen, supposed to
have promoted the address, as ‘ having alas I through him (the
Bishop of Natal) been led into unbelief’—as if no layman in
Natal was capable of forming some judgment for himself, as
educated men do^ upon the relations of Science and Scripture.
(v) If, however, as the Bishop of Capetown assumes, ‘ very
few of the subscribers sympathised with my views,’ there must
be others of the Laity in Natal who do; inasmuch as I received
from them some months ago a hearty expression of good-will, in
an address numerously and respectably signed.
But I desire to draw attention, specially, to the following
two statements which are made in the Bishop’s letter:—* The Bishop (Waldegeave) of Cablisle says in his recent Charge,—
‘ There has been on the part of the Bishop of Capetown a resolve,—in the carrying
out of which he has received no little encouragement from the authorities, both
civil and ecclesiastical, at home, and also, of late, from his own Suffragans on th e
spot,—to vindicate for himself a Metropolitical Jurisdiction, independent, as far
as possible, of that of the See of Canterbury.’
�6
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
The Bishop says—
I could not revoke the order,—[which had been issued for the publi
cation of this ‘ Sentence ’ in St. Paul’s Church,]—without stultifying
my whole proceedings, and acknowledging the right of Appeal to the Privy
Council, which I had formally repudiated.
It should be observed that I have not appealed to the Privy
Council, but to Her Majesty Herself as Head of the Church of
England, who has exercised Her constitutional right in this
matter, and referred my petition to the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council.
But again the Bishop says—
I have come here at the earnest request of the clergy, who have all deter
mined never to recognize Dr. Colenso again as their Bishop.
This was a very grave statement for him to have made on an
occasion like the present: and I must think that it ought not
to have been made by the Metropolitan, without the most
perfect certainty that it expressed the actual state of the case.
No sanguine expectations of his own,—no mere assurances of
eager and excited partizans,—as to what was, or would be, the
state of feeling among the clergy,-—could have justified, as
it seems to me, so strong an assertion,—nothing but the fact,
that he had actually received such a ‘ request,’ and an expression
of such a ‘determination,’ from all the clergy—from all, at
least, who were in the colony, and accessible.
But how stands the fact ? The total number of the clergy
in the diocese is, as stated by the correspondent of the Guardian.,
June 27, at this time eleven,—besides two now in England, and
two engaged as Missionaries, beyond the border of the colony,
in Zululaud. And by the previous mail I was made aware that
this statement was certainly not correct, so far as three, at
all events, of those eleven clergy were concerned. I very much
doubt, also, if, at that time, all even of the remaining eight
had expressed any such a determination. But the following
letter from one of the clergy in question, which appeared in the
Natal Mercury of May 19, 1864, will speak for itself:—
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
7
To the Editor of the ‘ Natal Mercury.'
Sir,—Tn the Bishop of Capetown's letter to some of the inhabitants of
Durban, dated May 1st, appears the following- statement:—11 have come
here at the earnest request of the clergy, who have all determined never to
recognize Dr. Colenso again as their Bishop.’
Allow me to state through your journal that I am not aware of having
joined in that request, or expressed any such determination.
If the ‘ Privy Council,’ to which Dr. Colenso has appealed, recognize
him as the lawful Bishop of Natal, I will do the same, or return my license.
No real good can be effected by disobeying the law, or disregarding the
highest civil authority in the land. And I hope, therefore, that some, at
least, of my brother clergymen will pause before they lend themselves to
any course of action, which in future they may have reason to regret.
We need not fear the result of investigation and criticism : for the doc
trines of the Church, and the teaching of the Bible, have a solid foundation ;
and, when the storm has past, and the dust subsided, we shall see the truth
even more clearly than before. 1 If this Council or this work be of man, it
will come to nought; but, if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.’
I hope you will publish this without delay, as an accident, which I met
with a few days back, made me unable to attend to' it earlier.
Umgababa Mission Station,
I remain, Sir, yours, &c.,
Umkomazi, May 7, 1864.
A. Tonnesen.
The anonymous correspondent of the Guardian writes of
the above clergyman as follows :—
One [of the clergy], unhappily, did withdraw himself from his brethren,—
not, it is said, because he has been drawn away from the truth, but on some
extreme views of Church and State;—
that is to say, he still clings, it seems, to the good old English
Protestant principle, of recognizing the Queen as supreme in
all matters within her realm, spiritual as well as temporal, and
of regarding it as the first duty of an Englishman, whether
clergyman or layman, to render obedience to the law.
But, it is added by the same authority, this clergyman ‘ has
since, we hear, come in.’ This means that he has been obliged
to succumb, to some extent, under the heavy pressure brought
to bear upon him, and has published in his church, by the com
mand of the Metropolitan, the ‘ Sentence of Deposition,’ which
he had at first refused to do. I have reason to know that the
following arguments, among others, have been used to produce
this effect with him, and, possibly, with others of my clergy
�8
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
(i) That they are wrong in disobeying the Metropolitan^—
(ii) That the sentence is a spiritual sentence, which does not fall under
the jurisdiction of the ‘ Privy Council,’—
(iii) That the Bishop of Natal had not appealed, and, therefore, they
had no right to assume that, as a ground for any opposition,—
(iv) If they would not obey the Metropolitan, their licenses would be with
drawn, and their names struck off the list of the Gospel-Propagation Society.
This, then, is the process by which dissentients are to be
eliminated or coerced, and the unanimity of the clergy is to be
secured in this matter ! With respect to the arguments brought
thus to bear upon them, I may remark as follows:—
(i) The clergy of Natal would have been perfectly justified
in disobeying the command of the Metropolitan,—as Mr. Long
was in disobeying that of Dr. Gray as Bishop,—if they deemed
it unlawful, and were prepared to take the consequences of dis
obedience. But, being ignorant themselves of the real facts of
the case, and having before them only the positive statements
of the Metropolitan,—not corrected by the information, which
my published ‘ Letter to the Laity of Natal ’ would have given
them, had it by that time reached the colony,—I cannot wonder
at the course which for the present the majority have taken.
(ii) The idea, that the Bishop of Capetown’s sentence,
being a ‘spiritual’ sentence only, will, therefore, ‘not fall
under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council,’ will, I apprehend,
be found to be a fallacy. The 36th Canon says distinctly:—
The King’s Maj esty, under God, is the only supreme Governor of this
realm, and of all other His Highness’s dominions and countries, as well in
all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal.
If the Bishop had first resigned his Patent, he might issue,
no doubt, sentences of deposition and bulls of excommuni
cation, as a Bishop of the ‘ Church of South Africa,’ fortified
by the ‘ Canons of Antioch, confirmed by the General Council
of Chalcedon,’ as quoted in p.29 of his recent Charge. And
such proceedings would certainly not be referred by Her
Majesty to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But
they would be as harmless, and would as little trouble our
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
9
peace and order, as Members of the Church of England, as if
they were issued by a Roman Catholic Bishop, or by the Greek
Patriarch, or by the Pope himself,—by whom indeed, speaking
in the name of all £ the Churches of the Roman obedience,’
(Charge, p.4), the Bishop himself is, at this very time, con
demned of schism and heresy, and excommunicated.
But, so long as the Bishop of Capetown holds Her Ma
jesty’s Letters Patent, he is, I apprehend, responsible to the
Queen Herself for using the powers committed to him, whether
spiritual or temporal, in relation to any of the Queen’s subjects,
rightfully and lawfully. Otherwise it is plain that, by means
of this new device of a distinction between 4 spiritual ’ and
‘ temporal ’ judgments, (long ago used in defence of the
Inquisition,) he might use his high office to condemn with
a 6 spiritual sentence,’—to place under the ban and excom\nunicate, and so virtually deprive of his ministry,—any one
of\his own clergy, without being liable to have his proceedings\brought under review, as they were in Mr. Long’s case,
before yhe Civil Courts of the colony, and finally before the
Queen in Council.
(iii) I regret that any of my clergy should have been misled by the statement that I had not appealed,—a statement
which, under the circumstances, would be naturally understood
to mean that I was not intending, and had taken no steps, to
test- the legality of the Bishop’s proceedings. I had, however,
given formal notice of my intention to do this; and it was
perfectly well known that I was seeking to obtain a judicial
decision upon the case from the highest Court of Justice in the
Realm. But the Bishop of Capetown has moved so precipi
tately in the matter, that there was no time for me to receive
even a reply, as to the advice which would be tendered to Her
Majesty with respect to my petition, before he proceeded to
carry out his Sentence in Natal.
(iv) Such arguments as these, which threaten to take away
�10
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
a man’s means of livelihood, or in well-known Zulu phrase to
‘ eat him up,’ for disobedience, must often be irresistible,—
especially when coupled with positive assertions, as above,
with respect to the extent of the Metropolitan’s jurisdiction,
and his independence of control. Yet the threat held out—
of striking off the Missionary’s name from the list of the Pro
pagation Society, if he refused obedience to such a command
of the Metropolitan—was, in fact, not justified by any vote of
the Society, empowering the Bishop to pledge it to this course
of proceeding, as a means of coercion in such a case. On
the contrary, it is well known that, when the Bishop recently
applied to the Society to grant him virtually such a power, the
request was refused, in a great measure through the sound
advice of some eminent laymen.
In fact, it is plain that, under the arrangement desired
by the Bishop of Capetown, the Society’s funds would be em
ployed to support the system,—not of the ‘ Church of England,’
which it is generally understood to represent, but—of the
‘ Church of South Africa.,’ which, in the language of the Bishops
meeting in Synod at Capetown, while ‘receiving ’ the Articles
and Formularies of the Church of England,—
is not bound by any interpretations put upon those standards by existing
Ecclesiastical Courts in England, or by the decisions of such courts in matters
of faith.
Proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown at Maritzburg.
The Bishop, having concluded his Visitation at Durban,
proceeded to Maritzburg, and there, on May 18, delivered a
‘ Charge ’ in the Cathedral Church (which shall be considered
presently)—after which the clergy then present, who appear to
have been nine in number, signed and presented the following
Address, drawn up probably by the correspondent of the
Guardian, with the view of its being signed by all the
clergy: —
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
11
To the Most Reverend the Lord Metropolitan of South Africa.
My Lord,—We, the clergy of the Church of England in the diocese of
Natal, assembled in the cathedral church of Pietermaritzburg, to confer with
your Lordship on the present state of the diocese, desire to express our deep
sympathy with your Lordship in the painful duty you have been called upon
to perform in sitting on judgment upon Bishop Colenso, and gratitude for
the fatherly care and help your Lordship has extended towards this portion
of your province, in the perplexities and trials to which it has been sub
jected. We would also place on solemn record our emphatic repudiation of
the erroneous teaching of Bishop Colenso, and our conviction that, should
it please Gon, for the chastisement of our sins, to allow Bishop Colenso to
return to the diocese with legal authority, he must still be regarded as
lying under a righteous sentence of condemnation, and that we dare not
acknowledge him as having authority in spiritual matters.
We would further beg to be allowed to offer your Lordship our most
grateful thanks for the Charge your Lordship has delivered to us in this
cathedral this day, and pray your Lordship to permit it to be printed, that
it may be in the hands of every member of our flock, and to allow the MS.
to be placed among the archives of this diocese.
St. Peter’s Cathedral, Pietermaritzburg, 18th May, 1864.
The above was signed by 1 the Dean,’ and eight other clergy.
Among the above signatures is that of one of the Missionaries
in Zululand ; and, accordingly, the informant of the Guardian
writes—
You will remark that, whilst I give the numbers of the clergy as eleven,
there are but eight signatures to the Address.
One clergyman is in
England; another, having broken a blood-vessel, is lying ill in bed, but
is well known to believe (s«c).
Thus this address has been signed by eight colonial clergy,
of whom several are catechists, who have been ordained by myself.
And these have been permitted by the Metropolitan—nay, en
couraged, if not, in some instances, virtually commanded and
compelled, to give their judgment on these great questions of
the day, and pronounce condemnation on their own Bishop, who
at any rate has been to some of them a Father in God, from
whose hands they have received ^ordination. If it had been
signed by all the clergy of such a diocese as that of Natal, it
is obvious that the weight to be attached to such a document
would have been incomparably less than would belong to a like
declaration, if made by the majority of the clergy of an English
�12
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
diocese. And the value even of such signatures has been
recently set very low by the Bishop of St. David’s.
The Bishop of Capetown replied as follows:—
Deanery, Maritzburg, May 19, 1864.
Reverend and Dear Brethren,—I beg to thank you very sincerely for your
Address. The duty, which I have had to discharge, has been a most pain
ful one. All personal considerations, however, must give way, when the
faith of Christ is at stake. The questions, which your late Bishop has
raised, are, as I have said in my Charge, no less than these,—Is there a
written revelation from God ? Is our Lord, God Incarnate ? Is Chris
tianity true ?
We ought not to suppose for a moment that any Civil Court would, if
appealed to on the question of civil right, venture to send back to this land
one, whose teaching you yourselves, with the whole Church, have solemnly
repudiated, with the right to take possession of the property of the Church,
given for far different purposes ; nor do I imagine that anyone would have
thought it possible, had it not been for the confident tone of Dr. Colenso
himself, assuring those to whom he had written that such was about to be
the case.
It rejoices me, my brethren, to receive from yourselves the assurance that,
let the worldly position of Dr. Colenso be what it may, you ‘ dare not
acknowledge him as having authority in spiritual matters.’ Maintain your
ground as witnesses for Christ, and for ‘ the faith once for all delivered to
the Saints,’ and, in God’s good time, all will be well. Our country’s Courts
will not commit the great wrong of giving a legal right to a bishop, deposed
and rejected by the Church, to force himself into your churches, and pro
claim from your pulpits ‘ erroneous and strange doctrines, contrary to God’s
Word,’ which he and you have sworn at your ordination ‘ with all faithful
diligence to banish and drive away,’ and thereby to compel your congregations,
—who, I rejoice to hear, have no more sympathy than yourselves with the
late Bishop’s teaching,—to abandon the churches which they have erected
for themselves.
But, if it were so, your course is plain. Christians have, before now,
been driven to worship on the mountain-top or by the river-side, in dens
and caves of the earth. I believe there is faith and zeal enough among
yourselves, if driven to it, to do the same.
I shall have much pleasure in complying with your wish, by publishing
my Charge, and by placing the MS. afterwards at your disposal.
I am, Rev. and Dear Brethren,
Your faithful servant and brother in Christ,
R. Capetown, Metropolitan.
The Rev. the Clergy of the Diocese of Natal.
A similar document, almost the counterpart of the chief
clause in the clerical ‘ declaration,’ was subsequently signed by
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
13
the same nine clergymen as before, and also by seven laymen
—six signing as churchwardens of four churches, but signing in
their own names merely, without the authority of the congre
gations.
It is obvious to remark how positively in his reply, as
above,-—and we shall see that he does the same in his Charge,—
the Metropolitan reiterates the statement, that e the whole
Church has solemnly repudiated my teaching,’ that ‘ I have
been deposed and rejected by the ChurchC But he must have
*
been aware that my books have never been condemned at all
by the whole Church, or by any competent authority in the
Church of England, and that not a few of the clergy of that
Church, and a very large body of the more intelligent laity,
are so far from condemning me, that they have openly come
forward to declare their disapproval of his proceedings.
Further, I maintain, as I have partly shown in my ‘ Letter to
the Laity,’ p. 10-14, that all the charges brought against me at
my (so-called) ‘ Trial ’ will fall to the ground by virtue of recent
decisions in this country, some in consequence of recent Judg
ments of the Privy Council, others by reason of a decision in
the Court of Arches—the very Court of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, under whose ‘general superintendence and revision’
the Bishop of Capetown bound himself to act, in accepting his
Letters Patent from the Crown,—which decision, however, he
distinctly repudiates, see Trial, p.388, declaring positively that
he ‘ cannot concur ’ in it, and presuming to say that ‘ it is a
wrong to the Church ’ of which he is still content to remain a
Bishop.
With respect to the ‘ questions,’ which, as the Bishop of
* Of the ‘ nearly fifty ’ clergy in the diocese of Capetown, very many of them
selected or ordained by the Bishop himself, about one-third do not appear to have
signed the ‘Declaration’ of ‘rejection,’ lately published in the Times, Sept.l. But
the signatures to this Declaration do not profess to be those of Clergy of the Church
of England, but of Clergy ‘ ministering in the Church in South Africa,' and they
address, accordingly, the ‘ Bishops of the Church in South Africa.’
�14
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
Capetown says, ‘ I have raised,’ or which, as he says elsewhere,
Charge, p.14, ‘have really been raised by my writings,’ I cannot
be responsible for inferences, which he or others may think
proper to draw from my critical conclusions. I must refer the
reader to the books themselves for the statements which I have
really made; but I emphatically deny that I myself have
raised these ‘ questions.’ On the contrary—
(i) I have said of the Bible, Part I.p.13, that it has—
‘through God’s providence, and the special working of His Spirit on the
minds of its writers, been the means of revealing to us His True Name, the
Name of the only Living and True God, and has all along been, and, as far
as we know, will never cease to be, the mightiest instrument in the hand of
the Divine Teacher, for awakening in our minds just conceptions of His
character and of His gracious and merciful dealings with the children of
men. Only we must not attempt to put into the Bible what we think ought
to be there,. . . and lay it down for certain beforehand, that God could only
reveal Himself by means of an infallible book.’
(ii) I have done my utmost to show, Part I.p.xxix-xxxii,
Part II.p.xv,xvi, Part Ill.p.xxxiii-xl, that the recognition of the
results of the criticism of the Pentateuch ‘ is perfectly consis
tent with the most entire and sincere belief in our Lord’s
Divinity,’—whereas Bishop Gbay’s view seems to lose sight of
the human nature of our Lord altogether, or to trench on the
Eutychian and Monophysite heresies, which confounded the
two natures in one.
(iii) I fully believe in the Divine origin of Christianity,
—not certainly of that Christianity, which may be blown away
by a breath, which teaches that ‘all our hopes for eternity are
taken from us,’ if one line in Esther or Chronicles is shown to
be unhistorical or untrue, whose ‘ foundation ’ is the dogma,
that ‘ the whole Bible is the unerring Word of the Living God,’
—but a Christianity rooted and grounded in those ‘words of
Christ’ — ‘the primal, indefeasible truths of Christianity,’ as
Dean Milman calls them,— ‘ which shall not pass away,’ — a
Christianity which at once satisfies the deep wants and longings
of the human heart, and is confirmed, as of Divine original, py
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
15
the whole course of human history,—a Christianity, to use again
the words of the same writer, which is 4 comprehensive, all-em
bracing, catholic, which knows what is essential to religion, what
is temporary and extraneous to it,’ and, being such, ‘ may defy
the world.’
And let me say further, it is not I who have said that Chris
tianity will not bear a close and critical investigation, that it
will not endure the searching eye of ‘ free enquiry.’ I believe
that it will, that it is essentially and eternally true. But I do
not believe that all is true, which ancient or modern dogmatisers
have asserted to be essential to the creed of Christendom, and by
which they always obscure, and not unfrequently put out of sight
altogether, the grand truths, which alone are ‘ indefeasible ’
and imperishable. I hold with Bishop Thirlwall, Charge,
p.123, that—
The numbers, migrations, wars, battles, conquests, and reverses of Israel
have nothing in common with the teaching of Christ, with the way of sal
vation, with the fruits of the Spirit. They belong to a totally different
order of subjects. They are not to be confounded with the spiritual revela
tion contained in the Old Testament, much less with that fulness of grace
and truth which came by Jesus Christ. . . . Such questions must be left to
every one’s private judgment and feeling, which have the fullest right to
decide for each, but not to impose their decisions as the dictate of an infal
lible authority on the consciences of others. Any attempt to erect such
facts into articles of faith would be fraught with danger of irreparable evil
to the Church, as well as with immediate hurt to numberless souls.
The Bishop’s Charge; his claim, of Jurisdiction.
I come now to consider the Bishop of Capetown’s Charge,
which is described by the correspondent of the Guardian as—•
the greatest, some say who know England well, that had ever been delivered
by an English Bishop.
In the first portion of it, p.1-12, the Bishop states his views as
to the office and powers of a Metropolitan.
These I need not
here consider at length, as these points, no doubt, will come
under discussion when my case is heard, as Her Majesty has
ordered, by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I
�16
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
remark only that I have no concern with, and do not in any
manner recognize, the powers of a Metropolitan, as they may
have existed at some time or other in the ancient Catholic
Church, or as they may now exist ‘in the Churches of the
Roman obedience,’ in which latter, says the Bishop, p.14—
since the Council of Trent, the powers of the Metropolitan, as well as
those of the Episcopate generally, have been, to a very great extent, merged
in the Papacy.
I recognize them only so far as they exist in ‘the United Church
of England and Ireland, as by law established,’ in which, as is
well known, the supreme powers, usurped by the Pope in the
Roman Church, are restored by the Constitution to the Crown.
And I note that the Bishop has entirely ignored the Act of
Submission of the Clergy, 25 Henry VIII, which surrenders
all those powers to the Sovereign, with respect to which Mr.
A. J. Stephens says, Laws relating to the Clergy, i.p.23 :—
The grand rupture [with Rome] happened in the reign of Henry VIII,
when all the jurisdiction usurped by the Pope in matters ecclesiastical was
restored to the Crown, to which it originally belonged, so that the statute
25 Hen. VIII was but declaratory of the ancient law of the realm.
I may observe, however, that the Bishop repeats on p.8
the assertion, which I have already been obliged to contradict
on p.6 of my ‘ Letter to the Laity ’; for he says—
Your late Bishop, who had for years recognized my jurisdiction, as has been
abundantly shown by the documents produced at his Trial, denied on that un
happy occasion that I had any jurisdiction over him, and protested against
the exercise of it.
I have shown in my Letter—
(i) That I have never recognized in the Bishop of Capetown
any jurisdiction over me personally, though I have recognized
his Metropolitan dignity, as my Patent requires me to do, in
accordance with the system of the Church of England; that is,
I have recognized (i) his preeminence and precedence as that of
a Bishop primus inter pares, (ii) the right of any one of my
clergy, who may deem himself aggrieved by any of my decisions,
to appeal to him as Metropolitan ;
.,
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
17
(ii) That the documents produced at my so-called ‘Trial’
do not imply any recognition of the jurisdiction which he
now claims over me as Metropolitan;
(iii) That the Bishop of Capetown himself, only a few years
ago, was then, as he expressed himself,—
in doubt as to the extent of Metropolitan jurisdiction.
By this time, I hope, my ‘ Letter to the Laity ’ may have
cleared up this matter of jurisdiction to the minds of many of
my Clergy and Laity. In the absence of any such correcting
influence, I cannot wonder that they should have been much
impressed by the positive statements of the Metropolitan, and
by his language at p.8—
If Dr. Colexso claims to be Bishop over the Clergy and Laity of this
diocese, he can scarcely question my authority over him. We derived our
respective jurisdictions from the same source.
I have shown in my^ Letter,’ p.5, that in my Patent, which
is of an earlier date than that of the Bishop of Capetown, I am
placed by the Crown in the same relation to him as Metropolitan,
that any one of the Suffragans of the Province of Canterbury
stands in to the Archbishop of that Province. And if, as I am
advised, the office of a Metropolitan in England involves no right
or power to exercise an irresponsible jurisdiction over a Suffragan,
without any right of appeal to the Sovereign, then neither has
the Bishop of Capetown any such right or power over me, nor
could such a power have been given him by the later Patent
which he has received.
The Bishop, however, says, p.6—
There remain the facts, that, if the Church; and Crown united in the
appointment of a Bishop, they were united also in the appointment of a
Metropolitan,—that, if one office exists, the other exists also,—and that each
of the eight South African Bishops, that have been appointed since tfie
Province was formed, solemnly swore before God that he would render
canonical obedience to me as Metropolitan at his consecration.
I have already shown, ‘ Letter to the Laity,’ p.4, that according
c
�18
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
to the principle laid down by the Privy Council in Long v.
Bishop of Capetown, viz.—
the oath of canonical obedience does not mean that the clergyman will
obey all the commands of the Bishop against which there is no law, but that
he will obey all such commands as the Bishop by law is authorized to impose,__
I am not bound by this oath to any obedience, except to such
commands of the Metropolitan as he may be lawfully empowered
to impose. And while I recognize his e dignity ’ as Metropolitan,
I deny that he is ‘ by law authorized ’ to summon me before him,
and sit in judgment upon me.
Moreover, that the dignity of Metropolitan may exist, without
his having any lawful jurisdiction, is plain from the following
letter, which has been recently addressed by the Duke of New
castle, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, to the GrovernorCreneral of Canada.
Downing Street, 10th February, 1864.
My Lord,—A Correspondence, which arose out of the recent case of
Long v. The Bishop of Capetown, has led me to submit, for the opinion of
the Law-Officers of the Crown, the question whether any, and, if so, what,
Metropolitan preeminence or jurisdiction was conveyed by the Letters
Patent bearing date the 12th Feb. 1862, which constituted the Bishop of
Montreal Metropolitan Bishop in the Province of Canada,
The following is the answer which I have received:—
4 We think it was competent to the Crown to constitute his Lordship a
Metropolitan, and thereby to give him gyreewiinence and precedence over his
Suffragans, but that, as to the coercive jurisdiction which the Metropolitan,
may exercise, and the manner in which it is to be exercised, these are
matters which must be settled by the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the
Church in a general Assembly of the Province, according to the provision
of the local Act of the Canadian Legislatru-e, 19 & 20 Victoria, cap. 121.’
You will be good enough to communicate a copy of this opinion to the
Bishop of Montreal, adding, that it will be for his Lordship, in concert
with the other authorities of the Canadian Church, to determine for them-’
selves whether they would prefer to apply for fresh and amended Letters
Patent, or to allow the existing instrument to remain in force, with the
knowledge that, so far as it assumes to invest the Metropolitan with coercive
jurisdiction, it is of no effect.
I have, &c.,
(Signed)
Newcastle.
It will be observed that the Patent of the Bishop of Montreal
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
19
did profess to give him, as Metropolitan, a power of e juris
diction,’—probably in the very same terms as those used in the
Bishop of Capetown’s. But this part of his Patent is pro
nounced invalid, by reason of rights already existing. And
the Metropolitan of Canada has only 4 preeminence and pre
cedence ’ over the other Bishops of his Province—he is primus
inter pares—but cannot exercise any jurisdiction over them.
I believe that precisely the same state of things exists in the
Province of Capetown, and that this will be made plain by the
decision of the Privy Council upon the hearing of my case.
What would be thought, however,—or what would be said
and done,—if the Bishop of Montreal were to throw to the
winds this opinion of the Law-Officers of the Crown, and, in
defiance of the Royal authority, were to assert, with the Bishop
of Capetown, that, in the exercise of what he pretends to call a
spiritual jurisdiction, he will proceed to summon, convict, sus
pend, deprive, any one of his Suffragans—e.g. the Bishop of
Heron,—and ‘should he presume to exercise Episcopal func
tions in his diocese, after the sentence of the Metropolitan shall
have been notified to him,’ will further proceed, ‘after due
admonition, to pronounce the formal sentence of excommunica
tion against him’ ? I apprehend that, in such a case, the LawOfficers of the Crown would have another duty to perform, and
would vindicate in due course Her Majesty’s Supremacy.
But the Bishop of Capetown lays great stress upon the
point that the Church, as well as the Crown, has conferred on
him his office as Metropolitan, and from the former he seems to
derive his 4 spiritual jurisdiction.’ But how has 4 the Church ’
done this ? The Bishop says, p.5—
The subject was fully discussed at a meeting of the English Bishops, and.
such of the Colonial Bishops as were within reach, summoned by the late
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1853. At that meeting, at which I was pre
sent, it was resolved that Metropolitans should be at once appointed over
the churches of Canada, New Zealand, South Africa (Australia and the Hast
Indies being already under Metropolitans); and the concurrence and joint,
c 2
�20
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
action of the Crown in this matter was sought and obtained. The Crown
gave what force of law it was in its power to do to the decision of the Church.
• • • By the concurrent action of the Church and of the Crown, and, at their
united call, I hold the office which I now fill.
It is obvious to ask, by what concurrent action of the Church
and State were the Metropolitans of Australia and India
appointed, previously to this meeting of the Bishops ? Here,
however, a resolution of certain Bishops is spoken of as a
‘ decision of the Church ’! to which the Crown ‘gave what force
of law it was in its power to do’! Convocation had no voice in
the matter: the Laity were not consulted: only a private
conclave of Bishops, English and some Colonial, c resolved ’ that
‘Metropolitans should be at once appointed,’ and then ‘the
concurrence and joint action of the Crown in this matter was
sought and obtained.’ And this is called ‘the action of the
Church ’I I leave Archdeacon Denison to settle this matter
with the Bishop of Capetown. But I maintain—and the Duke of
Newcastle’s letter abundantly shows it—that the Crown alone
appointed these Metropolitans.
The Bishop again observes, p.10—
It is the Canons, which define the relations of the Priest and Deacon to
the Bishop, of the Bishop to the Metropolitan, of the Metropolitan to the
Primate and at present, it would seem, the de facto Patriarch of all
Churches of the English Communion.
And then he proceeds to speak of the authority given him as
Metropolitan by the ‘Canons of the Church.’ Not a word,
however, is said in the Canons of the Church of England as to
the relations of the Bishop to the Metropolitan, or of the
Metropolitan to the Primate or Patriarch; nor are even the
names of Metropolitan, Primate, Patriarch, so much as men
tioned in any one of them. And, further, the appeal from the
Archbishop of York is not to the Archbishop of Canterbury as
‘ Patriarch,’ but to the ‘ Queen in Council.’ The Bishop refers,
no doubt, to certain ancient Canons, which, however, have no
force in the Church of England, except that, as Lord Hale says,
in Stephens, Laws relating to the Clergy, i.p.225,—
�THE BISHOP OP CAPETOWN.
21
So far as such, laws are received and allowed of here, so far they obtain,
and no farther.
And this is made still more plain by Lord Denman, as quoted
in Stephens, ii.p.1449 :—
I think it necessary to reassert, what has so often been declared by our
illustrious predecessors in this Court, and by the greatest writers on the
English constitution, that the Canon Law forms no part of the law of Eng
land, unless it has been brought into use and acted upon in this country.
Hence I am of opinion that the burden of proof rests on those, who affirm the
adoption of any portion of it in England.
But the hearer or reader of the Bishop’s words, if ignorant
of ecclesiastical matters, would be misled by the context, and
suppose that he was speaking of the Canons of the English
Church, since the next preceding sentence of the Charge runs
thus—
They [English Churchmen, who go out as colonists] carry with them
their Bible and their Prayer-book, and with them the laws of their Church
embodied in the Canons, so far as these are applicable to their new circum
stances. It is the Canons which define, &c.,—
that is to say, in two successive clauses, the Bishop uses the
expression c the Canons ’ in two totally different senses !
The Bishop goes on to assure my Flock that the Law-Officers
of the Crown were e not likely to consent ’ to advise Her Majesty
to refer my case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
—that the Queen could only do so 4 by a stretch of Her pre
rogative,’ p.ll,—that this would be—
in fact, to revive the Courts of Preview, Star Chamber, and High Commission, with all their arbitrary powers.
The only answer to these assertions is the fact, that Her
Majesty, by the advice of Her Privy Council, has so referred it,
and, in so doing, has exercised an unquestionable right, derived
from the first principles of our Protestant Constitution.
The Bishop of Capetozvris threatened Secession from the
Church of England.
But should Her Majesty, acting upon the advice that may be
tendered by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, be
�22
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
pleased to decide in my favour, it appears that the Bishop of
Capetown contemplates in that case a formal secession from the
Church of England. His language on this point is most remark
able, and cannot, as it appears to me, be understood to mean
anything short of this.
The fear is expressed, that a Civil Court might send back Dr. Colenso as
Bishop of this Diocese, because there is no legal power in the Metropolitan
to deprive him. The question, however, is, not whether there is a legal
power, i.e. a power conferred by some civil law—[in other words, a power
conferred by Her Majesty’s Letters Patent],—but whether there is any right
in the Metropolitan to deprive, and whether I am Metropolitan. I have shown
above that, by the joint action of the Church and the State, I am Metro
politan, and that the Metropolitan has power by the laws of the Church
[what Church ?] to deprive. I do not believe that any Civil Court would
deny this; because, first, by so doing it would declare that the Church, or,
if the term is preferred, the ‘voluntary association,’ in this country, called
the Episcopal Communion, is the only religious association, or the only
society in the land of any kind, that cannot remove an unfaithful officer
from his office : for, if the Metropolitan, with the aid of the other Bishops
of the Province, cannot do it, no power on earth can. The Archbishop of
Canterbury cannot do so. The Crown cannot. Were a Bishop to become
an Atheist, or were he to believe in Mahomet, or to teach all Roman doc
trine, it would by such a sentence be affirmed that there is no redress, no
power of removal, pp. 12,13.
Let us stop here for a moment, and consider the statement
which I have above italicized, and in which lies the Bishop’s
whole misapprehension of his position. He asserts that the
Crown cannot remove a Bishop: I am advised that the Crown
can remove a Bishop, and that no other power in the Church
of England can. Here, then, is the true remedy for the present
supposed grievance. The Queen, by and with the advice of
Her Privy Council, can cancel my Patent, or, if necessary,
can cancel that of the Bishop of Capetown. If, then, as it is
asserted, I have transgressed so grievously—nay, if I have
transgressed at all—the laws of the Church of England, it is
perfectly competent for the Bishops of Capetown and Grahamstown, or any Bishops of England my accusers, to make their
complaint to Her Majesty, and seek redress at Her hands ; they
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
23
may present, as I myself have done, a petition to be heard
before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or any
other Court which Her Majesty may see good to appoint, while
accusing me of serious derelictions of duty, in the discharge
of the high office which I hold by Her Majesty’s authority. I
call upon them solemnly to do this, and not to persist in the
unjustifiable practice of uttering abusive and, in fact, libellous
invectives against me. I will put no obstacles in the way of such
an enquiry: I will raise no technical objections, nor interpose
unnecessary delays. But, if they refuse to do this, then let them
hold their peace as to the point, of my having broken faith
with the Church of England, and violated her laws. Or, if they
reject Her Majesty's Supremacy, and desire to shake off the
control of those wholesome laws, which protect the clergy of the
Church of England from the grinding oppression of mere eccle
siastical domination, then let this purpose be distinctly avowed,
and so we shall understand more clearly the end which is aimed
at, and the nature of the conflict in which we are engaged.
But the Bishop proceeds, p.13—
And, next, it would thereby declare that the Church in this colony,
which is a branch of the oldest Corporation of the world, shall not be
governed by its own laws,—laws which it inherits from the Church from
which it derives its origin. I will not believe that any Civil Court on
earth would so openly violate the religious liberties of any denomination of
Christians.
Here, again, is the same fallacy as before. If the Bishop of
Capetown will surrender his Letters Patent, and, with any of
the Clergy or Laity, who are willing to secede with him from
the ‘ Church of England,’ will form another Church—to be
called, e.g. ‘the Church of South Africa, in union and full
communion with the United Church of England and Ireland,’—
and to be modelled (if they desire it) after that of some ancient
Church, with a complete mediaeval system of ecclesiastical tra
ditions, Priestly Authority, Episcopal and Metropolitan Courts,
exercising jurisdiction over clergy and laity, issuing sentences of
�24
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
suspension and deprivation for the former, and decrees of
excommunication for both,—there is nothing to prevent their
so doing: no Civil Court would interfere with them, or e violate
the liberties ’ of such an 4 association.’ But he cannot, I appre
hend, retain his status as a Bishop of the Church of England,
and then renounce the system of that Church, which rightly or
wrongly—most rightly, as I believe, though the Bishop of Cape
town seems to think otherwise—declares by the 37th Article
and the 36th Canon, that—
the Queen’s Majesty under God is the only supreme governor of this realm,
and of all other Her Highness’s dominions and countries, as well in all spi
ritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal.
The Bishop still proceeds, p.13—
But, if it did, it would only deprive the Church of its property. It
could not give spiritual authority to any man. Christ has not given this
power to Kings or Civil Courts. He has given it only to His Church: and,
if any Church were to surrender this power to Civil Courts, it would un
Church itself—cease to he a Church.
But the Church of England notoriously asserts that to the
Queen in Council rightfully Belongs the power of allowing or
disallowing the judgments, which may have been passed by
Archbishops and Bishops upon their clergy ; nor does it recog
nize the distinction, which the Bishop of Capetown attempts to
draw, between their 4 spiritual’ and ‘temporal’ jurisdiction.
And, accordingly, Dr. Williams has been restored to his spiritual
functions by the decree of the Privy Council, in direct oppo
sition to the strongly-expressed sentiments of his own Bishop.
It is obvious that, on the principle put forth by Bishop Gray,
Bishop Hamilton might have condemned Dr. Williams 4 spi
ritually,’ in spite of the decision of the Privy Council,— he
might have announced to him in the very language (mutatis
mutandis') of the three South-African Bishops, in their 8th
Resolution, adopted at the 4 Synod,’Dec. 15, 1863, with reference
to myself (see Letter to the Laity, p.31)—
Should [Dr. Williams] presume to exercise [Priestly] functions in the
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
25
diocese of [Salisbury], after [this spiritual] sentence of the Bishop shall have
been notified to him, without an appeal to Canterbury, and without being
restored to his office by the [Bishop], he will be ipso facto excommunicate,
and it will be the duty of the [Bishop], after due admonition, to pronounce
the formal sentence of excommunication.
Of course, the Bishop of Salisbury, though feeling so
deeply on this question, has never attempted to carry out such a
measure. The notion of such a proceeding would not now be
tolerated for a moment in England. Besides, the Bishop of
Salisbury knows that by the First Canon of the Church of
England, he himself, as well as the Bishops of Capetown and
Graiiamstown, is bound—
To the uttermost of his wit, knowledge, and learning, without any colour
or dissimulation, to teach, manifest, open, and declare, four times every year
at the least, in his sermons and other collations and lectures, .... that the
king’s power, within his realms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and all
other his dominions and countries, is the highest power under God;—
and that by the Second Canon it is declared—
Whosoever shall hereafter . . . impeach any part of his regal supremacy
in the said [ecclesiastical] causes restored to this Crown, and by the laws of
this realm therein established, let him be excommunicated ipso facto, and not
be restored, but only by the Archbishop, after his repentance and public
revocation of those his wicked errors.
If, however, such a proceeding be acquiesced in silently,
while being thus introduced in a distant colony,—if it be once
admitted, in any part of the Queen’s dominions, that a distinc
tion may be drawn between a 4 spiritual ’ and a 4 temporal ’
judgment of an ecclesiastical Judge of the Church of England,
—I venture to predict that the experiment will be tried, at no
distant day, at home.
But Bishop Gray proceeds as follows, and I call special
attention to these ominous sentences, which seem very distinctly
to imply that he contemplates secession from the Church of
England, should the Privy Council pronounce in my case (what
he ventures to call beforehand) an 4 unrighteous decision,’ by
which he means a nullification of his own judgment, and a
�26
REMARKS OX THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
declaration of my right to retain—under the laws of the Church
of England—the office which I hold as Bishop of Natal.
If this diocese, therefore, were to be deprived of its temporalities by an
unrighteous decision, the Mother Church would provide means for the support
of another Bishop, and send him out to minister to the faithful in the land.
I would myself, were life and strength spared, undertake to return home,
and rouse it up to the discharge of this duty, and would, with my episcopal
*
brethren, consecrate another Bishop to minister to the flock, and to witness
for Christ, and His word, and His truth, in this land.
If the Bishop first resigns his See, and his connection with the
Church and State of England, it is perfectly open to him to
adopt the course proposed, and to establish this ‘Free Church.’
The Bishop, indeed, says, p.8—
I have claimed the same right, but no greater, to administer the laws of
this Church, whether in my capacity as Metropolitan or in that of Bishop,
than would be conceded to a Roman Catholic Bishop or a Wesleyan Super
intendent, in the administration of the laws of their respective communities.
This I deny. I think I have sufficiently shown that the Bishop
claims the right, not of administering the laws of the Church
of England, as they are laid down in her formularies, and inter
preted by the decisions of her highest Courts of Appeal, but of
declaring, by his own authority, the laws which he is to
administer, or, at all events, the interpretation which he will
put upon those laws, as Metropolitan of the Church of South
Africa.
Besides which, the heads of the Roman Catholic, Wesleyan,
Dutch Reformed, and other Churches, have never subscribed the
Canons and Articles of the Church of England, and conse
quently are not bound by her laws, as the Bishop of Capetown
is. If Bishop Gray really does what he has here threatened
to do, without relieving himself by resignation of those grave
responsibilities which he incurred, when he signed his adhe* Would the English Bishops, with the penalties of prcemunire before them,
venture to do this ? or would even Bishop Cotterill of Grahamstown, or Bishop
Welby of Saint Helena, holding Her Majesty’s Letters Patent ? Bishops Twells
and Tozer, or any other Missionary Bishops, not holding office from Her Majesty,
might possibly set at nought the Royal Supremacy.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
27
rence to the 1st, 2nd, 36th and 55th Canons, and declared
his unfeigned eassent’ to the 37th Article, and as the very
condition of his being admitted to the Episcopate of the Church
of England, ‘solemnly swore before God,’ to use his own
words, that he would exercise whatever jurisdiction might be
committed to him—
according to such authority as you have by God’s Word, and as to you shall
be committed by the Ordinance of this Realm,—
I apprehend that the act would be one of disobedience of
the Law, violation of the Oath of Consecration, and rebellion
against the Queen’s Supremacy. I doubt, however, if there
are many of the Laity, or even of the Clergy, of Natal, who
would be prepared to follow the Metropolitan in this secession.
I doubt also if all of those, who signed their names to the
documents already quoted, appreciated fully at the time the
nature of the act which they were committing, or saw clearly
the course to which the Bishop of Capetown wTas pledging
them. For these remarkable passages were not uttered in their
hearing as a part of the original Charge, but were added after
wards as a note, as the Bishop says, p.12—■
in the hope that it may relieve the anxieties of some, who have spoken to
me on the subject.
The Bishop of Capetown’s strong language.
The Bishop has asserted on p.13 that my condemnation—
has been deemed unavoidable by the Bishops of this Province, as well as by
the whole Episcopate of the Church.
I do not believe that he has any authority for this latter
statement. I presume it to be of the same kind as that other
assertion, into which his warmth of feeling has betrayed him,
viz. that all the clergy of Natal had declared that they would
never again receive me as Bishop. At all events, the language
of the Bishop of London and others in Convocation showed
sufficiently that they, at least, would not for a moment justify
�28
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
an act so unconstitutional and so unrighteous, as that which
Bishop Wilberforce regarded with so much complacency, viz.
the condemnation and deprivation of a Bishop of the Church
I
of England by the single voice of a Metropolitan, without
any right of appeal whatever,—not even to the Archbishop of
Canterbury,—a right which is enjoyed by the humblest Deacon
in the diocese of Capetown.
The Bishop then goes on to speak of the case on its
merits. And here he certainly does not spare hard words, which,
indeed, with thoughtful minds will not supply the absence of
arguments, and would not be used, I imagine, in support of a
really strong cause, but which produced, no doubt, to some
extent, the desired effect for the present moment upon the feel
ings of those who heard them. He speaks of ‘ the heresy of
these awful and profane words,’ p.19, of my ‘ reckless arrogance,
like that which marked the infidels of the last century,’ p.20,
of my using i the language of the boaster and the scorner,’ p.21,
of my ‘distempered imagination,’ p.21, of my ‘awful writings,
and of his duty to ‘ earnestly warn the flock against their im
piety,’ p.25, of my ‘ being led captive of the Evil One,’ p.33, of
my ‘ instilling the poison of unbelief,’ p.33, of my ‘ teaching the
very opposite to that which I undertook to teach,’ and ‘enjoying
the emoluments of my abused office and violated trust,’ p.31,
of my—
‘ teaching directly contrary to what She [the Church, i.e. as his hearers
would suppose, the Church of England] holds on fundamental points, and
directly opposite to what I undertook to teach when She gave me my com
mission, and for the teaching of which her faithful children have provided
for me a maintenance,’ p.32.
Finally, he asserts, p.36, that I ‘have forsaken the Living Word
of God,’ and, p.37, that—
all that would be respectable in the world, ignorant and careless though
some be,—all but the scoffer and unbeliever,—avowedly are on God’s side,—
and, therefore, he evidently means it to be inferred, are in
direct opposition to ‘ the Evil One ’ and me.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
29
These are, certainly, strong expressions. I cannot wonder
that the Clergy or Laity of Natal, who were present, after
hearing these terrible denunciations, enforced by the personal
energy of the Metropolitan and the (supposed) authority of his
office, signed at once the documents above quoted. Indeed, I
found it necessary, after reading this vehement Charge, to turn
for a while to the quiet reading of my own books, that I might
know myself again, and satisfy myself that I was not really
such a monster of iniquity as is here depicted. As some
of those, however, into whose hands this pamphlet may come,
may not have seen the two works of mine which have been so
stigmatised, and may not be able to procure them, I have
thought it well to quote a passage of some length from each of
them in the Appendix (1), from which the reader will be able
to judge in some measure how far such language as the above
was really justified. I shall also, for my own protection from
misrepresentation, publish, as soon as possible, an abridged
popular edition of my work on the Pentateuch, so far as it
has proceeded, which will enable many, I hope, to form a more
correct opinion of its nature than they could gather from
reviews, whether friendly or hostile. As before, however, I
challenge the Bishop of Capetown to present me by petition to
Her Majesty, praying that the charges against me may be
heard and investigated before a lawful Court, in such manner
as Her Majesty may direct. And thus it will be decided, not
by the arbitrary judgment of a single ecclesiastic, but by the
rightful authority of the Sovereign, as Supreme Head of Church
and State, acting through the recognised organs, whether I have
in any way ‘ abused ’ my office, or i violated ’ my trust.
But the Bishop also uses, as others have done, another
class of weapons, in place of argument: he tries to cover me
with ridicule and contempt.
My writings—which I have
‘ poured forth voluminously, borrowing for the purpose from all
sources of German infidelity,’ have been e met and exposed by
�30
REMARKS OX THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
not less than seventy writers ’; and he repeats the usual
formulge, p.25,26,—
The rapidly declining interest felt in his writings, now that the novelty
arising from the author’s position has worn away,—the wearisome length of
full replies,—an objection, started in a few lines, requiring many pages for
a 'thorough and efficient answer,—the little bearing that many of these
sceptical questionings have upon the real point at issue,—may all combine to
make theologians think that their time had better be devoted, as some are
devoting it, to solid works, such as the two great Commentaries on Scrip
ture, now in the course of publication, in which the chief doubts and
difficulties, which not a single writer only, but others, whether in England or
the Continent, have raised or felt, may be examined, and receive such solu
tion as our present knowledge and learning may enable us to give them.
I am glad to find that in these ‘two great Commentaries/
the ‘ chief doubts and difficulties,’ which continental, as well as
English, writers have ‘raised or felt,’ will be examined, and
‘receive such solution’ as the case admits of. But I venture to
predict that, if this is really done, the result will be somewhat
different from that which the Bishop of Capetown anticipates.
It is obvious that he himself is not personally acquainted with
the criticism of the Pentateuch, or he would not have ventured
to speak (p.19) of ‘the seeming difficulties and obscurities’ in
it, as—
arising, to a very great extent, from the brevity with which it relates events,
and possibly from errors in the text, which from multiplied transcriptions
may have crept in, but which are of no great moment.
If he had personally devoted some time to the close exam
ination of the matter, he would have found that the difficulties
are not seeming, but real,—that they do not arise chiefly from
any ‘ brevity ’ in the narrative, which is often, on the contrary,
very diffuse, but from conflicting statements, written by different
hands in different ages,—that any errors of the text, which
may arise from transcription, are, indeed, ‘ of no great moment,’
but they scarcely affect any one of the more important of these
‘ difficulties.’ At all events, he would have found, as others
have found already (App.ty, who have honestly commenced the
critical examination of the Pentateuch from the most orthodox
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
31
point of view, that the popular traditionary notion, to which he
clings, of its being wholly the work of Moses, cannot possibly
any longer be maintained.
But the Metropolitan has still other modes of describing
me. He says, p.27,—
With many other unbelievers, he is purely a fanatic.
mysticism, based upon assumption.
His system is a false
The passage, which contains the evidence of my 4 fanaticism,’
is the following, from a letter to himself produced at my
4 Trial’:—
Another takes a different view of Inspiration, as I do myself, and believes
that God’s Spirit is, indeed, speaking in the Bible to all, who will humbly
seek and listen to His teaching,—but that, even when we read the different
portions of it, we are to 4 try the spirits, whether they are of God,’ to 4 prove
all things, and hold fast that which is good,’ to 4 compare spiritual things
with spiritual,’—that it is a part of our glorious, yet solemn, responsibility
to do this,—that, having the Spirit ourselves, an 4 unction from the Holy
One, that we may know all things,’ having the promise that we shall be
4 guided into all truth,’ if we seek daily to have our minds enlightened
and our consciences quickened, by walking in the Light already vouchsafed
to us, we are not at liberty to shake off this responsibility of judging for
ourselves, whether this or that portion of the Bible has a message from God
to our souls or not; God will not relieve us from this responsibility; He
will not give us what, in one form or other, men are so prone to desire,—
an infallible, external guide—a voice from without, such as men often wish
to substitute for the voice within.
I have quoted the passage at length, that the reader may
see from the whole context, and not merely from the defective
*
* The Bishop has more than once misquoted my expressions. Thus he speaks of
me as having said that ‘ a man can try, and ought to try, the very words of our Lord
Himself, whether they teach truth or not,’ p.14, as ‘intimating that he may sit in
judgment upon the very words of Him, whom he still professes to regard as God
Incarnate,’ p.18,—whereas my words are these,—‘ By that light the words recorded
to have been littered by our Lord Himself must all be tried.’ In like manner, he has
quoted me, p.20, as saying, ‘ though a thousand texts of Scripture should be against
us,’—whereas I have written, ‘ should seem to be against us; ’ and I have further ex
plained myself thus, Comm, on Romans, p.209: ‘Either we have misinterpreted the
words of Scripture, or we have missed their connexion, or we have lost sight of the
real point and spirit of the passage, insisting on the mere letter of the word, and some
minor particulars, which were only thrown in to fill up the imagery, but were never
�32
EEMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
extracts quoted by the Bishop, what is my real meaning,—that
I am speaking here of Christian men, devout students of the
Bible, and am not claiming, as the Bishop says,—
for the heathen, quite as much as for the Christian, ... an unction from
the Holy One to guide him unto all truth.
But when the Bishop ridicules me as a ‘ fanatic,’ p.16,17, for
intended to bind our consciences.’ Again, on p.19 he quotes my words thus: “ ‘It is
not to be supposed,’ lie says, ‘ it cannot be maintained,’ that ‘ He possessed a know
ledge, surpassing that of the most pious and learned adults of His nation, upon the
subject of the authorship and age of the different portions of the Pentateuch,’ that
‘ He knew more than any educated Jew of His age.’ ” But my words are these, Part
I,p.xxxi: ‘ It is not supposed that, in His human nature, He was acquainted, more
than any educated Jew of the age, with the mysteries of all modern sciences ; Dor, with
St. Luke’s expressions before us, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature,” can
it be seriously maintained that, as an infant or young child, He possessed a know
ledge, surpassing that of the most pious and learned adults of His nation, &c.’
So on p.23 he says of me, “In his Part IV,p.xiii, after having spoken con
temptuously of the Creeds, . . regarding them, evidently, as venerable documents,
which we may, if we please, altogether set aside, and quoting, in support of his
unbelief, the language of one, who, even in the worst days of the last century, was,
in his sense of duty towards his flock, and to the Chief Shepherd, far behind others,
&e.” I do not intend to endorse the character here given of Bishop Watson ;
but, at any rate, it would have been fair to have told his hearers that it was not I,
but His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought him forward as a
bulwark of the faith, one who had long ago ‘refuted my arguments,’ and that I had
expressed no opinion whatever of my own respecting the Creeds, contemptuous or
otherwise, but had merely quoted Bishop Watson’s views.
But perhaps the most notable instance of this strange habit of misquotation occurs
on p.22 of the Charge, where the Bishop writes as follows
“Again, p.629, he says: ‘.They must try the spirit of the Prophet’s words by
that law, which they have within them, written upon their hearts.’ . . ‘If
the words which that Prophet speaks to them come home to their consciences as
right and true words, then, in God's name, let them acknowledge and welcome
them, and send them [on] with a blessing of ‘ God-speed ’ to others. If the voice
which speaks within declares that the utterance from without is false, then shall
thou not hearken; the word is not God’s, and he, who hears it, must not obey it.’
In other words, every living man has a higher inspiration in him than the Prophet;
or, as most plain men will think, the Prophet has none, i.e. he was not commissioned
by God, not moved by the Spirit to deliver what he did deliver.”
The reader will scarcely believe that the Bishop has here left out the first and
third clauses of a paragraph, of which he has quoted all the rest,—those two clauses
distinctly showing that I am here only paraphrasing the words of a passage of
Deuteronomy, xiii.l—3. See the whole passage quoted in App.l,p.67.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
33
believing that there is in every heart a witness for God, and for
saying that-—
the voice of this inner witness is closer to him than any that can reach him
from without, and ought to reign supreme in his whole being; for the
Light in which he thus sees light, the Voice which he hears, is the Light
of the Divine Word, is the Voice of his Lord:—
and when he asks—
What is this but to place man’s mind above God’s Holy Word,—human
reason above Divine Revelation ?—
I can only say that it appears to me to do just the very opposite ;
it teaches that man’s mind must be subject to the ‘Word of God/
to the Living Voice which speaks within him,—that ‘ Divine
Revelation ’ is the very light of ‘ human reason,’—that, in
truth,—
‘ There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him
understanding.’ Job.xxxii.8.
At all events, I should say that such a view, if wrong, scarcely
deserves to be derided as the ‘fanaticism of unbelief,’ p.15,—
that it is one, at least, which is shared with me by multitudes
of good men now, as it was held by many holy men of old, who
were not ashamed to be stigmatized as ‘ fanatics,’ because with
St. John, i.4,5, they believed in ‘ the Life, which was the Light
of Men,’ ‘ the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world.’
The Bishop of Capetown's own religious teaching.
It would be impossible, as it would be useless, to discuss
here at full length the different points on which the Bishop of
Capetown accuses me, as—
teaching directly contrary to what the Church [of England] holds on funda
mental points.
I have already touched upon these above, and in my ‘Letter
to the Laity’: and I can only repeat that I have taught nothing,
as I believe, which is forbidden by the laws of the Church of
England, and I challenge him to bring the doctrines of my
books before the only authority which has a right to try them.
D
�34
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
But the reader will gather the position which the Bishop him
self has assumed, in direct defiance to the recent decisions of
the Privy Council, from the following extracts from his
Charge —
(i) ‘Our Church, in common with the whole Catholic Church, of which
she claims to he a branch, holds that the Bible is the Word of God. Dr.
Colenso says that it is not.’ j>.31.
[I have said, Part II,p.387, 1 The Bible is not itself “ God’s Word ” ;
but assuredly “God’s Word” will be heard in the Bible by all who will
humbly and devoutly listen for it.’
I have said also, Part III,p.28, ‘ There is a sense in which I am quite
ready to speak of the Bible as the “ Word of God.” . . . But I prefer the
language of the First Homily : “ In it (Holy Scripture) is contained the Word
of God: ” and I agree fully with the language of Dean Milman : 11 The moral
and religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is the ‘Word of God,’
contained in the Sacred Writings.”’
But our Church,—the ‘Church of England,’ not the ‘Church of South
Africa,’—has declared, as the Bishop already knew, by the voice of her
highest Court of Appeal, that she does not require her clergy to say that the
Bible is the Word of God.]
(ii) ‘ The Church teaches that the wicked perish everlastingly,—that
this is our time of trial and probation,—that in the eternal world there is
no more trial,—that the judgment fixes our condition for ever. Dr. Colenso
rejects this view, in the teeth of the Word of God and the faith of the
whole Church of Christ! ’ p.32.
[Though the Church of England does not require its clergy to maintaiu
the endlessness of future torments, and I have given reasons why I should
refuse any longer to do so, yet, in point of fact, I have not maintained the
contrary. I have said that, ‘ I dare not any longer dogmatize at all on the
matter; I can only lay my hand upon my mouth, and leave it in the hands of
the righteous and merciful Judge.’ Nay, I have said further: ‘As many
leave this world, whether in Heathen or in Christian lands, it may seem to
us almost past belief that the vessel so defiled should ever be cleansed
again, and made fit for the Master’s use. And it may be so: we cannot
assert to the contrary, whatever hidden hope we may entertain.’—Comm,
on the Homans, p.216.]
There is one point, however-—the question, I mean, of ‘ as
cribing ignorance to Jesus as the Son of Man ’—which has never
been discussed before the Privy Council, and on which the
Bishop lays very great stress, speaking of ‘ the heresy of these
awful and profane words,’ p.19, and not thinking it beneath the
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
35
gravity of the occasion to use (as he does more than once in the
course 'of the Charge) a tone of mockery and scoffing. With
respect to this point I assert once more, that I have said nothing
which is not strictly consistent with the most orthodox faith—
that my view is the orthodox view, and that the dogma, which my
adversaries maintain, bears no little resemblance to that which
was considered ‘ heresy ’ in Eutyches, who is said to have main
tained —
That the Divine nature of Christ had absorbed the human, and that, con
sequently, in Him there was but one nature, viz. the Divine. Mosh. H.v.22.
In addition to the words of Bishop Thirlwall, already quoted
in my ‘Letter to the Laity,’ pp.35,36, I think it well to repro
duce in the Appendix (3) some extracts from the letter of the
Rev. W. Houghton, printed at length in the preface to my Part
III—since it may not be known to many of my readers.
The following are some further extracts from the Bishop’s
Charge, &c., from which the reader will be able to judge how
extreme are his views, on some of the great subjects which are
now under discussion at home.
Thus he maintains the infallible truth of every statement in
the Bible, as follows, Trial, p.390 —
The Church regards, and expects all its officers to regard, the Holy
Scriptures as teaching pure and simple truth: it is nothing to reply that
they teach what is true in all things necessary to salvation.
And again he says, Trial, p.388:—
‘The Ordinal does not ask of those, who are seeking to be admitted
to the lowest office in the ministry, whether they believe that the Scriptures
u contain everything necessary to salvation,” but whether they believe them
to be God;s Word—whether they believe them [‘ all the Canonical Scrip
tures ’] to be true. This is the first condition of admission to the ranks
of the ministry. The truth of the Scriptures [of every statement of the
Book of Chronicles, Esther, the Book of Job!] lies at the foundation of
Christianity. The first and most anxious enquiry, therefore, of those about
to be sent forth in the Church’s name, though without full authority to teach,
is whether they believe them—believe them to be true. Then, when the
Priestly office is sought, when the position of teacher is to be undertaken,
the Ordinal goes further (!), and requires not merely belief in the Scriptures
n2
�36
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
themselves, [as being- in every line and letter infallibly true], but a belief
that those Scriptures contain [N.B. the Ordination Sendee says 11contain
sufficiently”] all things necessary to salvation, and a promise to teach
nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but wliat [N.B. a you
shall be persuaded ”] may be concluded and proved by the Scripture.’
[I need hardly say, that these assertions are made directly in the teeth
of the late judgment of the Court of Arches, which stands at the present
time as Law in the Church of England, and by which it was ruled that
the pledge given in the Deacon’s Declaration at Ordination 1 must be regarded
as sufficiently fulfilled, if there be a bond fide belief that the Holy Scriptures
contain everything necessary to salvation, and that to that extent they have
the direct sanction of the Almighty.’ But their extravagance is at once
apparent, when we find the Bishop attempting to maintain that the Decla
ration made by the Priest at Ordination goes further than that of the Deacon,
the latter being understood in the sense in which it has just been interpreted
by himself,—i. e. he asserts that the avowal, that the Scriptures ‘ contain
sufficiently all things necessary to salvation,’ goes further than the assertion,
that every single statement in the Bible is divinely and infallibly true,—e. g.
that the colloquies in Job i.6-12, ii.1-6, between Jehovah and Satan, literally
took place in the courts of heaven, or that Jehovah ‘answered Job out of
the whirlwind,’ in the grand Hebrew poetry of Job xxxviii-xli.
Let it be noted that the same Declaration, which is made by the Priest,
is made also by the Bishop; so that it cannot be said that the Deacon’s
stringent declaration of belief is not repeated at the admission to the Priest
hood, because, having been once made, the second declaration is only super
imposed upon it; for, if this is the case, why is this second form of declara
tion required to be made again by the Bishop? Nor is there any ground for
saying that the Priest has to make an additional declaration as a ‘ teacher ’;
for ‘ it appertaineth to the office of the Deacon ’ also ‘ to preach, if he be
admitted thereto by the Bishop.’ . . It is plain that the declaration of
the Priest and Bishop really interprets that required to be made by the
Deacon,—in accordance, in fact, with Dr. Lushingtox’s decision.]
The following is taken from the Bishop’s ‘ Sermon, preached
at Maritzburg, on Sunday, May 8, 1864,’ p.10:—
The fact of the Resurrection is not questioned, nor yet the accu
racy of the records which the Gospels furnish of our Saviour’s life and
teaching. But, if they were, it would not avail. Other records besides these
abundantly testify to the historic Christ. AU the great facts concerning Him
are preserved in other writings, Were there no written and inspired record
of the Christ, uninspired history would, upon all fundamental points, supply
the deficiency (!).
The following are taken from the Charc/e:—
‘ We must commence by assuming something.
We need assume for our
�THE BISHOP OP CAPETOWN".
37
purpose no more than that the facts recorded in the New Testament are facts,
■—that the things were done, and the words were spoken, which are there
declared to have been done and spoken.’ p.34.
’
‘ What the Catholic Church, while yet one, during the first thousand
years of her history (!), under the Spirit’s guidance in her great Councils,
declared to he, or received as, the true faith,
is "the true Faith, and that
we receive as such. More than this we are not bound to acknowledge.
Less we may not.’ p.35.
[What was it that happened at the precise moment indicated, a.d. 1000,
to deprive the decisions of the 1Great Councils’ of the Church of that
character of infallibility, which is here ascribed to them up to that time ?
But the Church of England says in her 21st Article: ‘ General Councils
may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of
Princes. And, when they be gathered together, (forasmuch as they be an
assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of
God), they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto
God.']
‘It is the office of Reason to examine the grounds, to weigh the
■ evidence, of their being a Revelation from God. Prophecy and miracles are
the grounds upon which Revelation rests its claims! Through them an appeal
is made to the reason of man in support of the truth of God’s Word
[?. e. of every line and letter of Esther and Chronicles], and the Divine
Mission of our Lord. . . When the understanding is convinced that the
Bible is the record of God’s Revelation [“ ? that the letter of the Bible is
God’s Revelation”], the functions of Reason end. It has no right to sit in
judgment upon the contents of that Revelation, and reject what it dislikes,
or cannot comprehend.’ p.15.
[Alas for the multitudes of ‘ wayfaring men,’ if the only grounds upon
which the Bible claims our reverence, as ‘containing God’s Word,’ are the
external grounds of ‘prophecy’ and ‘miracles’! But there is One who has
told us that it is only ‘an evil and adulterous generation’ that ‘seeketh after
a sign’: and the Bible itself teaches us, Deut. xiii.1-3, that ‘ if there arise
a Prophet, and give us a sign or a wonder,’ and the ‘sign’ or the ‘wonder’
actually come to pass, whereby he has attempted to seduce us from our
duty, from that which we know to be the right, the good, and the true, from
the worship in heart and life of the One True and Living God,—we are not
to hearken to the words of that Prophet.
*
Yes, truly! ‘the Word of God
* Comp, the language of the Reviewer in the Guardian, Aug. 31, 1864, p.858:_
‘ Thus much seems to be clear, that a miracle per se neither has nor ought to have
that infallibly demonstrative effect, which Mr. Row attributes to it. Has he for
gotten that the Israelites in old times were forbidden (Deut.xiii.) to be lad away
into error by workers of miracles, and that we are no less expressly warned in the
N. T. against “ false Christs and false prophets, who shall shew great signs and
wonders, and deceive the very elect ” ? How then can a miracle, simply as such,
accredit an alleged revelation ? ’
�38
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and is a
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’ Thank God ! we have
no need to 'examine the grounds’ and 'weigh the evidence,’ in order to
believe that we have in the Bible a Divine Revelation,—in order to realise
most fully 'the truth of God’s AVord ’ and the 'Divine Mission of our Lord?
But, in fact, the Bishop, it will be seen, while professing to vindicate the
authority of the Bible, really rests it all upon the authority of the Church,
and puts the Creeds on a level with the Bible.]
To sum up, we believe the Scriptures to be the AVord of God, because the
Church, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, declared them to be such. . . .
On the very same grounds, we believe the Creed [he says afterwards 'the
Creeds ’] to be the true interpretation of the Word in all essential points. It
icas fi amed by the Church under the same guidance, vouchsafed in conse
quence of the same promises.
'One step further I will go. The Creeds, interpreted as the Church, which
drew them up under the Spirit’s guidance, intended them to be interpreted,
contain the whole Catholick Faith.’— Charge, p.34-35.
' Even were there no Scripture, the truth would not fail. We should
still have an independent witness to Christ in the teaching of the Apostles’
Creed. That Creed, though in strictest accordance with Scripture, is a
witness in addition to Scripture. Both owe their origin to the Church, under
the Inspiration of the Spirit of God.'' *—Sermon at Moritzburg, p.13.
[Is it Dr. Guay that I hear, or Dr. Williams ? the Bible' owes its origin
to the Church,’ says the one—it is ' the written voice of the Congregation,’
says the other.
The Bishop charges the Bishop of Natal with reckless haste
in publishing.
On p.27 of his Charge the Bishop of Capetown makes a
statement which I am bound to notice.
Upon the appearance of his first work, assailing the faith through his
Commentary [on the Romans], I wrote a letter, earnestly entreating him
* It is remarkable how exactly the Bishop of Capetown re-echoes the words of
the Bishop of Oxford, who says in his last Charge (1863), p.58:—‘AVe shall in the
long run be unable really to maintain the Divine authority of Holy Scripture, if
we give up the Divine authority, in its proper place [what does this mean ?], of
‘ the Holy Catholic Church ’; and again, p. 60, ‘ Once received on external evidence,
[«.e. on the authority of the Church], as the revealed will of God, soul after soul
will have, in passage after passage, the inward witness, that, through it, God Himself is speaking to its inward ear. . . . But the Book, as a Book, must come to
[the faithful soul] from the witness of the Church, before it is capable of receiving
from his own spiritual experience these inward confirmations.’
It is obvious to ask, how did the ‘AVbrd of God’ come home with piercing power
to the hearts of men in those centuries, when the canon of Scripture was still
�. THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
39
not to publish, and, when too late to hinder publication, sought to point
out to him wherein he had taught amiss. When unable to convince him,
I referred the book, and our correspondence, to the Fathers of the Church
at home, who met, at the call of the late Archbishop, now with God, to
consider it. Before I could receive their answer, the death of the beloved
Bishop Mackenzie compelled me to proceed to England. I then received
the concurrence of the Bishops, generally, in the course which I had pur
sued ; and, on the arrival of your late Bishop shortly after me in England,
I communicated their views to him. At the same time I entreated him to
meet three of the most eminent Bishops of our Church, who had expressed
their willingness to confer with him on his arrival, and discuss his difficulties
with him, hoping that he might thereby be induced to suppress his book so
full of error. He, however, declined. He would not meet more than one,
and then not as if he were in any error, but only as a common seeker after
truth. At that time he had not published his open assault upon the Word
of God; but, hearing that he had printed, for private circulation in the
Colony, a work reputed to be sceptical in its tendency, I besought him not
to put it forth in England, until he had met and discussed his views with
the Bishops. But this also was declined, and the work was published.
I must first correct one statement in the above, which
might lead to an erroneous impression. The Bishop says that
he had ‘ heard that I had printed ’ the rough draft of my work
on the Pentateuch £ for private Circulation in the colony.’ The
information, which the Bishop had received, was not correct:
and as I myself stated distinctly to him (see (i) in App.^p^')
the reason for which I printed it, viz. to put it the more easily
before learned and judicious friends in England, I regret that
he has repeated the above misstatement.
The charge, however, is here made formally against me,
that I wilfully rejected the kindly-offered counsel of my
Episcopal Brethren in England,—that I rushed hastily and
impetuously into publication, without caring for the advice of
those eminent scholars on the English Bench, who might
have rendered me assistance in my difficulties. This charge,
unsettled ? But from the above principles the Bishop, of course, deduces the
paramount necessity of believing in the Church, that is, as he says, of ‘ a hearty
belief alike in her Sacraments, her Creeds, her Orders, and her Bible,’—so that
belief in the Divine authority of ‘the Church’s’ Bible is here put on exactly the
same footing as belief in that of Episcopacy and Episcopal Ordination!
�40
REMARKS OX THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
I am aware, has been insinuated in other quarters, and probably
has done me some injury in the minds of fair-judging men.
But I have never seen it openly made before; and I am thank
ful for the opportunity, which it gives me, of setting the real
facts of the case before the eyes of my fellow-countrymen. As
the Bishop of Capetown has stated so circumstantially the
course which he adopted towards me, I feel it incumbent on me
also to state what occurred, and to support my statement with
the necessary documents:
The Bishop’s personal observations upon the Bishop of Natal.
There is yet one other portion of the Bishop’s Charge
which I am compelled in my own defence to notice. And here
I must, indeed, express my astonishment at the course, which
the Bishop has thought it right to pursue. Holding the very
strong opinions which he does on the subject of Church
authority and Scripture infallibility, and other questions raised
in the present day, I am not altogether surprised—however I
may regret—that he has denounced so vehemently the views
which I have expressed, that he has warned my flock solemnly
against adopting them, and laboured zealously to build them
up in the belief, which he himself holds to be essential to a
true living faith. And, confident as he appears to be in the
strength of bis ecclesiastical position, I can understand—though
I cannot justify—his hastening to anticipate any steps on my
part, for bringing the matter, though with unavoidable delays,
before the highest authority in the realm. He may be—and,
I believe, he is—acting now illegally, and with undue precipi
tation. He has hurried up to Natal, and taken advantage of
my absence to undermine my authority, and, in violation, as it
seems to me, of the constitution and order of the Church of
England, he has sought to withdraw my Clergy and my Flock
from their allegiance to their lawful Bishop. And even now he
is acting, as I apprehend, in defiance of the law, and in dis
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
41
regard of Her Majesty’s authority, by setting at nought the
decision of the Court of Arches, and asserting positively, in his
assumed office as Judge, that the Church of England does
hol'd, and requires its Clergy to hold, two doctrines, which the
late Judgment of the Privy Council has declared the Church of
England does not maintain; and he threatens to go still fur
ther, should the decision of the Privy Council be in my favour.
But the Metropolitan manifestly transgressed the bounds of
what could be proper and becoming on such an occasion, even
from the highest view that may be taken of his office, when he
proceeded to discuss my personal religious life before my Clergy
and Laity in my own Cathedral, and to hold up to them—many
of them my own children in the ministry, ordained by me to the
Diaconate and Priesthood,—a picture of ‘ the past career of
Bishop Colenso.’ As he has said of my criticisms that—
an objection started in a few lines requires many pages for a thorough and
efficient answer,—
so here, in making these personal remarks upon me, the Bishop'
must have been perfectly aware that I could not reply to his
charges, made in a few words, without entering at length into
details, which, though well known to himself, would be weari
some to my readers, and would involve the characters of others.
(I know,’ however, to use the words of the Bishop of Oxford,
on a recent occasion in the House of Lords,—however little he
has acted up to the spirit of these words, in the language which
he has used with reference to myself and others—
I know enough of the people of England to know that it is not by trying
to produce a momentary pain on those who cannot properly reply to them,
that great questions will be solved; but that it is by dealing with them
with calmness, with abstinence from the imputation of motives, and, above
- all, with the most scrupulous regard to stating upon every -point that which
shall prevent any man being led to a conclusion other than that which the
facts warrant.
The Bishop of Capetown speaks, for instance, of the Euro
pean population of the colony, as ‘ a soil in which the Church
�42
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
might have struck deep her root,’ if I had only done my work
more faithfully; he says—
the spiritual wants of the English population would have been supplied;
an influence would long ere this have been brought to bear on the tribes
within the colony, and the regions beyond; and, socially and politically,
the condition of this land would have been sounder and safer than it is, and,
religiously, nearer to God. p.30.
He does not mention that special reasons existed, independently
of the Bishop, why the Church has not ‘ struck her root ’ more
deeply in the white population,—that in Maritzburg the principal
clergyman, one of Bishop Gray’s own choice, holds views, de
scribed by the Bishop himself, as expressed in language ‘ going
beyond that of the Church,’ such views being utterly opposed to
the general feeling of the whole community,—or that in the other
chief town there existed an equally sufficient reason of another
kind, which I cannot here mention, but which will be well known
to every colonist, and especially well known to the Bishop of
Capetown himself, who warned me, when I took charge of the
See, that I should find this particular difficulty. He well
knows also that, of the Clergy now in the diocese, several are
invalids—who either sought the colony at first because of their
health giving way in England, or have broken down in their
work in Natal. And yet these are still drawing their stipends
as missionaries from the limited funds granted to my diocese
by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; and it would
be impossible at present, through want of means, to fill up
their place with others.
Then, as regards the heathen, the Bishop says, p.30:—
There is no saying what the effect of vigorous and extensive Church
Missions might have been upon the mass of untutored heathenism around
you, directed by one endowed with considerable gifts, who had prepared the
way for great success, by mastering, beyond all others, the difficulties of the
language, and making its future acquisition easier to all religious teachers.
But there came a falling away. The subtle poison of unbelief entered in:
the mind was turned away from the practical work which lay before it, and
given to the working out of sceptical theories. Confidence was shaken.
Works, begun well, were abandoned. Progress there was none. Instead
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
43
thereof there has been declension. The Clergy are reduced in number from
what they were. Men are unwilling to remain under such a state of things
as has existed among you. Others have shrunk from supplying their places.
Whatever there is of real work, whether in the mission-field or in parochial
work, was the result of first efforts, when faith was not undermined; and
for the last few years has been carried on by zealous men,—apart from,
almost in opposition to, him who might have been the soul of it, but from
whom there has been of necessity a continually increasing alienation.
The statements in the above passage—the only object of which
seems to be that of overwhelming the merits of my case with
prejudices—involve, I assert it deliberately, a most unjust and
cruel suppression of the truth. I will not stay to ask how the
Bishop was authorised to pronounce so definitely about the
direct consequences of my f falling away,’ as he calls it, in its
effect upon my practical work, of which he knows nothing, but
what he has heard from others, and those my adversaries. But
I may state that the chief contents of my Book on the Romans,
which he deems so e heretical,’ were present to my mind many
years before I went to Natal,—that I have gone over the
ground, again and again, with my own soul and with my
pupils, while yet I ministered as a Parish Priest in England,
—and that (as the memoir of Bishop Mackenzie mentions)
I expounded this very epistle—in substance, on almost all
main points, precisely as I afterwards commented upon it—in
daily lectures to the Missionary party who went out with me
at first to the colony. The spirit of that book has been all along
—and will be, I trust, to the end—the very life of my Mis
sionary labours.
But what have those labours been ? When I landed in
Natal, there were no books in Zulu for the instruction of
Missionaries, no dictionary, no grammar, (except an admirable
sketch in Danish, which a lady of my acquaintance most kindly
translated for me)—there were none for the education of the
natives, no translation of the Scriptures or Prayer Book, (except
a translation of St. Matthew by the American Missionaries,—an
excellent first attempt, but very defective,—and a few scraps of
�44
REMARKS OK THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
Genesis). The whole work had to be done from the beginning,
the language having to be learned from natives who could not
speak a word of English, and written down, and analysed, with
infinite, intense, labour,—and this in addition to the other
duties which devolved upon me, of preaching and ministering
to Europeans and natives, visiting from time to time on horseback
the different parts of my diocese, (one-third the size of England
and Wales,) and keeping up a laborious correspondence.
The Bishop of Capetown, I believe, has never set his hand
to this branch of the Missionary work: and he, therefore,
knows not what it is. When he had charge, at first, for several
years, of the Kafirs and Zulus in his vast original diocese, he
made no attempt, I imagine, to acquire the native tongue; nor
now, I believe, has he done anything personally to acquire the
language of such wild tribes as still exist within his own present
diocese. The coloured people, who abound in the more civilised
districts of his diocese, speak, more or less, the Dutch language :
and I do not suppose that he has ever preached in Dutch even
to them. But, if so, there were books enough in existence, from
which that language might have been learned. Very far, indeed,
am I for blaming him for this omission: he, too, has had intense,
infinite, labour; but it has been labour of another kind, in
building up the Church chiefly among a civilised European
population. And hence the injustice of his remarks upon
myself.
He speaks, indeed, of my being s endowed with consider
able gifts,’ of my having—
prepared the way for great success, by mastering, beyond all others, the
difficulties of the language, and making its future acquisition easier to all
religious teachers.
But he seems totally unable to estimate the amount of work
involved in this. I thank God for such c gifts ’ as I have, and
for the blessing of an University education, which has enabled
me to use them more effectively. But I have no special gift
for languages, but what is shared by most educated men of fair
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
45
ability. What I have done, I have done by hard work—by
sitting with my natives day after day, from early morn to sunset,
till they, as well as myself, were fairly exhausted,—conversing
with them as well as I could, and listening to them conversing,
—writing down what I could of their talk from their own lips,
and, when they were gone, still turning round again to my
desk, to copy out the results of the day.
In this way, and by degrees, I was able to force my way
into the secrets 'of their tongue, and to overcome those difficulties
which had to be encountered before any Missions could be set
forward to any considerable effect among the natives. Instances
of missionaries, indeed, may occur now and then—I am fortunate
in having some at this time among my clergy, of whom, however,
two are foreigners—by whom the native language may be
acquired, without the aid of books, from mere contact with the
natives, the Missionary himself having natural gifts, and de
voting his whole time to the study and practice of it. But with
the ordinary English teacher the case is different. He needs a
grammar, dictionary, translations—by means of which he may
correct the faults, which he makes in his first attempts at con
versation, and increase his acquaintance with the forms of speech
and vocabulary of the language. And the Missionaries will all
need books for the use of their native classes, and these, not only
portions of the Bible and Prayer Book, but books of instruction
in matters of common life,—containing the simple lessons,
which an English child should learn, in Geography, Astronomy,
History, Geology, &c.
Before, therefore, any considerable number of Mission stations
could be established, this work had to be done ; and such books
it has been my duty to prepare, for the use of the teachers, as
well as of the taught. And, after the character which the
Bishop of Capetown has given me, I must ask to be forgiven
for showing to what this labour has really amounted. I landed
with my family in Natal on May 20, 1855 : and it happened
�46
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
that on the same day of the year, May 20, 1862, after a sojourn
of exactly seven years, I re-embarked for England. Let it be
remembered that, during this interval, a considerable time had
to be spent in mastering sufficiently for myself the native tongue,
before I could venture to undertake the work of preparing books
for others. And then let the reader judge if the Metropolitan
was justified in his remarks upon me, when he had, or might
have had, before him the results of my labours, even in this one
department, during these seven years.
List of Books prepared by the Bishop of Natal for the use of
Missionary Students and Native Scholars.
(i) Grammar of the Zulu-Kafir Language, pp. 184.
(ii) First Steps in Zulu-Kafir, an abridgment of the former, pp. 82.
(iii) Zulu-English Dictionary, pp. 552.
(iv) Three Native Accounts of a Visit to the Zulu King, in Zulu, with
translation, vocabulary, and explanatory notes referring minutely to the
Grammar, designed expressly for the use of Missionaries studying the
language.
(v) First Reading Book or Primer (in Zulu). .
(vi) Second Reading Book—fables and stories (in Zulu), some of which
were communicated to me by one of the Missionaries.
(vii) Third Reading Book—sentences and narratives, from the lips of
natives (in Zulu).
(viii) Fourth Reading Book—elements of Geography and History (in
Zulu), 2nd Ed.
(ix) First Lessons in Science, Part I—elements of Geology, written in
easy English for Zulus learning English.
(x) First Lessons in Science, Part II—elements of Astronomy, do. do.
(xi) Common Prayer-Book, Morning and Evening Prayer, Collects, many
Psalms, and all the Occasional Services, and Metrical Psalms and Hymns
(in Zulu), 3rd Ed.
(xii) Book of Genesis (in Zulu), 2nd Ed.
(xiii) Book of Exodus (in Zulu).
(xiv) Books of Samuel (in Zulu).
(xv) Harmony of the four Gospels (in Zulu), 2nd Ed.
(xvi) New Testament, complete (in Zulu).
(xvii) Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, upon the proper treat
ment of cases of Polygamy, as found already existing in converts from
heathenism, 2nd Ed., pp. 94.
(xviii) Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, pp. 311.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
47
I might add also the first rough sketch of my work on the
Pentateuch, pp.72O; for I believe that by this work, and by my
Commentary on the Romans, I have done more to promote the
cause of sound learning and religious education, than by all
my other labours put together.<■
Of course, in preparing for each new edition of any book,
the whole work had to be carefully gone over again with my
natives. I make no mention here of first attempts, now thrown
aside as imperfect,—though they may have cost much labour to
produce,—but only name those books which are actually in use
in our Missions in Natal and Zululand, or, at least, will be in
use as soon as I return to the diocese: for I understand that in
my absence it has been ordered that none of my books sjiall be
circulated, for fear of their containing, I suppose, some porten
tous heresy.
In fact, among other attempts to defame my character, in
order to dispose more easily of my arguments, I have seen in
the Guardian statements to the effect that I have corrupted
the Scriptures in my translations. It is ridiculous to suppose
that I could attempt such a folly, which any Missionary of any
Church might detect. I am far indeed from supposing that my
versions are perfect; I may have missed the meaning of the
original in some places, and failed to express it satisfactorily in
Zulu in others. And I shall of course make it my duty, as new
editions are required, to revise and amend them continually,
giving all due heed to the suggestions of others now engaged in
the Mission work. But I challenge anyone to point out a single
passage, wherein I have dishonestly departed from the meaning
of the text of Scripture,—not certainly as it exists in the English
version, but in the Hebrew and Greek originals, as interpreted
by the most able commentators.
And this also I can say with confidence, that these books
are all written in correct idiomatic Zulu, and, as such, are
very acceptable to the natives themselves. My plan to secure
�48
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
this correctness was, never to trust to my own translations,
but to pass every word through the mouth of some one or
other intelligent native before I printed it. I would take,
for instance, the Greek Testament; and, first representing
in Zulu, as accurately as I could, the meaning of a clause of
the original, I would then require my native to repeat the
same in his own phraseology. In so doing, he would adhere,
of course, generally to mine; but, having been trained to
understand my purpose, he would introduce also those nicer
idioms, which at once mark the difference between the work of
an European and a native. Having mastered the Zulu tongue
sufficiently to be able to know whether he had clearly expressed
the meaning of the original or not, I would persevere in this
way until the desired object was gained; although, perhaps, in
the rendering of difficult passages, a considerable time might have
to be spent in expressing perfectly a single verse. All Mission
aries, of course, who have been personally engaged in the work
of translation, know something of this labour, and are able
to appreciate it: but the Bishop of Capetown seems to make
very light of it.
And who was the chief printer of many of these books ?
A Zulu lad, whom I took as a young savage from his kraal a
few years ago, with a number of others, who were given up to
us for education by their fathers for five years. The story of
their being brought to us is very interesting, but it cannot be
told at length here. Suffice it to say that we did keep them for
five years, as agreed, and that during this time—with the usual
drawbacks, difficulties, disappointments, failures,—which must
attend any school, but especially a school of savages, whose
white teachers at the best spoke only with stammering lips in the
native tongue,—we made fair progress with them in reading,
writing, and arithmetic, and the general elementary work of vil
lage schools. Some of them, besides, were taught the business
of the printer and binder, and others made some progress in
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
49
other manual arts, though not so much as we had hoped and
desired. The great difficulty was to procure the proper teachers
—steady energetic men, possessing manual skill of any kind, yet
willing to work in instructing these lads in a colony like ours,
where such skill and industry were much less easily obtained than
in Capetown, and secured readily among the colonists a far
greater remuneration than the Mission station could afford to
give them.
At the end of the five years, when the term for which they
had been sent to us had expired, their mothers, brothers, sisters,
worried their fathers to reclaim them: and, just as in any English
school, the lads, now grown many of them to the critical age,
themselves desired to be released from thraldom. At that
time, also, I had no efficient teachers skilled in manual arts,
under whom to place them if they had been willing to remain ;
and I was about myself to return to England—as I should have
had to do in any case, quite independently of my book on the
Pentateuch, for the purpose of raising supplies of money and
men for extending our Mission work. Of course, it was im
possible for me to conduct the whole work of this primary
Institution myself, or even to oversee it at all times, though it
was carried on beneath my own roof. I felt this more especially
when required to visit the different parts of my diocese, or when
called to leave it for some weeks together, to visit the Zulu king,
or to attend a conference of Bishops, 800 miles away, at Capetown.
Under all these circumstances, I had no alternative but, for
prudential reasons as well as in answer to the expectations
of the boys and their parents, to allow the children of the Insti
tution to return for the present to their homes, about a year
before I left Natal. They were most of them able to read and
write and cypher, and had made some progress in other ways ;
and I trust that they have carried to their kraals the first seeds
of a civilizing influence,—so far, at least, as to lead them to
desire to bring their own children hereafter for training, and
E
�50
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
leave them in our hands with more hearty readiness than their
parents did.
And this is the work of which the Bishop says, c works well
begun were abandoned ’—as if it were nothing that one of these
very boys, now a youth of eighteen, is at this very moment
conducting the whole work of our Printing Press, continuing
steadily at his labour, during my absence, without any super
vision in his office, correcting the sheets himself with the
greatest accuracy, and sending me regularly, month by month,
the fresh (proofs ’ from the press, which mark the progress of
his work, and not only labouring himself, but training others
also, without any white man to help him I
Doubtless, during the last twelve months or more of my
residence in Natal, my mind had been intensely occupied with
the questions which had been raised upon the Pentateuch in
the course of, and by consequence of, that very ‘ practical work ’
itself, in which I had been engaged. If I had never translated
with my natives the books of Genesis and Exodus,—if I had
been content merely to superintend the diocese, devoting myself
to the more easy and pleasant occupation of riding about from
place to place, visiting and preaching to the English community,
addressing the native congregations by the dull, lifeless, process
of speaking through the mouth of an interpreter, but letting the
native language alone,—I should, perhaps, never have had my
attention drawn so closely to the criticism of the Pentateuch.
But so far was I even then from ‘ abandoning ’ my native work,
that my very last act before leaving Natal was to revise carefully
once more the Prayer Book, the New Testament, and the book
of Genesis throughout, in order to give my boy steady employ
ment during my absence in England.
I think it best to quote in the Appendix (5) some letters
from this youth, received during my sojourn in England, which
will not only show the steady industry and energy with
which he carries on his appointed labour, but will also indicate
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
51
the course which the Metropolitan has thought it right to take
with respect to my native converts. It was not enough, it seems,
to brand me before my Clergy and Laity, generally, with all
kinds of hard names, but my poor simple natives must be told
that I have i gone astray exceedingly,’—that I 4 have rebelled,’
—-that I 4 do not believe in God.’ I translate also in the
Appendix some letters which I have received, while in England,
from native catechists, of whom also the Metropolitan says
nothing. They will serve to show in what spirit these, too, have
been trained, and to what temper they have attained, by God’s
blessing, under my instructions.
I repeat, it is unjust and reckless in the extreme in the Bishop
of Capetown, who went up to my residence, and saw this very
work going od, to make these statements—and others like them
—for the mere purpose of raising prejudices and causing pain.
As regards the particular assertion, that—
for the last few years this work has been carried on by zealous men, apart
from, almost in opposition to, him who might have been the soul of it, but
from whom there has been of necessity a continually increasing alienation,—
I do not think it necessary to descend into personal questions of
this kind: but I may say, (i) that such alienation, wherever
it may exist, may arise from other causes as well as ‘ sceptical
theories,’ and may be the fault of others as well as myself,—
(ii) that the Bishop’s statement is here, as I have shown it
to be elsewhere, very heated and exaggerated,—(iii) that with
respect to one, at least, of the most 4 zealous ’ and able Mis
sionaries in the colony, the Bishop, as appears from the facts
already stated, is prepared to drive him from the diocese,
notwithstanding the small number of the clergy which he
laments so much, because of his dutiful attachment to me as
his Bi,shop, whatever differences may exist in our religious views.
But the Bishop says—
The clergy are reduced in number from what they were. Men are
unwilling to remain under such a state of things as has existed among you.
Others have shrunk from supplying their places.
E2
�52
REMARKS ON TIIE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
Doubtless, those among the clergy, who do not agree with those
‘ extreme views of Church and State,’ which the correspondent of
the Guardian naively calls e home views,’ and who are prepared
with the Metropolitan to abandon the Church of England altoge
ther, rather than submit to her system and her laws, may be
4 unwilling to remain ’ under present circumstances. But the
statement that 4 the clergy are reduced in number from what
they were,’ coming from the Bishop of Capetown, is again most
unfair and unwarranted.
In the first place, the statement is not correct. The clergy
under my charge are at the present moment fifteen, including
two now in England, and two—both ordained by myself, and
drafted from my ozvn diocese, but—sent by myself to labour
beyond the bordei' in Zululand, and there placed, by an express
resolution of the Gospel-Propagation Society, under my charge as
Bishop. On reference to the lists of the Society from the year
1853, when I first took charge of the diocese, (though I only
began to reside in 1855), to 1863, the numbers of clergy
labouring under my direction will be found as follows, 4, 4, 4, 5,
7, 9, 13, 11, 12, 13,13;—to which are to be added in each year
two chaplains, military and colonial, who do not appear in the
Society’s lists, and also, from 1855 to 1860, my dear departed
friend and fellow-labourer, Bishop Mackenzie, whose noble
services as Archdeacon, given gratuitously to my diocese, I need
scarcely say, were not likely to be replaced. Thus the number of
the clergy has been increased from 6 in 1853 to 15 in 1863.
And I may add that, when I first landed in the diocese, there
was one single small church approaching to completion ; while
in the case of the two principal churches, (the Cathedral at
Maritzburg, and St. Paul’s at Durban,) the works indeed had
been begun, but they were stopped in each instance for want of
funds, the walls being only partially raised, and suffering injury
from exposure to the weather. At this time there are fourteen
churches, not reckoning chapels on Mission Stations.
Thus the statement above quoted is not even accurate in
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
53
point of fact.
*
But, when I consider the circumstances under
which it was made, I have still more reason to complain of it.
* The correspondent of the Guardian writes as follows: ‘His lordship [the Bishop
of Capetown] arrived by the mail-steamer on April 7th, to find the number of the
clergy dwindled down to eleven, some of whom also from ill-health are incapable
of work;—a sad sight to one who had just left nearly fifty clergy and thirty
catechists, actively and zealously employed in his own diocese, containing a
population inferior in number to ours.’
The audacity of this assertion is really amazing. In the first place, the number
of clergy has not ‘ dwindled ’ at all, as appears from the above data; secondly, the
fact, that some are in ill-health, is no fault of mine, but makes it more difficult to
supply their inefficiency with more active labourers, as the invalids still receive the
stipends of the Society; thirdly, as to the comparison with Bishop Gray’s diocese,
let it be noted that (i) the diocese of Capetown (52,702 sq. miles) is nearly four
times as large as mine (14,397 sq. miles); (ii) the white population of the former
(54,477) is also/owr times as large as mine (13,990), while a very large proportion
of the coloured people of the former (66,026) are comparatively civilised, living in
towns or villages, and able to speak Dutch or English, whereas the 156,061 natives
, of Natal are almost all mere savages, living in their kraals, and speaking only some
Kafir dialect; (iii) that the colonial government at the Cape allows for the clergy
of the Church of England in the Western Province AJ2,032 per annum, and I
presume that similar assistance is given in the matter of schools, while in Natal
only £350 is allowed (of which £250 goes to the chaplain at Durban, and £100 to
the Dean of Maritzburg), and the legislature has distinctly refused to grant more.
In short, such a comparison as the above may be hazarded in England; but it
would simply be deemed ridiculous in Capetown or Natal. The whole grant of
the Society in my diocese for heathen-work was £1,350 per annum, which
(allowing for contingencies) would not support more than six or seven married
missionaries, since their stipends must almost wholly be paid from home. And
how far would the £500 allowed for work among Europeans go, in a colony like
ours, where the white population are very much scattered, except in the two chief
towns, and where other denominations are very strong? For some years, the Dean of
Maritzburg absorbed £150 of this sum, and Archdeacon Fearne another £100; and
even in Maritzburg, the cathedral city, Dean Green, by the last Blue-Book, received
only £50 from his congregation, whereas the sum raised by the Cathedral Church
of Capetown in one year is returned by the last Blue Book as £1,288. For the
diocese of Capetown, the Society paid, in 1861, £3,782; in 1862, £4,101; in 1863,
£4,398, ‘general, appropriated, and special funds’; and only two or three, I
believe, of the clergy are engaged in work among the heathen-, so that the amount
granted viz., £6,430 from the Government and the Society, that is, thrice as much
as is granted to my diocese—is almost all effective in stimulating the exertions of
the white population. And, I need hardly say, it is comparatively easy to secure
those, who will be willing to minister among civilised people, white or coloured, in
villages or towns. Whereas, even when the means of livelihood are provided, it is
most difficult to find well-educated men, (i) willing to devote themselves to the
study of a barbarous language, (ii) able sufficiently to master it, (iii) ready to
bury themselves in the solitudes of savage heathenism, far removed from medical
advice, congenial society, and the other blessings of civilisation.
�54
EEMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
No one knows better than the Bishop of Capetown that the first
thing needed for securing clergy in a colony is money—and
then men—men of the right stamp, who will not be a hindrance
to the work, instead of a help in it. Bishop Gray, I believe,
has once—if not twice—been in England, collecting money and
obtaining men for his work, while I have been fastened to my
desk in Natal, engaged upon Zulu nouns and particles. It
would have been just to have remembered this.
And then, also, it would have been only fair to have borne
in mind that my diocese is, as regards the European population,
in very different circumstances from his own. The Cathedral
city, Maritzburg, contains about 3,000 white inhabitants, while
Capetown alone has more than 17,000, a population a fourth as
large again as the whole white population of Natal. The
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had strictly limited
for some years past, before I left Natal, its grant for the
colonists to 500/. per annum, of which the Dean of Maritzburg
alone had been receiving 150/. (reduced of late to 100/.,
and, perhaps, now to 50/.), so leaving but a small sum to
be divided among the other clergy, in the more sparsely
inhabited, and therefore poorer, parishes. Efficient men are
not to be secured, except in rare instances upon the narrow
*
and uncertain incomes which colonial cures usually supply.
Yet, for work among the white-men of a colony, such
men are needed, as well as for work at home, not catechists
of limited attainments, or clergymen going out in search of
health, (though, for want of others, we should thankfully make
use of these)—but gentlemen of education, intelligence, and
energy, who will help to form the minds, and raise the tone of
feeling, as well as guide the religious belief, of the next generation.
And for work among the heathen, too, such men are needed—
men of large hearts, and abilities strengthened and refined by aca
demical training, with the power of mastering a native language,
*
* Of five catechists, sent out to me some years ago from England for native
work, with the view of their being, perhaps, ultimately ordained, one only shewed
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
55
and, when they have mastered it, of sitting down to talk out
religious questions with the native, entering within his heart,
as it were, penetrating into its secret chambers of thought, and
drawing out into the light of day the fears and hopes which
are common to man,—the religious ideas which lie undeveloped
in the consciousness of the veriest savage, ready to be quickened
into life by Christian teaching,—the eternal laws, which are
written by the finger of God on his heart as well as on ours.
This work, I need hardly say, is something very different from
the tame repetition, with babbling defective utterance, of the
cumbrous, and often unintelligible and absurd, circumlocutions,
which stand so commonly as representatives, in a barbarous
tongue, of the grand expressive language of our formularies.
But this work requires men of a different stamp from the
great majority, who are generally willing to give themselves to
it. Admission to the ministry in the Church of England invests
many a man on a Missionary Station with the social rank of a
gentleman, who in England would have been but a second-rate
schoolmaster in a National School, and who is utterly inca
pable of appreciating the grandeur, as well as the difficulties, of
the work which lies before him. To such a teacher let the
native bring his doubts, and he will be crushed with a severe
reproof, and warned of the guilt of unbelief. And so the old
evil will be repeated, and the futile attempt will be made to
propagate, as the essentials of religion, dogmas, from which the
native’s own quickened intelligence, as he makes increased ac
quaintance with facts in our schools, will of its own accord revolt,
and which he will hear also disavowed by many—not of loose
living and irreligious, but—of the most thoughtful and intelli
gent, white-men around him.
I believe that the Missions of the Church of England
require much improvement in this respect, and demand the
services of some of our best University men, and would
any capacity whatever for learning the Zulu language. It was impossible to turn
the others to account for our purposes, to my extreme disappointment, as at the
time they were very greatly needed.
�56
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
abundantly reward their labours. For myself, however, instead
of employing a number of inefficient and illiterate clergy for this
work, I would rather devote myself to raising up an intelligent
body of native teachers, who, if precluded from being ordained
as clergy—(for they might never be able to sign their adherence
to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Athanasian Creed, which
latter cannot at present even be expressed in their language)—
would yet, I trust, do good work as catechists and schoolmasters,
in spreading throughout their tribes the light of civilization and
Christianity.
So far, then, as ‘practical work ’ is concerned, I can assure my
readers that the Metropolitan’s fears are unfounded. My mind is
not‘ turned away ’ from it. I never felt a more hearty desire to
engage in such work than I do now. And I believe, as I have said,
that no part of all my life has been better spent for the advance
ment of this ‘practical work’ of religious teaching, and more
especially of Missionary teaching among the heathen, than that
which I have devoted to the composition of my books upon the
‘ Epistle to the Eomans ’ and the ‘Pentateuch.’ If, then, there
has been any seeming intermission in my personal labour—as, of
course, there has been during my two years’ stay in England—I
have but recoiled for a moment, to spring to it again with more
vigour than ever, and in the spirit of my books to carry forward
the work of God among my people.
My labours in the Zulu tongue are now, to a great ex
tent, completed—at least, those more pressing labours, which
have kept me, as I am painfully conscious, during the past
seven years, so closely engaged in work for the natives, as to
seem—but only to seem—to have felt less acutely the wants of
the European portion of the colony. The Bishop of Capetown
knows nothing, I imagine, of such distraction. But I shall
be free now to expend more of my time, as I fully hope to do,
in ministering to the wants of this part also of my flock, telling
them the glad tidings of their Father’s Love, revealed to us in the
Gospel of Christ, and teaching them that ‘having these promises,’
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
57
as 6 sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty,’ they should—
‘ cleanse themselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness
in the fear of God.’
Another view of the charge of dishonesty.
I have now concluded my review of the Bishop of Cape
and Charge. There is nothing in his subse
quent Visitation of the diocese which requires further notice
at present. But I think it right to say one thing more. The
Bishop has accused me repeatedly, in the plainest terms, of
dishonesty in the course which I am pursuing. He has spoken
of me, p.32, as one who is—
town’s proceedings
teaching directly contrary to what she [the Church of England] holds on
fundamental points, and directly opposite to what he undertook to teach,
when she gave him his commission, and for the teaching of which her
faithful children have provided for him a maintenance.
And he says further, Trial, p.399 :—
It appears to me to be of far higher obligation to maintain good faith in the
keeping of engagements voluntarily undertaken with most solemn vows,
than to remain in a post, the duties of which one can no longer fulfil, in the
hope of bringing about a change.
I, in my turn, will now set before the reader two pictures, and
will leave it for him to say which presents the portraiture of the
more honest and consistent clergyman of the Church of England.
The Bishop of Natal held, when in England, a College
living, the reward of his exertions in earlier days, and which
no Bishop could have taken from him for anything that he has
written. He resigned this preferment, and accepted from the
Crown the appointment to the See of Natal, knowing that he
would be a Bishop of the Church of England, and, as such,
would still be under the protection of her laws, whatever those
laws might be. For the sake, however, of what he believed
to be the truth, he was prepared to resign his See, if he had
found that the laws of the Church of England forbade the
publication of his views on the Pentateuch.
He now challenges his adversaries to point out a single
�58
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
passage in his works, which is condemned by the existing laws
of the Church, or else, if they are in doubt on any points,
to bring them at once to an issue before the only lawful
authority. He is ready also even now to resign his See,
whenever he shall be satisfied that he cannot hold it con
scientiously, or that it would be better for his fellow-men, and
for the Truth itself, that he should resign it,—which he does- not
feel to be the case at present.
The Bishop of Capetown has subscribed the 36th Canon, viz.—
The Queen’s Majesty, under God, is the only supreme governor of this
realm, and of all other Her Highness’s dominions and countries, as well in
all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal;
he has declared his ‘unfeigned assent’ to the 37th Article, viz.—
The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and
other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this
realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, doth appertain ;
he has ‘ solemnly sworn before God ’ to ‘ correct and punish ’—
according to such authority as to him should be committed by the Ordinance
of this Realm;
and he has received his appointment as Bishop and Metropolitan,
on the express conditions implied in the above acts. He was
bound, therefore, to exercise any jurisdiction which he might
claim as Metropolitan, in agreement with the above conditions.
But the Bishop of Capetown, while still holding Her Majesty’s
Letters Patent, deliberately sets aside the existing Law of the
Church of England, disregards the Queen’s authority, and re
pudiates the judgments of the Privy Council, past and pros
pective. And he positively asserts, in the teeth of the late
decision, that the Church of England holds all her officers
bound to teach two dogmas, which, it has been declared on
the highest authority, she does not hold them bound to teach,
viz. that ‘the whole Bible is the Unerring Word of the Living
God,’ Trial, p.382, and that ‘the punishment of the wicked in
hell is endless,’ Trial, p.370.
Let Englishmen, lovers of fair play, judge between us. I do
not accuse the Bishop of Capetown of downright dishonesty in
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
59
the course which he is pursuing, though it is obvious that the
very same language, which he has applied to me, may be retorted,
and with, at least, equal force applied to himself: e.g. p.31 —
What we have to consider is, whether one, who undertook an office of great
trust and dignity [at the hands of the Crown, as Bishop and Metropolitan of
the Church of England], and received the emoluments [and honours] thereof,
upon a distinct understanding that he ivould [acknowledge the Royal supre
macy in the Church of England, and act according to the laws and constitu
tion of that Church, which the Queen of this Protestant nation, who
appointed him], deemed to be of the very deepest importance [for the repression
of ecclesiastical domination, and the promotion of true religion among her
people], is to be allowed, now that he has changed his mind, and holds and
teaches [independence of state-control,—a principle] the very opposite to that
which he undertook to teach, and atfirst did teach—to retain his position in the
Church [of England], and to enjoy the emoluments of his abused office and vio
lated trust:
or again, p.32—
She [Her Majesty the Queen] has no wish unduly to interfere with [Dr.
Gray’s] liberty of thought or teaching; but she says, that, if he teaches directly
contrary to what she [in her constitutional office, as head of the Church of
England,] holds on fundamental points, [enforcing, as doctrines of the Church
of England, dogmas, as to the Bible and endless punishment, which she has
authoritatively forbidden to be enforced within the Church of England,]
and directly opposite to what he undertook to teach, [in respect of the Royal
Supremacy], when she gave him his [appointment], he shall not do so in [her]
name, or as a Bishop of the Church [of England]. He must do it outside
the Church [of England] :
or again, as above:—
It appears to me to be of far higher obligation to maintain good faith in the
keeping of engagements voluntarily undertaken with most solemn vows, than to
remain in a post, the duties of which one can no longer fulfil, in the hope of
bringing about a change
*
* In like manner, it would be easy for anyone so disposed to retort upon the
Bishop some of his other expressions. Thus he calls me a ‘ fanatic’: but no fanati
cism can exceed that with which, shutting his eyes to the realities around him, and
to the circumstances of the age in which he lives, he appears to surrender his
whole being to the worship of his own ideal of a Catholic Church, which, in defiance
of the known facts of history, he assumes to have continued one and ■undivided
‘ during the first thousand years of her history,’ and of which he seems to
consider himself, by virtue of his ‘Apostolic Succession,’ the infallible repre
sentative and exponent in all South Africa. So, when he exclaims in his
Sermon at Maritzburg, p.10, ‘ Conscience, Reason, Intellect—These be thy Gods,
�60
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
As I have said, I would not ascribe such dishonesty to the
Bishop of Capetown, though he has not hesitated to ascribe it to
me. I assume that, from his own point of view, his course of
conduct appears correct and justifiable, however others may
view it, who, perhaps, might say that, if he is not satisfied with
the laws and constitution of the United Church of England and
Ireland, and feels that he cannot conscientiously, in the exercise
of his Episcopal or (supposed) Metropolitan jurisdiction, allow
as the laws of the Church of England do allow—a clergyman
to say that e the Bible is not in itself God’s Word, though it
contains it,’ or that ‘ the punishment of the wicked may not be
endless,’ his only proper course is to resign his office as one of
that Church’s ‘ representatives in her high places’—that he
might still exercise jurisdiction as the Head of a dissenting
community, but not as a Bishop of the Church of England.
But the Bishop, with the exercise of charity and courtesy, might
have admitted the possibility that my course of conduct also,
from my own point of view, appears to me at least as correct as
his own—if not more correct—since that, which I and those who
think with me have done, we have done in the very spirit of the
Protestant Reformation, which proclaimed the principle of ‘ free
inquiry,’ and the right and duty of ‘ private judgment.’ We
have taken merely a step further in the very same direction. As
the Bishop of London said in his Charge (see my Part II,p.xxvi)—
As to free inquiry, what shall we do with it ? Shall we frown upon it,
denounce it, try to stifle it ? This will do no good, even if it he right. But
after all, we are Protestants. We have been accustomed to speak a good
deal of the right and duty of private judgment. It was lyy the exercise of
this right, and the discharge of this duty, that our fathers freed their and our
souls from Home's time-honoured falsehoods.
But the course followed by the Bishop of Capetown would
lead us back to Rome: it is directly opposed to the spirit of
the Reformation. Bishop Gray speaks, indeed, Charge, p.35,
0 Israel! ’ it is obvious to substitute ‘ Tradition, Authority, Sacerdotalism! ’ If
some are in danger of unduly exalting one set of powers, others are, at least, in
as much danger of making idols of the others.
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOW.
61
of 4 the modem Roman corruptions of, and additions to, the
faith,’ which, he says, the true Churchman 4 rejects and even
these he describes in very mild terms, as 4 grave errors and
mistakes on matters rather of opinion than of faith,' against
which the Church 4 protested,’in her Articles, 4 at the period
of the Reformation.’ This is certainly strange language from
a Protestant Bishop, the 19th Article of whose Church declares
that—
as the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the
Church of Home hath erred, not only in [heir living and manner of cere
monies, hut also in matters offaith.
In fact, the principle put forth by Bishop Gray is the very
same with that which was advanced in the celebrated Tract,
No. 90, the author of which subsequently acknowledged his
position in the Church of England to be untenable, by seceding
to the Church of Rome.
4 Modem corruptions of the Church of Rome ! ’ We know,
at all events, that the worship of the Virgin Mary, Saints, and
Images, was in full operation in the Church of Rome at the
beginning of the eighth century.
*
So much for the purity of
the Catholic Church 4 during the first thousand years of its history! ’ Nay, before the end of that same century, the portent
of the Papacy itself loomed already, as a dark cloud, on the
horizon,—and the minds of men were rapidly becoming familiar
with the idea of an 4 Universal Bishop,’ by whose irresponsible
decisions the whole Church was to be bound. And the fact is,
that, of these papal pretensions, the claims, put forth by the
Bishop of Capetown, are, though on a small scale, the counter
part; and, if we are driven to compare them, the latter are
as exorbitant as the former, and more preposterous, as resting
* See Milner s Church History, iii. p.159, where he quotes from a letter of Pope
Gregory III., as follows: ‘ We do not look upon them [images] as gods: but, if it
be the image of Jesus, we say, “ Lord, help us! ” if it be the image of His Mother
we say, “ Fray to your Son to save us ! ’’ if it be of a Martyr, we say, “ St. Stephen,
pray for us! ” ’
’
�62
REMARKS ON THE PROCEEDINGS AND CHARGE OF
on a less tangible basis, while they arrogate to the Metropolitan
more than even papal irresponsibility. He claims, for instance,
for himself, and for all Metropolitans and quasi-Metropolitans,
absolute freedom from all control. He might be guilty with
impunity of simony, felony, or treason; he might go over
openly to the Church of Rome; or, to use his own words, p.22,—
Were a [Metropolitan] to become an Atheist, or were he to believe in
Mahomet, or to teach all Roman] doctrine, it would by such a [principle]
be affirmed that there is no redress, no power of rem oval.
Happily, the constitution of the Church of England, by recog
nizing the Royal Supremacy, forbids such a claim as this to be
made within her pale.
Were there no other reason for my maintaining firmly my
ground against his proceedings, I should feel bound as a Bishop
of the English Church to do so, in order to vindicate the Church
of England from any complicity with those essentially Roman
principles, which are—perhaps unconsciously—maintained by
some, and by none more persistently than by the Bishop of Cape
town, but which I believe to be antagonistic to the first prin
ciples of our reformed Protestant Church, as by law established.
And so, when he continually repeats that—
‘the faithful children of the Church of England have provided for him, as
Bishop of Natal, a maintenance,’ p.32,—
and speaks of the congregations of Natal being—
1 driven from the churches which they have built, in faith that the teaching
of the Church, and of the Word of God, would be ever proclaimed within
their walls, and compelled to seek refuge in other religious bodies, where
discipline will at least secure to them the essentials of the faith,’ p.33,—•
when he says, Trial, p.399, that—
the founders of the See filled by the Bishop were still living, and provided
an endowment only ten years before, expressly for the purpose of teaching
and maintaining those truths, which they still hold, but which he has aban
doned,—
and talks [see above, p.12] of my being 4 sent back ’—
with the right to take possession of the property of the Church given for far
different purposes,—
�THE BISHOP OF CAPETOWN.
63
I reply that, if any, in England or in South Africa, have con
tributed to the foundation of the See of Natal, and to the
erection of the churches within the diocese, in the idea that that
See would be abused by me, while holding Her Majesty’s Letters
Patent, to cooperate with the Bishop of Capetown for the
establishment of a ‘ Church of South Africa,’ which should set
at nought the decisions of the Court of Arches and the Privy
Council, and disown the Royal Supremacy—or that those
churches would not be opened as widely, for the utterance of
free thought and the results of free inquiry, as is allowed to be
lawful in the Church of England,—they deserve to be disap
pointed : I never have been, and never will be, a party to such
a scheme,—to such ‘ wicked errors,’ [see 2nd Canon]—to such
(as it would seem to me) a treacherous abuse of my office.
But, as regards the churches in my diocese, I would remind
the Metropolitan that there are some, at least, of the laity who
have helped to build them, who do not agree with his views.
Further, I would observe that they are almost without exception
built on land granted as a free gift by the Crown itself, and that
these sites, as well as the far more valuable tracts of land,
which have been given by the Government for missionary
purposes, and which are now beginning to become productive,
were granted to me, as Bishop of the United Church of England
and Ireland, in trust for the uses of that Church, and not for
the ‘ Church of South Africa,’ which disregards the decisions of
the Supreme Court of Appeal (App.G) in the Church of England,
and disavows the Queen’s Supremacy. For such a Church as
this these grants were certainly never intended: this ‘property,’
at all events, c was given for far different purposes.’ And I
should hold it to be an act of dishonesty on my part, if I allowed
it to be diverted from the purpose for which it was originally be
stowed, so long as Her Majesty retains Her hold upon the district
of Natal as a British possession, and so long as I am entrusted
with authority to act in Her name as Bishop of Natal.
�APPENDIX
■—♦ —
1. Extracts from the Bishop of Natal’s Books: p.29.
(i) On the Fear of Death, from the Commentary on St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, p. 144-7.
Death in itself is no sign of a curse. Death was in the world, for the
countless races of animals and animalcules, ages before man’s .sin. There
was no sign of curse in their death. Nor would the death of man be
attended with any notion of a curse attached to it, but for the consciousness
of sin. The less we know or think of sin, the less we dread deatli; the
more we know and think of sin, the more we dread it, unless we have the
Light of God’s Love in the Gospel to cheer us. As human beings, bound
by ties of tender affection to one another, there is, of course, connected with
death, the grief of separation from those whom we love. There is also,
generally, the anticipation, and the actual sense, of pain and physical dis
tress. But the sense of grief and pain is not the sense of a curse. And
feelings of this kind are often overpowered by nobler feelings, quickened
within the hearts of men—even heathen men—by the grace of God, though
untaught, by more intimate acquaintance with the truth, as we Christians
know it, to understand more fully the baneful nature of sin, and to bless
God for its antidote revealed in the Gospel. How many thousands die on
every battle-field, or in the active discharge of life’s duties in every land,
without any dread of death, as necessarily coupled with a curse ! What
notion of a curse embittered the glorious hours of those who fell, fighting
for their homes and their fatherland, at Thermopylae or Marathon ?
So then, the idea of death is not necessarily connected in the minds of
men with that of a curse. But then comes the Law, and brings home to
our consciences the bitter sense of sin, of evil that has been committed,
against the light which we had, against our better knowledge and better
resolves, before the Face of a most Pure and Holy Being. And the
Devil—the Slanderer—the Accuser of God and the Brethren—makes use
of this to fill our hearts with guilty fears, which keep us away from our
Father's footstool. He teaches us thus to connect the idea of a curse with
�APPENDIX.
®
65
death. .-And many go trembling along the path of life, with the gloomy grave
at the end of it, afraid to look the ghastly terror in the face. And so they
turn their eyes ever, as it were, to the ground as they go, and busy them
selves closely with the petty things of this life, its business and pleasures,
that they may for the present forget their fears, instead of making light of
death, as they might, as they ought, and manfully pressing on to do the
work of their Lord.
For how utterly unchristian, how utterly contrary to the whole spirit
and letter of the Gospel, is this notion of death, as something to be dreaded,
not merely for the pain, or present sense of separation from the objects of our
love, which it brings with it, but for itself, for some idea of a curse attending
it, as the carrying out of a fearful doom, a judgment from God, which Adam’s
sin has brought on his race ! Separations take place continually in families,
lifelong separations, for various reasons, in the common path of duty,
with grief of heart, no doubt, and the dropping of natural tears of pure
affection, sometimes with bitter pain and anguish, but yet without sense of
awe or horror. Extreme pain is undergone under various circumstances, in
the hospital-ward, on the battle-field, far exceeding in intensity that which
we see to be generally connected with death. Often such pain is borne
courageously and cheerfully, sometimes with fear and shrinking; but there
is no sense of horror, no notion of a curse, mixed up with this fear. Now,
if we read the New Testament rightly, we shall learn to look at the sepa
ration which death brings with it, and the pain which may attend it, in
something of this temper. We shall learn to look upon death as a Chris
tian should do, as St. Paul did, who takes but little account of it, and rushes
very small provision in his letters for the comfort of bereaved friends, 'and
none at all for the dying Christian himself, except to tell him that he has
fought the good fight, and finished his course, and may now hope to enter
into rest. Indeed, we make far too much of death in these days. We
crown him King of Terrors, when our gracious God and Father has bereft
him of all his power to harm us, and deprived him of his sting, and made
him a messenger of grace to us.
Will it be said that after death still comes the judgment ? Why, yes,
and before death too. And this is the point, which we ought to bear in
mind, not to prepare for death, but to prepare for our Lord’s appearing, for
His coming to judge us, as He may do at any moment, as He actually does,
from day to day, from hour to hour’, in the ordinary work of common life,
as well as on special great occasions. The reason why we are so ' prone
to connect this judgment only with death is this, that we cannot conceive
of its actually taking place in this blessed world, where on every side we
find a Father’s Love. And yet it is really taking place from day to day
even here. A Father’s Hand is blessing continually, or chastening, His
children. But we feel as if we shall then stand before Him all alone,
stripped of the countless gifts of His Goodness, which here relieve our fears,
F
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APPENDIX.
and are meant to do so under the Gospel of His Grace, but which are too
often perverted into reasons for sinning yet more, and turned into lascivious
ness. In truth, however, the 1 judgment after death’ is but the carrying
on of that which is going on in life,—the manifestation of that which is
now taking place, it may be in silence and secrecy,—the revelation of that
Lord, who is even now, daily and hourly, taking account with His ser
vants. Those, who never bethink themselves now of their Master’s Presence,
will, indeed, then seem to see Him, perhaps, for the first time, who has been
with them, speaking in their consciences, observing and overruling their
doings, all along. And those, who have been consciously 1 keeping back
the truth in unrighteousness,’ all their lives long, and have died, hardened
in impenitence, may have reason to dread death, because it will bring them
face to face with Him, whose Voice they have heard in their hearts, whose
Light shone upon their minds, whose Love they felt on every side, and
yet they chose ‘the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds
were evil.’ But even to such as these death itself has no curse attached to
it. It is but the gate, through which their Lord and Master calls them to
Him, that He may pass the righteous sentence of His Love upon them—
that is, that He, who knows exactly what they are, in consequence of what
they have done, may appoint for them that lot, that degree of purifying
chastisement, which they need. And this, indeed, may be something fearful
and terrific, as the needful rod is to children.
But Christians should learn to make light of death, as St. Paul did.
Indeed, he tells us, ‘ we shall not all die.’ And, as we do not couple the
1 change,’ which St. Paul says, will pass on the bodies of some, by which
1 this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on
immortality,’ with any notion of a curse attached to it, so neither ought we
to connect any such notion with death, as it will come to others. To ‘ die,’
or to ‘ be changed,’ it is all one, it should be all one, to the Christian.
How courageously and cheerfully may we go to the duties of life, whatever
dangers they may entail upon us, with this thought to sustain us, instead of
shrinking and weakly wailing with fear at the idea of death ! To the frail
flesh, indeed, the form of death may often be terrible : but the thing itself
ought not to be, even to the spirit. There are some, who will say ‘ good
night ’ to one another, and retire to rest, perhaps at early eve, perhaps at
midnight, and who, on waking on the glorious mom, will put on their new
apparel. There are others who will not go to rest at all, but, having
watched all night, will rise up at once at the break of ‘ that day,’ and be
clothed upon, and mortality will be swallowed up at once in life.
(ii) On the Reading of the Scriptures, from the Pentateuch
Critically Examined, Part III, p.628-32.
"We must, then, even in reading the Scriptures, ‘ fry the spirits, whether
they are of God.’ In this way only can we do the Will of God, and discharge
�APPENDIX.
67
the true duty, and rise to the true dignity, of man as the child of God. We
might wish, perhaps,—many do wish,—to have it otherwise, to be able to
fall back upon the notion of an Infallible Book or an Infallible Church.
But God has not willed it so. He will not give us,—at least He has not given
us,—a Revelation of such a kind, as to relieve us from the solemn duty of
judging, each for himself, what is right and true in His Sight. His Spirit
has quickened us, that we may do, as living men, His work in the world:
He will not suffer us to abdicate the glorious office to which He calls us.
We must—not only claim and exercise the right, but—bear the responsibility,
of private judgment, upon the things of the life to come, as well as of this
world.
■ The Beuteronomist himself will teach us this lesson. He tells us, indeed,
that God in all ages will.raise up Prophets like unto ourselves, xviii.18, will
kindle His Fire within the heart, and put His words into the mouth, of
men, who, in all the weakness of humanity, shall speak to their fellow-men
all that they feel commanded to teach in His Name,—who shall utter His
Eternal Truth, and minister to their brethren the lessons of 1 doctrine,
reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness.’ And their brethren shall
c hear ’ them; they dare not neglect the Truth, of whatever kind, which
God’s own grace imparts and brings home to them from the lips of a fellow
man, however high or humble.
But they must not listen to him with a blind unreasoning acquiescence,
though He speak to them in the Name of Jehovah, and though the '■ sign or
wonder ’ come to pass, xiii.2, which he brought to them as the very creden
tials of his mission. They must ‘ try the spirit ’ of the Prophet’s words by
that law which they have within them, written upon their hearts. Jehovah,
their God, is proving them, to know whether they truly and entirely love
Him, and love His Truth, ( with all their heart and with all their soul.’ If
the words, which that Prophet speaks to them, come home to their con
sciences as right and true words, then in God’s Name let them acknowledge
and welcome them, and send them on with a blessing of ‘ God speed! ’ to
others. If the Voice, which speaks within, declares that the utterance from
without is false, then ‘shalt thou not hearken,’ xiii.3; the word is not God’s;
and he, who hears, must not obey it.
In this spirit we must read the book of Deuteronomy itself, and we shall
find the Living Bread which our souls may feed on,—we shall find in it the
Word of God. And that Word will not be at variance with the eternal and
essential substance of Christianity, with those words which ‘ shall not pass
away.’ Then we shall live no more in constant fear, that some rude stroke
of criticism may shake, perhaps, the ‘very foundations of our faith,’ or that
the announcement of some simple fact of science or natural history may
threaten to ‘take from us our nearest and dearest consolations.’ We shall
learn thus to have ‘faith in God,’ as our Lord has bidden us, Mark xi.22,
and not in the written records, through which He has been pleased, by
r 2
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APPENDIX.
inspiring the hearts of our brother men with life, to quicken and comfort our
own. When we hear such words as these—
‘ Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God doth man live,’ D.viii.3—
‘ Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the
Living God, thy God, doth chasten thee,’ D.viii.5—
‘ If from thence ’—from the very depth of sin-wrought misery—‘ thou shalt seek
the Living God, thy God, thou shalt find Him, if thou seek Him with all thy heart
and with all thy soul,’ D.iv.29—
we shall joyfully welcome them as messages of truth, not merely because we
find them in the Bible, but because they are true—eternally true.
It is true that God loves us as dear children, and that we may go to Him
at all times, as to a wise and tender father, with a child-like trust and love,
as with a child-like reverence and fear. Rather, we must go to Him thus if
we would please Him, and act upon the words of our Lord, who has taught
us all to say, ‘ Our Father.’ We must ‘consider in our hearts ’ that He, who
has planted in our breasts, as parents, dear love to our children, a love
stronger than death, does by that very love of ours shadow forth to us His
own Eternal Love. Our love can take in every child of the family: our
hearts can find a place for all; yes, and our love embraces the far-off prodigal,
in his miserable wanderings, no less surely and no less tenderly, than the
dear obedient child, that sits by our side, rejoicing in the sweet delights of
home. He that has taught us to love our children in this way, how shall
He not also love His children, with a Love in which the separate loves of
earthly parents are blended, and find their full, infinite, expression,—the
Father’s loving wisdom and firmness, to guide and counsel, and, if need be,
to correct and chasten,—the Mother’s tender pity and compassion, that will
draw near with sweet consolations, in each hour of sorrow and suffering,
will sympathise with every grief and trial, will bow down to hear each
shame-stricken confession, will be ready to receive the first broken words of
penitence, and whisper the promise of forgiveness and peace.
Ah! truly, the little child may cling to its mother’s neck, and the
mother’s love will feel the gentle pressure, and will delight to feel it: but
it is not the feeble clinging of the little one that holds it up; it is the
strong arm of love that embraces it. And we, in our most earnest prayers
and aspirations, in our cleaving unto God, in our longing and striving after
Truth, as in these poor enquiries, are but as babes, ‘ stretching out weak
hands of faith ’ to lay hold of Him, Whom no man hath seen or can see, but
Who, unseen, is ever near us, whose tender Love embraces all His children,
those that are far off as well as those that are near, the heathen and the
Christian, the sinner and the Saint.
Happy, indeed, are we, who are blessed to know this—to know the high
calling and the glorious privileges of the children of God—not that we may
be more safe than others, who as yet know it not, but that we jnay be filled
�APPENDIX.
69
with hope and strength and courage in the assurance of this Truth,—that
we may he more living and earnest and joyful in our work,—more brave to
speak the Truth, to do the Right, to wage eternal war with all that is
false and base and evil, within us and without,—more patient in suffering,
—more firm and true in temptation and trial,—more sorrowful and ashamed
when we have fallen,—more quick to rise, and go on again, in the path of
duty, with tears and thanksgivings,—more eager to tell out the Love of
God to others, whether to those who as yet are groping, ‘ if haply they may
feel after Him and find Him,’ Who ‘ is not far from any one of them,’ ‘ in
Whom they live and move and have their being,’ or to those who have
known Him, but know no longer now the joy of His children, 1 sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death, fast bound in misery and iron.’
But, in all this, it is not our knowledge, however clear, or our faith, how
ever firm and orthodox, or our charity, however bright or pure, that holds
us up daily, and binds us to the Bosom of our God. ? Our Father ’ will
delight in all the sacred confidences of His children,—their clingings of
faith and hope,—their longings of pure desire for a closer sense of His
Presence, — their holy aspirations and penitential confessions. But it is
not our prayer that will hold us up. It is His Love alone which does this.
‘ The Eternal God is our refuge,
And underneath are the Everlasting Arms.’ D.xxxiii.27.
2. Opinions of various Writers in the Church of Eng
land RESPECTING THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH : p.30.
It is interesting to observe that many, who have recently gone into the
questions of criticism connected with the Pentateuch—not merely those
treated of in Part I of my work, but such as are discussed in Part II, and
especially in Parts III and IV,—though starting from the traditionary
point of view, have arrived at conclusions more or less departing from it.
This alone must be sufficient to show to any thoughtful mind that that view,
at least—which ascribes the whole Pentateuch to Moses, except, perhaps, a
few sentences, interpolated here and there by another hand—is, at all events,
uncertain and disputable.
(i) Thus Bishop Browne, who has engaged to write upon the Pentateuch
in the Speaker’s Commentary, has said in his reply to the clergy of Cambridge,
in reference to my criticisms,—
‘The study of all the objections lately raised may, probably, oblige us
to take a wider view of some points than we had atfirst expected.’
(ii) The Rev. W. H. Hoare has said (see my Part III, p.xiii)—
‘ The general idea of dividing the documents in the manner that has been in
dicated [i.e. into Elohistic and Jehovistic portions], has, I believe, been sho-wn
to be based on more than merely critical conjecture. Aaron or Eleazar may
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APPENDIX.
fairly contest with Samuel the honours of the Elohist, and Moses, with “the
promising young men of Samuel’s time,” the honours of the Jehovist.’
(iii) The Rev. W. Houghton has said (see my Part IH,p.xl)—
‘I have diligently, conscientiously, and prayerfully studied the whole
question at issue for the last six months, and am compelled to admit. the
general truth of your arguments, though differing in some particulars. You
are aware that I published a pamphlet in reply to your Part I. I have
withdrawn that reply from circulation.’
(iv) The Rev. J. J. S. Perowne has said (see my Part LV,p.xxix)—
‘ So far, then, judging this work [the Pentateuch] simply by what we
find in it, there is abundant evidence to show that, though the main hulk
of it is Mosaic, certain detached portions of it are of later groivthd
(ff) The ‘Layman,’whose book is dedicated by permission to the Archbishop
of York, says (see my ‘Letter to the Laity,’ p.39-41)—
‘ It must be confessed that the results we have arrived at do differ very
'materially from the views commonly held. . . . These are facts very strongly at
variance with the notions generally entertained. Facts they are, however,__
not mere theoretic fancies or unfounded assumptions.
‘ Much of it [the Pentateuch] is certainly un-Mosaic, some earlier, some
contemporary, some later than Moses. Many portions of the Pentateuch
could not have proceeded from his pen, or even have been written under his
direction.’
It is true, the Archbishop of York has now stated, in his correspondence
with the Rev. James Brierley, published in the Times of July 26, that he
‘does not concur’ in the conclusions of the ‘Layman’ : nor do I. I believe
that they are only the first conclusions of an honest and truth-seeking
enquirer, which he will, perhaps, hereafter feel obliged to modify, as he
becomes better acquainted with the subject, and, in so doing, he may find
himself compelled to depart still further Rom the traditionary view, and
approximate more closely to my own on some points. But, however this may
be, these and other important statements are still allowed by his Grace to
circulate under the authority of his name; and though they had been specially
brought under his notice on May 18, by one of the clergy of his diocese, yet
two months afterwards, on July 15, he had not ‘found time’ even to look into
the book, of which (we must believe) a presentation copy lay upon his table.
The only inference, as it seems to me, that can fairly be drawn from this
fact is, that the Archbishop is aware that these statements, though he
does not wholly concur in them, are yet, more or less, and substantially,
true,—that his Grace knows that an honest examination into the question
will lead to results such as these, differing only in detail from my own,—
that, at all events, he did not consider these statements, which were so
severely judged when made by me, to be of so deadly a nature, when circulat-
�APPENDIX.
71
lag in a book 1 dedicated by permission ’ to himself. I may now, surely, predict
with some confidence, that at no very distant day the main results of these
criticisms on the Pentateuch, which have been scorned and stigmatised by
■many of my clerical brethren, both here and in South Africa, will be generally
acknowledged as truths in the Church of England, and form part of the
basis of all sound theological training.
Since the above was written, the ‘ Layman ’ himself has addressed a letter
to Mr. ~Rp.rRHT.-RV, which appears in the Guardian of August 8, as follows:—
1 July 26.
‘Rev. Sir,—My attention having been drawn to the letters which have
passed between yourself and the Archbishop of York, (touching a work of
mine on the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch), published in this day’s Times,
I desire to inform you that his Grace is in no sense responsible for any of the
views there set forth, still less for the way in which they are expressed.
For all this I alone am answerable. I have never regarded his Grace’s
acceptance of the dedication as in any way implying his sanction or approval
of its contents, but merely as an expression of his kindly feeling towards
myself. And I must confess that I am surprised that you should have put
any other construction upon it. I may add that the Archbishop expressly
declined to inspect any portion of this work before publication, doubtless
from the desire to leave both himself and me entirely unfettered.
‘ With regard to the matter of your observations, I would recommend a
more attentive study of the views I have set forth, in the form and connection
in which I have stated them, before you hastily conclude them to be identical
in tendency with those advanced by the Bishop of Natal. The main point
at issue in this controversy (as I apprehend it) is not whether every verse of
the Pentateuch was actually written by Moses himself—a point of very little
moment—but whether the Pentateuch is to be regarded as a true history,
composed in or about the times of which it treats, or as a collection of utterly
untrustworthy legends, wrought up into their present shape by writers many
centuries removed from the events narrated. On this fundamental point the
views advanced by the Bishop of Natal and myself are as diametrically
opposite as can well be conceived. Of this it will be easy for you to con
vince yourself, if, instead of trusting to a few extracts culled by the Bishop
to suit a particular purpose, you should think it worth while attentively to
peruse the books themselves. I remain, Rev. Sir, yours respectfully,
‘ A Layman or the Church or England.
‘Author of The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuch Considered?
With reference to the above, Mr. Brierley has favoured me with the
following communication:—
1 Mossley Hall, Congleton, Aug. 25, 1864.
‘Mv Lord,—In the Guardian of Aug. 3, there appeared a letter addressed
to myself from the “ Layman,” author of “ The Pentateuch Considered.”
‘ On Aug. 8 I sent the enclosed 11 Reply ” to that letter to the Editor of
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APPENDIX.
the Guardian. As this has not been published in that j oumal, either on the
10th or 17th or 24th, I can only conclude that it has been designedly, and,
I must say, most unfairly, suppressed.
‘1 now beg leave to forward it to you, requesting you to make any use
of it you may think proper. I have the honour to be, my Lord, your
humble and obedient servant,
‘ James Brierley.’
(Mossley Hall, Congleton, August 8, 1864.
* Sir,—In reply to your letter addressed to me, and published in last week’s
Guardian, I beg leave to make the following observations:—
* (1) The question is not in what light you may have regarded the Arch
bishop’s acceptance of your dedication, but in what light the Church atlarge, and readers generally, will regard it.
‘(2) I put no “ construction” upon his Grace’s acceptance of it, until I
had drawn his attention to the extracts in question, had asked whether he
approved of them, and had waited six weeks in vain for a reply, when I
very naturally assumed that his Grace did approve of them.
( (8) It now appears that it was not through some accident, or from
want of time, that the Archbishop did not look at your book, before he
allowed it to circulate under the authority of his name; but that he de
liberately a declined" to look at it beforehand, “doubtless,” as you say,
“from the desire to leave both himself as well as you unfettered.”
‘ This course of proceeding will seem strange, I think, to many of the Clergy
and Laity, with reference to such a book as this, at such a crisis in the
history of the Church.
1 (4) I said nothing of the u tendency ” of your views. I stated only that,
assuming your statements to be in any degree well-founded, they are u ex
traordinary ”; that “they make it impossible to deny the Tight of the
a Bishop of Natal to maintain his theory of the composition of the PentaII teuch, which only differs in point of detail from yours ”; that we “ must
il now make up our minds to admit the composite character of the Penta11 teuch, and the non-Mosaic origin of considerable portions of it.”
1 (5) The question at issue is not certainly whether every verse of the
Pentateuch was actually written by Moses himself, but whether large
portions of it—(you say, more than one-fifth at least)—were written “ after
the conquest of Canaan,” while, you add, “ a variety of explanatory notes,
“ additions, and occasional alterations, with a few passages of greater
“ length, chiefly from other ancient narratives, were introduced by a writer
“of much later date, very probably, in the days of Saul,”—that is, I suppose,
by a writer some centuries removed from the events narrated.
‘ (6) Though I and others may admit that this point, of the Mosaic
authorship of the whole Pentateuch, is “ a point of very little moment,” yet
you must be aware that this is a point considered to be of vital consequence
�APPENDIX.
73
by numbers of the orthodox Clergy and Laity, as by the Rev. Sir PI.
Thompson, who says of your own statements, in the Churchman of July 14,
that their 11 intended drift is to unsettle our belief that the Pentateuch is the
u work of Moses," and that they are “ scattering broadcast throughout the
“ land the seeds of doubt and infidelity.”
1 (7) As towhat the Bishop of Natal’s motives in “culling” extracts
from your book may have been, of course I know nothing; but it appears to
me that he has done so for no other purpose than to show, as he says himself,
in his letter to the Laity, p.38, that an honest enquirer (meaning yourself)
has been obliged to admit “that the results which he has arrived at do
“ differ very materially from the views commonly held," that “these wq facts,
“ very strongly at variance with the notions generally entertained," that “facts
“ they are, however, not mere theoretic fancies, or unfounded assumptions."
‘ At all events, the Bishop does not claim you as agreeing in his “ views.”
He says in his letter, p.41, that “ the author believes, apparently, in the
“ literal historical truth of the accounts of the Creation, Paradise, the Fall,
“ the Deluge, the Rainbow, and the Confusion of Tongues,” which the
Bishop, in his books, tells us plainly he does not believe in.
i (8) In conclusion, if I could only find time, I would gladly read your
work : but-you must pardon me for saying that it can scarcely be necessary
for me to do so; since, however, your views upon the whole subject may
differ from the Bishop of Natal’s, the admissions made by yourself (as proved
by the extracts quoted) sufficiently agree with his statements, as to satisfy
me that th the main the question as to the unity and authenticity of the
Pentateuch is pretty much as the Bishop has stated it to be,—in accordance,
I believe, with most of the great continental critics.
11 remain, Sir, yours truly,
1 James Brierley,
1 Incumbent of Holy Trinity, Mossley, near Congleton.
1 To “A Layman,” &c.’
(vi) The Bishop of Oxeord, also, appears to have made admissions of some
importance at the recent Conference of his clergy at Oxford, though it is
somewhat difficult to gather the Bishop’s exact meaning from the reports
which have been given of his words by different hearers, and from his own
statement as copied below.
(1) One report (Standard, August 10) says as follows:—
1 The Bishop of Oxford, in an elaborate address, enlarged with much
force upon the anti-Biblical opinions enunciated by distinguished members
of the University during the past few years, and by careful argument urged
that the true explanation of the unhappy differences existing was to be
found in a misconception of the manner in which inspired truths were trans
mitted to us. He contended that the apparent anomalies in Holy Writ were
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APPENDIX.
in consequence of indirect revelations,—the persons, to whom many of the
revelations were made, having varied their rendering of them to such an extent
as to give grounds for objections on the part of those, who are disposed to
look at the Scriptures with a severely critical eye. In proof of this position,
his lordship pointed out that the Ten Commandments, which were inscribed
by the finger of God on Mount Sinai, and the miracles He worked, and the
parables He gave,—the whole of which acts were performed directly by God
Himself,—had never been the subject of adverse criticism from the pen of
the greatest infidel, from the proclamation of the Gospel to the present
time. That anomalies did exist, no one was prepared to doubt. But the
clear and only explanation was given in the fact, that the messages from
Heaven were not verbally transmitted. And his lordship strongly urged that
this construction was one that should be used by all members of the Chris
tian Church, in refuting the attacks to which it was subject at the hands of
those who were prepared to doubt, or to induce others to doubt, the inspi
ration and authenticity of the Divine Word.’
(2) The account in the Guardian of August 17, taken from the Oxford
Herald, and having all the appearance of being a tolerably accurate report
of the Bishop’s words, contains the following statements as corm’ng from his
mouth in the course of his address:—
‘Reverend Brethren,—It has been set down in the scheme of this after
noon that I should address a few words to you first upon a discussion of the
Word of God, of which you are afterwards to hear from Archdeacon Lee
and Dr. Wordsworth. But I am at a loss to know what to do in saying a
few general words to the purpose; because, in doing so, I might be in dan
ger of intrenching upon the deliberations of those, who have prepared papers
for this Congress; and I almost thought it would be better to offer no
remarks till the conclusion of your proceedings. But I have been told that
you think I am under an engagement to offer some preliminary observations;
and I therefore do not hesitate to respond to the wishes so expressed. Of
course, the great matter before us is the consideration—not of that doctrinal
question so admirably set before us in the sermon this morning, for which
we cannot be too grateful,—it is not so much to discuss that, as it is to
considei' the question of the Inspiration of the Word of God, which some of
the present members of the Church have raised into great prominence, so
that we may be prepared with answers to objections so raised.
‘ It is of great importance at the present time that these matters should
have been well thought over by the clergy in considering the great and
difficult subject of what is understood by the Inspiration of the Word of
God. In limine it is of great importance to notice this question: for the fact,
that all Scripture is written by Inspiration for our instruction, means that
Scripture is inspired by the Holy Ghost; and, because that is true, we dispose
of the most formidable objections, which stand in the way of any dispute.
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75
I All truth is from God alone. Truth on any subject-matter being from
God, shows that it must be inspired so far as it is true. . . . But now what
is Inspiration ? Because we all know that TIoly Scripture has given us no
definition of what it is, or what the Church has held it to be, and we are
therefore led to decide what it is according to the ordinary latitude of in
terpretation. And, first, in approaching that point, and in giving our inter
pretation of what Inspiration does mean, we can have recourse to no antecedent
probabilities as our sure guide—nothing which would show what would be the
precise message of God's thought to man, so that the only way is to take the
Rook as a fact, examining it as to the way in which God has been pleased to
give us His inspired word.
*
And, if we do that, we are met by this view.
Taking it as a message from God to man, knowing that it embodies thought,
which man without the message could not have conceived, and knowing
that he could not from antecedent probabilities have discovered the inten
tions of God, we must examine it as we should any other message, and see how
He, who has sent it, has been pleased to send it to us......
‘ As under the first message that was inscribed in stone, or that was spoken
by the Prophet in a state of rhapsody, there would be the simple communi
cation from God to the receiver; but in the other cases, in which the mes
senger was to deliver the message, there was room for admitting the presence
of the human essence, in a way that, while it had the authority of God,
leaves room for the surrounding human element, in which there might be direct
error, without touching the slightest truth of Inspiration.’
(3) 'An Oxfordshire Rector’ reports to the Record (August 10) as
follows:—
II was present yesterday and to-day at a conference of the clergy under
the presidency of the Bishop of the Diocese. The subjects for discussion
were “ The Word of God and Inspiration.” All the speakers recognised the
fact, that these for the Christian are the great subjects of the day. The
Bishop opened the conference with some general remarks, and inter alia
propounded his theory of Inspiration. It was, I think, as follows,—“ That
the writers of the Old and New Testament might be either conscious or
unconscious of the meaning, scope, and object of the message which they
* I need hardly say that it is very satisfactory to find the Bishop of Oxford
here using language, which is almost identical with that, by which on p.xix of
my Part IV I have sought to justify my Critical Examination of the Pentateuch.
I have said: ‘ We are utterly unable to judge a priori what parts of Scripture must
be recorded with strict verbal accuracy. We can only do—what in these criticisms
we are endeavouring to do,—that is, work out,—with all care, with all the ability
which God has given us, and with all the help of our best critical apparatus,—a
posteriori, from the documents actually in our hands,—the real substantial facts
which the Bible contains, and take them as God’s facts for our guidance.’
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APPENDIX.
delivered; that, if the first, as would, of course, he true in the case of Jesus,
they could make no possible mistake, all which they said would be abso
lutely true, it would be without reservation the mind of the Spirit of God;
that, if the latter, they might err, from the want of the power of comprehension
incident to humanityThe Bishop explained, with his accustomed power
and facility of diction, the opinion which he had formed upon the subject,
and illustrated his meaning at length by adducing the simile of the servant
sent by his master to convey a message to a friend, of the nature of which
the two corresponding parties wished the servant to be ignorant: and, in the
course of his remarks, the Bishop used the terms, “ the human element in the
Bible.”
‘ There was, of course, considerable discussion subsequently upon the re
marks made by his lordship, and to-day the subject was again referred to.
Many of the clergy present felt startled to find that one of those, who were
foremost to denounce Colenso and the Essayists, appeared to endorse the
truth of the principle which they advocate. The Bishop attempted to
explain his meaning to-day : he re-announced his opinion with this saving
proviso, that as yet he had not found, and he believed he never should find,
a particle of error in the Word of God. But what of the principle which
he enunciated ? Many assert that they have discovered historical, geographi
cal, arithmetical, scientific, moral, and religious error in the Bible. How
does his lordship propose to answer them ? ’
(4) Among the clergy, who ‘ felt startled ’ at the above remarkable admis
sions, appears to have been the Rev. W. R. Fremantle, one of the leaders in
procuring the signature of the 11,000 clergy to the Oxford Declaration. He
writes to the Record (August 17) as follows:—
‘ What I understood the Bishop to say [on the second day] was that the
whole Scripture had been written under the superintendence of the Holy Ghost,
so that all and every part of it was absolutely free from error,—that no error
had as yet been found in it, and he believed no error ever would be found
in it. He believed the Bible not because it contained the truth, but because
it was given to us by inspiration of God. Then, in speaking of the two
forms of inspiration referred to by the u Oxfordshire Rector,” the Bishop
said that, as regards the human element, he thought there were some points
in which a man’s natural reason and memory would suffice without a su
pernatural revelation, as, for example, St. Paul referring to his cloak being
left at Troas (!) In this department of the subject, he could conceive the
possibility in the surroundings of the man of the existence of inconsistency,
contradiction, and error, if the writers had been left entirely to themselves.
But, inasmuch as a revelation to the man was one thing, and inspiration to
record truth was another, so the human element had been guided and kept
from error by the general superintendence of the Holy Ghost.
( This explanation I accepted with much thankfulness; for, after the state
�APPENDIX.
77
ment made by his lordship on the first day, I, in common with others of the
clergy present, was in some doubt as to what he really meant.’
(5) So, too, the Rev. F. M. Cunningham writes to the Record (August
19) and states, inter alia, as follows :—
‘ On the second day, Mr. Fremantle called his Lordship’s attention to the
fact that the minds of his clergy were disturbed, and requested him to give
an explanation of his meaning. He did so, and in such terms as led Mr.
Fremantle to say that his mind was inexpressibly relieved. In this view
of the case I am convinced that most of those who were present fully con
curred.’ But Mr. Cunningham also admits that 1 in his Lordship’s address
on the first day, there was undoubtedly room for anxiety, and the minds of
many were disturbed. I largely shared in their anxiety, though I felt
assured that I had misunderstood the Bishop, when I heard him, at the
end of the first day’s proceedings, endorse with entire cordiality all that had
fallen from Archdeacon Lee of Dublin.’
(6) Once more, ‘ An Oxford Rector ’ (the Rev. A. M. W. Christopher)
writes also to the Record, of the same date, stating that he had enclosed
to the Bishop the Standard}s report of what he had said, and also that of
the ‘Oxfordshire Rector,’ asking his Lordship,'/if he thought fit to do so,
kindly to write briefly his opinion on the subject on which he spoke, that
this might be "given accurately in his own words ’: and he also added,
‘ Your Lordship will not, I am sure, think me wanting in respect, if I say
that I was not satisfied by what your Lordship said, as I understood it, on
the first day of the Conference.’
(7) The Bishop replied as follows :—
‘ ‘ Many thanks for your very kind letter. I had not seen either of the
newspaper extracts you send me. But if I had, I should not have answered
them. It is a hopeless endeavour to set oneself right by answering anything:
and, if you reply to one, you must reply to all. I therefore leave matters to
right themselves. It is quite a different matter replying to you; and I do
it with the greatest pleasure. I said nothing of the sort attributed to me in
these extracts. Perhaps the subject was too abstruse to be treated so briefly;
and this has led to misapprehension. In brief, my belief is this: The
whole Bible comes to us as “ The Word of God,” under the sanction of God
the Holy Ghost. We cannot pick and choose amidst its contents. All is
God’s Word to us. But, as I believe that this, which I hold as the only
orthodox view, is encompassed with many difficulties by what is called
the theory of “Verbal Inspiration,” I desired to show how, in my judgment,
a careful scrutiny of the Bible, which revealed the “divers manners” in
which the Holy Ghost spake,—
1 (1) Sometimes by the mere mechanical use of the human agent who
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APPENDIX.
conveyed the message, as when (i) God wrote words on the first tables,
(ii) dictated them for the second, or (iii) committed them to prophets simply
to repeat, or (iv) spake them through the prophets,—
‘(2) Sometimes by possessing the human instrument with a complete
knowledge of that he was to speak, and leaving him to express it, under the
mere suggestions and guardianship of His own special presence, according to
the natural use of the human faculties,—
‘I desired, I say, to show how this would greatly lessen these difficulties,
and enable men to realize the essential difference between Holy Scripture
and any other books,—namely, that as all truth comes from God, other books
may be in a sense said to be inspired because they are true, but Holy
Scripture alone can be affirmed to be true because it is inspired.
‘ You are quite free to make any use of this you see fit.
‘I am, yours most truly,
'S. Oxon.’
The above, which ‘ inexpressibly relieved ’ the minds of Mr. Fremantle
and others of the clergy, represents, we must suppose, what the Bishop
said on the second day. It is very difficult to understand from the above
letter what the Bishop really does hold on the subject of Inspiration.
But it is singular that such a master of rhetoric, upon a subject of such
grave importance at the present time, and which he himself, no doubt, had
fixed beforehand for the consideration of his clergy, expressed himself on
the first day so imperfectly, as to have been so seriously misunderstood—not
only by the sih? above quoted, viz. the reporters of the Standard and Herald,
the Oxfordshire and Oxford Rectors, the Rev. Messrs. Fremantle and
Cunningham,—but, it would seem, by the whole body of the clergy. As
the subject was known beforehand, it was not necessary that there should
have been any ‘cloudiness’ in the original statement, however brief. But
it is difficult to see how the view now put forth by the Bishop lessens any
of the more serious difficulties of the theory of 1 Scriptural infallibility,’
which, it would seem, (if I understand him rightly,) the Bishop still
maintains,—e. g. that which arises from Moses saying in D.v.22, ‘ These
words Jehovah spake unto all your assembly in the Mount out of the midst
of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, and He added no more;
and He wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me ’
—compared with E.xx.l, ‘God spake all these words, &c.’ which latter
1 words ’ differ materially from the former; comp, especially E.xx.11 and
D.v.15.
(8) In the Spectator of August 27, a letter appears from Oxoniensis,
from which I quote the following extract:—
‘ An article of great ability recently appeared in the Quarterly Review,
which is almost universally attributed, in part if not wholly, to the Bishop
of Oxford, It contains statements about Inspiration, which I believe to be
�APPENDIX.
79
perfectly wise and just. It is too long to quote, but its gist is that there is
a “human” as well as a “Divine” element in Scripture, and that humanly
the Scripture writers were liable to occasional error. The following are
some of the words:—“ In the utterance his own peculiarities will all be
present, and so his ignorance upon matters lying wholly outside the message,
as to which, therefore, the sender of the message has not enlightened his mes
senger. . . . When, for instance, St. Paul reveals to us the depths of the
Divine counsels, we know that we are listening, not to man, but to God.
. . . But, when the same apostle writes that the cloak which was left at
Troas should be brought after him, does any reasonable man really maintain
that, if it could be made certain that the cloak was left—not at Troas,
but—at another place, the veracity of Holy Scripture would be thereby
impugned ? ” ’
I add another extract from the same article in the Quarterly, April 1864,
p.552
1 If the intention of the Almighty was through His word to reveal reZagious truth to man, what would be more natural than that He should pour
into the minds of His instruments a flood of light upon those truths, which
He intended them to declare, leaving them still uninformed as to matters, of
which they were the bearers of no message to their brethren ? . . . On this
theory, as to whatever it (the Bible) professes to reveal, we know it must
be absolutely true, because in that it is the result of the inspiration of God ,•
whilst in that, which is the accident and not the object of the message, the
messenger is left to his own unaided powers.’
I need hardly say that this is precisely the ground, which I myself have
taken in all my writings. The ( religious truth,’ which God 1 intends to
reveal] that, and that alone, is the ‘ Word of God ’ in the Bible.
3. Extracts from the Fathers and others, shewing their
VIEWS AS TO THE LIMITATION OF OUR LORD’S
the
Son of Man:
KNOWLEDGE
AS
p.35.
For Mr. Houghton’s letter, with the references at full length, see my
Part HI on the Pentateuch, p.xxxviii-xl. The following are some of the
authorities which he quotes on the subject:—
‘ One must know that most of the Fathers—indeed almost all—appear to
say that He (Christ) was ignorant of some things; for, if He is said to be
in all respects of the same substance with us, and we are ignorant of some
things, it is manifest that He also was ignorant, and the Scripture says of
Him, that He increased in age and wisdom.’—Leontius.
‘To whom can it be a matter of doubt that He has a knowledge of that
hour, indeed, as God, but is ignorant of it, as man ? ’—Gregory Naz.
(As on becoming man He hungers and thirsts, and suffers with men, so
with men, as Man, He knows not.’—Athanasius.
�80
APPENDIX.
'The ignorance, then, does not belong to God the Word, but to the form
of the servant, which knew at that time such things as the indwelling
Divinity revealed.’—Theodobet.
°
We ought not to accuse the Word of God, and rashly to impute any
ignorance to Him. But we should rather admire His love towards man,
who did not refuse, out of His love towards us, to bring Himself down to so
great an humiliation, as to bear all things that are ours, one of which also is
ignorance. ’—Cybil of Alexandria.
* Just as Chbist took this upon Himself in common with men, to hunger,
thirst, and suffer the other things which are spoken about Him, exactly in
the same way
is nothing to offend any one, if He be said, as man, to have
been ignorant also in common with men.’—In.
' He is ignorant, then, according to His human nature, who knows all
things according to the power of His Divinity.’—Chbysostom.
Dr. Pusey, after stating what he considers to be the ' doctrine of the
Church ’ on this point says, on Atman. Diss. II. against Arianism (Library
of the Fathers), ch.xxviii:—
'However, this view of the sacred subject was received by the Church
after St. Athanasius’s day; and it cannot be denied that he and others of
the most eminent Fathers use language, which primd facie is inconsistent
with it. They certainly seem to impute ignorance to our Lord as man, as
Athanasius in this passage.’
But foi the doctrine of those which . . . only affirm that, though as
God He knew all, yet as man He was ignorant of some things, just in the
same manner as He was passible and subject to all human infirmities which
had not sin in them, . . . this sure is so far from heresy that ... it is the
[almost] unanimous assertion of all the Fathers.’—Hammond.
' To say that the Second Person in the Trinity knows not something, is
blasphemy; to say so of the Messias, is not so, who nevertheless was the
same with the Second Person in the Trinity.’—Lighteoot.
' Certainly, when the Apostle teaches that He (Jesus) was like to us in all
things, sin excepted, without doubt he comprehends this also, that His soul
was subjected to ignorance. ... In fine, unless anyone pleases to deny that
Chbist was made a true man, let us not be ashamed also to confess that He
voluntarily took upon Himself all things which cannot be separated from
human nature.’—Calvin.
' As it may be truly said of the body of man that it is not immortal,
though the soul be, so it may be truly said that the Son of Man was not
knowing, though the Son of God knew everything.’—Watebland.
In the face of all these authorities, however, the Bishop rides, Trial, p. 345
' I must decide that in imputing to our Blessed Lord [the Bishop does
not give my full statement, " as the Son of Man ”] ignorance, and the
possibility of error, the Bishop has committed himself to a subtle heresy.’
Let the reader notice that I have used identically the same language as
�APPENDIX.
81
Gregory Naz., Athanasius, Cyril, Chrysostom, and 1 others of the most
eminent Fathers,’ who, says Dr. Pusey, ‘ certainly seem to impute ignorance
to our Lord as man.’
4. Correspondence of the Bishop of Natal
Bishop of Oxford and the Bishop of Capetown :
with the
p.40.
Within a few days after my arrival in England, I received a letter from
the Bishop of Oxford, which, being marked 1 secret,’ I do not quote—except
so far as is rendered absolutely necessary, for my justification under the
present circumstances. In this letter, the Bishop said, with reference to
some points in my Commentary on the Romans :—
Gin these points I should greatly like calmly and prayerfully to talk
with you, if you will let me. They are too long for writing. But what I
mainly wish for now is, to pray you not to take any irretrievable step, until
you have, in free discourse with some of us, reviewed the whole matter. . . .
All I would ask for Christ’s sake is, that you rest not satisfied until you have
given us some such opportunity of free brotherly converse. ... If you could
come to me, to give a day or two to such a consultation, you would find a
warm greeting, and, I hope, a loving and unprejudiced discussion of
differences.’
To this affectionate appeal I was about to respond at once in the same
spirit, accepting heartily the invitation given, when another post on the
same day brought me a letter from the Bishop of Capetown, which seemed
to change wholly the character of the proposed discussion. It appeared to
me, in short, that, instead of being invited to a friendly conference, I was
about practically to be ‘ convened ’ by him, as Metropolitan, before a bench
of Bishops for my offences. And that I was not wrong in this supposition, is
shown by the fact, that the Bishop of Capetown did not correct my own
view of the matter, as expressed in my letters to him, copied below, and
that he still says, in the extract cited on p.39, from his Charge,—
1 He would not meet more than one [of the English Bishops], and then
not as if he were in any error, but only as a common seeker after truth.’
This language may be compared with the expressions of the Bishop of
Oxford—‘free discourse with some of us,’ ‘free brotherly converse,’ ‘loving
and unprejudiced discussion of differences.’
(i) As by submitting to be thus called to account by him, I should have
recognised indirectly the j urisdiction of the Metropolitan, I thought it my
duty to reply to the Bishop of Oxford and to the Bishop of Capetown,
as follows, Aug. 9, 1862
‘ To the Bishop of Oxford.
i I thank you most sincerely for your most kind and friendly letter. I
should be most happy to discuss any points in my Book on the Romans,
G
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APPENDIX.
either with yourself or any other brother Bishop, singly and privately ; though
I must confess that I do not anticipate much result from such a conference,
as the views which I have expressed in that book are, generally speaking,
not the result of a few years’ colonial experience, but have been long held
by me, have grown with my growth, and are, as I fully believe, quite com
patible with a conscientious adherence to the Articles and Formularies of
the Church of England. I do not think, however, that any good would
result from my meeting a number of Bishops together upon the subject, and,
therefore, would prefer declining your very kind invitation.
1 Under any circumstances, I am sure that you would be the last person to
wish me, for any personal reasons, to shrink from the confession of what I
believe to be the truth.’
To the Bishop of Capetown.
‘Just before your letter reached me, I had received one—a very kind one
—from the Bishop of Oxford, making a similar proposal. I should be most
haPPV t° meet any of my brother Bishops singly, and discuss with him any
portions of my Book on the Romans ; but for various reasons I do not think
it would be productive of any good result for me to meet a number of them
together, and I have written to that effect to the Bishop of Oxford.
‘ With respect to my other book ... it is quite true that I have been for
some time past deeply engaged in the study of the Pentateuch, and have
arrived at some startling results. I have had a portion of them privately
printed, for the express purpose of laying them before such of my friends in
England as would be most likely to be able to give me assistance and
advice in this matter, by possessing sufficient acquaintance with the subject,
and by being free from those strong prejudices, which would prevent their
discussing calmly and dispassionately with me the points in question. I
trust that I duly leverence both the Church and the Bible : but the Truth is
above both. I have already taken measures for submitting my views on
the Pentateuch to some of my friends, and shall be glad to do so privately
to any intelligent candid, and truth-seeking student. Among others, 1 had
thought of asking the Bishop of St. David’s to confer with me upon the subject.
But I am not prepared at present to propound my views prematurely to any
one.’
(ii) The Bishop of Capetown replied as follows, A
u
*g.
12, 1862 :—
‘I think you have not quite understood the object of my proposal. I
have been placed in great difficulties by the book [Commentary on the
Romans] you have published. People in England, and many of the Bishops
who have read it, are pained and shocked by it. They have thought, and
so have I, that the most Christian course was for those who were able to
do so, to meet you, and endeavour to convince you that you were in error.
1 If, by God’s blessing, they should succeed in this, it might lead to your
�APPENDIX.
83
withdrawing a book which so many think unsound, and render all other
jjroceedings unnecessary.
‘ I doubt much whether one Bishop would meet you (!), and I do hope that
you will not decline to meet any who wish to discuss the language used,
lovingly with you, as a Brother.’
As from the expression above italicised it was now plain to me that the
proposed proceedings, under the guise of a friendly conference, were really
intended to have a formal meaning, and to be, in fact, indirectly, an asser
tion of jurisdiction over me,—and as I did not believe that, in my Book
on the Romans, I had written anything which could warrant such a course
of conduct torvaids me, so that I must not so much as indulge the thought
that any Bishop of the Church of England would be willing to meet me
singly, in private, friendly, conference—I replied briefly, adhering to my
former resolution.
(iii) I now quote the Bishop of Capetown's answer, dated Aug. 20,1862 :
(I am very(gorry that you have come to the conclusion that you will not meet
the Bishops ; and I do earnestly hope that you will reconsider your decision.
‘ Just think what the position of this painful case is. You have pub
lished a work [on the Romans] which has distressed many, both in this
country and in Africa,—which has led some of your clergy to communicate
formally with me on the subject,—which, when examined, appears to me,
and the other Bishops of the Province, to contain teaching at variance with
that of the Church of which we are ministers, and which is, in consequence
referred by me to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, through him, to cer
tain other Bishops for their opinion. These Bishops, without pretending to
sit in judgment upon the work, do, nevertheless, very generally [X.B°not
unanimously] concur in thinking that its teaching is extremely painful and
apparently not in accordance with that of the Church of England,—so much
so, indeed, that several of them have expressed themselves as unable, under
present circumstances, to admit you to officiate iu their dioceses. You may
be able, at an interview, to explain much that shocks the minds of others^-
or they may, if they should meet you, be able to convince you that yoJ
have expressed yourself unguardedly and unscripturally.
‘In the hope that by God's grace they might be able"to do this, men like
the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Oxford, the Bishop of Lincoln and
I doubt not, others too, would meet you, and endeavour to show you wheie
your error lies. If they should succeed, they would win a brother. If they
should fail, they would at least have used every effort to lead him back to
the truth, from which they believe him to have departed. Is not the course
proposed, of ‘ two or three ’ meeting you, the truly Christian and Scriptural
one ? And is it right to refuse to be a party to it ?
‘ The case is not an ordinary one. You cannot but be aware that you have
propounded views which are very startling—which you did not hold when
g
2
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APPENDIX.
you were consecrated—some of which have just been condemned by a legal
Court—and which it is impossible that the Church should silently acquiesce
in. It is not we who are the first to move in this matter. It is you that
have departed from your former standing-ground, and have been led to
adopt views, which l am sure you are far too honest to maintain are those of
the Church of England, and to propagate those views by your writings and
by word of mouth. As the guardians of the Church’s faith, we cannot but,
under such circumstances, plead with you.
‘ Forgive the freedom with which I write. There is, I believe, on
the part of the Bishops a very earnest desire to do what in them lies
to recover one who ... [I omit some complimentary expressions.]
I venture to hope that, if you are willing to meet the chief Pastors of
the Church at home in the same spirit in which they are prepared to
meet you, and to discuss with them those views which you have recently
adopted and propounded, good only would result from it. But I confess
that I do not see how they can consent to meet you, one by one, merely in a
private way, or treat the grave statements which you have made as open
questions. Many of these statements, however qualified by a different
language in other parts of your book, appear to all the Divines that I have
met with, who have studied your book, to be both unsound and dangerous.
You may be able to show them that you have been misunderstood, or you
may be led to qualify statements which we regard as rash and erroneous.
Do not lightly throw away the chance of setting yourselfbright, and settling
a matter of very great importance to yourself and to the Church.’
(iv) My reply to the above was as follows, dated August 27, 1862 :—
‘I received your last letter before I left Cornwall, but have delayed
replying that I might give its contents a due consideration. I thank you
most sincerely for the kind expressions which you have used towards myself
in it. I wish, indeed, that I were more worthy of them. But, as to the
main question, I am sorry to be obliged to say that I feel it due to myself,
and to my rightful position, to adhere to my resolution of declining to meet
a number of Bishops together in the way proposed.
‘I do so for the following reasons among others. I am so far from con
sidering that the views which I have expressed in my Commentary on the
Romans are contrary to the teaching of the Church of England, that—
as, indeed, I have already stated in the first letter which I addressed to you
from Natal in reply to yours, expressing your disapproval of my book,—I
entirely believe that what I have taught in that book I am permitted to
teach, within the liberty allowed me by the Articles and Prayer Book of
the Church of England, and with a conscientious adherence to the letter
and spirit of them. With, I think, two exceptions only, those views I held
as strongly, and preached them as plainly, when I was consecrated, as I do
now. On two points, I admit,—the Scripture doctrine of the Atonement,
�APPENDIX.
S5
and the subject of Eternal Punishment,—my mind has progressed with
advancing age, experience, enquiry, and meditation, to my present views.
But I have said nothing, as I believe, and as able and eminent divines assure
me, which can justly deserve the censures which some have passed upon my
book.
1 Of course, I am aware that the recent judgment of Dr. Ltjshington [in
“ Essays and Reviews ”] brings me under condemnation on certain points.
But you cannot surely believe that flat judgment will be maintained in the
Court of Appeal, when it obviously departs from the very principles which
the Judge himself laid down, and which the higher Court has laid down
in other cases. Mr. Grote’s pamphlet makes this abundantly plain. If,
however, it should be confirmed on these points, it will then be the dutv of
myself and a multitude of other clergymen, who have held and taught
views like my own, to decide on our future course.
‘Believing, then, that there is no real ground whatever for the opinion
that the views expressed in my Commentary on the Romans, however they
may differ from those of some of my episcopal brethren, ai’e in any way con
demned by the Articles and Formularies of the Church, and having already
entered into a full explanation on all those points, on which you expressed
objection to my teaching, in a letter which (I presume) has been laid before
the Bishops assembled to discuss my book, I feel that I should place myself
in a false position, if I should consent to be convened before a number of
Bishops in the way proposed, which would, in fact, amount to a recognition
of their right to interrogate me.
‘Nevertheless, as I have said, I shall be most glad to meet singly and
privately with any Bishop, who either from a sense of duty to the Church,
and to what he believes to be the truth, or from a feeling of charity to
wards a brother whom he wishes to “recover,” would be willing to meet
and discuss with me any of the questions raised in the Commentary. It
seems to me that this course will be most truly in accordance with the
Scriptural rule to which your letter refers.
‘ I was wholly unaware that Bishop Clavghton had joined in the con
demnation of my book, (though I knew that he did not agree with some of
my views), and certainly from his letters to myself I should never have
inferred it.
The only pain I feel is that of causing to yourself so much anxiety and
giief, in addition to your other vexations. But this God lays upon you
(and upon me also) in the'path of duty.’
(v) At the end of three weeks, I received this note from the Bishop of
Capetown, dated Sept. 17, 1862
‘ I think that I ought to tell you that the dear good old Bishop of St.
Asaph has expressed a readiness to discuss your views with you, if you
chose to visit him with a^view to that purpose, and that, although I have
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APPENDIX.
no commission from the Bishop of Oxford to say so, I cannot help feeling
that he would be ready to do the same. I cannot tell you how deeply I
grieve over the case.’
As the Bishop of Capetown must have discussed the whole matter with
the Bishop of Oxford, and ‘ had no commission from him ’ to say that he
would be -willing- to see me, of course the latter porti'on of the above note had
no meaning- for me under the existing- circumstances. For the Bishop of St.
Asaph I have the deepest esteem and respect, and, perhaps, I ought to have
gone to him for the purpose. But I was in London, he in Wales; and I
liaidly felt that, with a Prelate of his advanced years, a discussion upon my
Commentary would be likely to lead to any practical result, and I had no
leason to suppose that he had studied at all the criticism of the Penta
teuch. To the Bishop of St. David’s, whom I myself mentioned to Bishop
Gray, and whose learning might, indeed, have been profitably consulted
bv us, my proposal, as his Lordship has informed me, was never in any wav
communicated. 1 he fact was, as I believe, and as the above correspondence,
I think, will sufficiently evidence, that the Bishop of Capetown was
determined from the first to bring me to account, if possible, in some form
01 other, for my Book on the Romans,—which, though containing, as I
maintain, no single statement at variance with the Articles and Formu
laries, was yet very strongly condemned by himself and others, holding
extreme views in the Church on either side, both in England and in South
Africa. If I had consented to be thus ‘ convened,’ no doubt the act would
have been quoted, as my private letters have been, to show that I had
1 recognised’ the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan.
5. Letters from native converts, received by the Bishop
of
Natal
while in
England: p.5O.
From a native youth,
C)
1 Feb. 2, 1863.
(My Father,—I thank you very much for your reply to me about that
matter which I told you about [his marriage], and I too for my part wish
that you may come and settle that affair. Wre here are living verv happilv.
We rejoiced greatly at the arrival of Dulela [sent back from England]; she
arrived on J an. 6 : we asked of her the news about you, and she told us.
But we shall be very delighted when we see you all, through the mercy of our
God and Father. A little while ago I was sick for a time, Oct. 23,1862; and I
vent away home, but returned here ag-ain, Nov. 3, 1862. I began to print
the Gospel of Matthew, and finished it on Jan. 28, 1863. Now I am
printing the Gospel of Mark. Lingane is working upon the Book of Genesis;
and I think he works remarkably well. Llansi also is learning very well:
as far as I can see, I should say that he will learn well presently. But I
wish very much to hear when you will come back to us here; for we all
remember you exceedingly, longing that you may come immediately. I
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87
should like you to tell the Inkosikazi [Mrs. Colenso] that I am now
learning to play the harmonium; but I teach myself by myself; some tunes
too I am now able to play well when we worship. Also the Inkosikazi
[Mrs. Grubb] said to me that she would like me to help her in teaching
other people of an evening; so I teach them, Umpiwa there, and Simoi,
and Henry, another man of Mr. Robertson the teacher in Zululand. Again,
I have heard that now Umpiwa wishes to be admitted into the Church of
the Lord, and be baptized. I rejoiced very much at that. Salute for me,
&c.; all of ours here salute you very much. But all blessing and glad
ness are in the hands of God our Father, who is Almighty, of His great
mercy, to protect us well and all our brethren.’
i March 20, 1863.
Father,—I wish now to write to you about how we are going on at
Ekukanveni. I wish also to hear how you are going on in England. We
are all well: but I am just now in great trouble, because Llansi is going
away. I do not all complain of his being sent away : I am only very sorry
for it: for I see that I shall be without any one to help me, since Lingane
wishes also soon to go. But I have spoken with the Archdeacon, and
asked him to send for Mankentyane. The Archdeacon consented, and I
hope that M. will help nicely in what I want: besides I know that he is
much more expert than either Lingane or Llansi. But, as for Llansi, I did
hope that he would have helped me, and that I should have taught him
thoroughly according to your word: now, however, I am quite grieved at
the sad story of his going away. [Llansi had not committed any very
serious offence: but he was in fault, and it was thought most prudent to
send him away from the station, and he was then employed by a printer in
town.] We are very glad to hear of your welfare at this time; and we
trust that God will grant us through His mercy to see you again.
Glut, my father, about the matter of the gun, which I wished to buy, now
I see that I don’t much need it. I wish to leave it, and not to buy it now.
I don’t say that I leave it, because I see something else which I desire : I
wish to leave it simply because I don’t particularly want it. What I wish
now is to lobola [deposit cows for a girl whom he wishes to marry] a
little. Not that I want to marry immediately—I remember your advice to
“ wait till I am older.” I quite agree to this : I only wish to begin by de
grees. Therefore I should like you to tell ------ that I wish to use this
money of the gun for this purpose, since this affair is to be settled by you
as that of the gun was ; and, though I still wish for this gun, I wish also to
restrain my heart with respect to it, lest, perhaps, I should injure any one
with it.
‘ Salute for me Inkosikazi and all the children. Tell them that I shall
greatly rejoice to see them again through the mercy of our Father.’
(ii)
i My
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APPENDIX.
J-111)
_
‘April 29, 1863.
‘ My Lord, I rejoiced exceedingly to-day because we heard of your life
and your work there in England; for there arrived that letter of yours
which you sent to William, and we heard it all clearly ; it rejoiced us ex
ceedingly. . . . But one thing will gladden us especially ; we shall joy when
we see you heie again in Natal, since we have been looking for you exceed
ingly- • . . I am now at work with Mankentyane and Fani ; Lingane went
away a few days after Llansi’s departure ; but presently these two arrived.
They help me capitally. I am now in the middle of Luke: Mankentyane
has printed Genesis: Fani is stitching Prayer-books. This is how we are
working here. ... A few weeks past Undiane made a call, coming to ask
the Aichdeacon [Grubb] for a book, “ First Lessons in Science ” : I fancy
the Archdeacon gave him one. . , .’
The above three letters are translated literally from the original, written
in Zulu. I give now three letters in English from the same lad, verbatim
and literatim (the spelling not altered) as he wrote them. The reader
will judge whether there are signs here of any ‘progress,’ and any solid re
sult of my labours, observing that these letters indicate the present state of
things during my absence from the Colony, and that this lad was a little
naked savage when I first took him from the kraal. If a well-educated
Englishman finds it so difficult to write grammatical Zulu, how much more
difficult must it be for a native to write English !—when he has first to be
taught the very elements of grammar, and that by a teacher who can
scarcely explain his own meaning in the native tongue, and often knows
but little about grammar himself, or knows only the grammar of the English
tongue, which differs totally from that of the Zulu.
(iy)
‘Ekukanyeni, June 29, 1863.
‘ My dear Lord,—I have no time now to write all what I wish to say to
you, but I am very glad to see you writing, for I like very much to write
every word in English tongue, but I can’t do that, for I know not all the
sorts of English word.
‘ At this time I am very glad to my work, I have only Fani who help
me in the place of Mankentyane and Lingane. When Mankentyane was
just came here, he was with us only one month and half, when he hears
that the sickness of small pox will be at Natal he gone away, he left Fani
in his place, but I hope that Lingane will come to me if Fani go home.
‘ Jojo says that I better write and tell you that he is not at Ekukanyeni
now, he saw that his wife is very ill, and go to his friend to help him by
giving him. (Jojo) medicines to give his wife for she was very ill. But he
says that I tell you that he is not go away at Ekukanyeni, he only stay
for a few months for he fears that his wife will be ill again. He has a
child, her name is Unoziduli, I hope that she will grow very well by the
might of God. Jojo and his wife Nomvuzo says that I may salute you for
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89
them and Inkosikazi [and the children], as they hope that they will see
them again by the power of our Father.
‘ But, my Lord, the thing which I want to know about it, is this that I
want to know that, if I done all the copies of the book of New Testament,
what shall I do ? I say that for I don’t like to go away to some body, I
don’t like to leave Ekukanyeni. I say that for I see now I will done them
at April or May, 1864, I don’t know yet, only thinking. I want to know
if you will send some copies for me, for I want to work very much now I
am very oblige [desirous] to work my printing books in the printing-office.
‘ All the people salute you, my Lord, every person which know you salute
you. I hope to see you again, if God wills. Salute Inkosikazi for me,
please, and ask her that [whether] she will glad if I many? I think that
I will many for [in] few months, but I have no enough cows to give the
father of intombi yami [my girl]. Tell Inkosikazi that, if I marry, I will
ask something for my wife, for she is my mother indeed, and the intombi
says that I may salute for her to Inkosikazi her mother.
Salute Inkosikazi and children for me, tell them that I will write for them
all in next steamer. If God wills that we see you, we shall be glad.’
(v)
‘ Aug. 23, 1863.
‘ My dear Lord,—I am very glad this day that you send me this letter,
my heart is so fully rejoice to see it. At this time I know that you will
come back to us again, for if I take this your letter and look at it, I see
this to be sure that you wish for yourself to come again at Natal. ... I
have heard that Ngoza [a chief] want to bring here his boys. Now I am
only [alone] in the printing-office. Fani has go home at the end of last
July, and he left me alone, but though he is gone I am working comfortable,
and need nothing. I just print only [alone] like my doing when you was
here. You know that at that time I was only [alone] in the printingoffice. If God helps me I will do all that you told me to do. Now I
leave the New Testament, I want to [have] done the Book of Genesis be
fore [first]; when I done it, I shall go on the New Testament, and when
I done it, I will go on Exodus.
‘Salute Inkosikazi. . . . for me, and tell them that I will be very glad to
hear about them all right. All people who know you say ‘ Good bye.’ I
can’t count them for they are so many. If God of peace and love might
send our friends back to us, as it pleased Him, we shall be glad and rejoice,
through Christ Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior. Good by to every one.
I am your faithful servant.’
(V1)
‘ Bishopstowe [Ekukanyeni] : March 27, 1864.
‘ My dear Lord and Father,—I want to hear of your coming very much
at this time, for I heard not about your matter in England, only I know
that you shall come back again as you told me in last month’s, but I don't
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APPENDIX.
know which time you will be here. But, my Lord, my work in thislast month
goes very slowly, for I sent my proof to------ but he keep it for a long
time, and then I thought in my mind, I said, “it is better that (am do)=
[I do] for myself the jjroves which I printed,” and then I begin to print
Exodus, for
got my proof of the book of New Testament; but I
think to take that proof also to him, for it is right to me to do all which
is my business and finish it. For I can do the proves for myself, if there is
no man to take them. . . . But for myself I shall thank God if I see you
here in Natal again. But all our doings are in the hands of God our
Heavenly Father, to send our friends here again, that we may see one
another by God’s seeing [providence] and love. That is all now. I shall
be veiy glad to hear of your coming to us again. For we live here like as
children who have not their father and mother.
‘ This is the two sheets of the beginning of Exodus, which I had done
for myself, and try to do right, all the words, that they may [be] without
mistakes, as I try to do so.’
[In these two sheets, corrected by himself, there was only me small
printer’s error.]
The following is a literal translation of a letter, which I received from the
same youth by the last mail, reporting the proceedings of the Bishop of
Capetown, when he paid a visit to my residence.
(v^)
1 Ekukanyeni: May 29, 1864.
My Lord, I rejoiced greatly to hear your letter which you sent to
M illiam. I wish much that you would write to me also, that I may hear
clearly whether these people are speaking the truth, or no, about you. The
other day, May 10, there came the Bishop of Capetown along with Mr.
Robertson : they reached Ekukanyeni both together. And so Mr. Robert
son called William, saying he wished to see him. They came in both
together into the printing-office, and looked at my work. Afterwards we
went out together with them in the afternoon; and we talked with Mr.
Robertson, and asked “Where is the Bishop [of Capetown] going to?”
Said he, “Aha! that Bishop has come to put all things properly. For
Sobantu [the native name for the Bishop of Natal] has gone astray greatly;
I don t suppose that he will ever come back here.” Again he said, f<The
Bishop has come to tell the people to abandon the teaching of Sobantu;
for Sobantu has gone astray exceedingly; he has rebelled; he does not
believe in God our Father, and in Jesus Christ our Lord.” William and
I, however, contradicted, saying, “ As to Sobantu, we know that he, for
his part, is a man who believes exceedingly. When has that [which you
speak of] come upon him?” Said he, “When he was in England he
rebelled ; his book, too, speaks badly.”
11 wish, now, to hear plainly whether, indeed, they have spoken truth or
not, Mr. Robertson and others, to-wit, that you no longer believe. But I
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91
know that there is not a word of truth in what they say. Just the one
thing is, that we believe in God our Father, who knows everything.
‘As to my work, it is going on very well indeed. I should say that in
about another month I shall have finished this Book of Exodus which I am
now printing. But I have only a part of it here : I don’t know where the
rest of it is. I have here Ch. i-xxix. I don’t know anything about the
rest. LI did not translate the description of the details of the tabernacle, &c.].
After that I shall print the New Testament, beginning there at Luke [where
he had left off], and the others, until I have finished all that book of the
Histories, and the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul’s writings, and so on with
the others. After that I shall print the Book of Samuel ; when I have
finished that, there will be an end of the work which you set out for me.
But that will take some little time before I have finished those Books,
because I am working all alone. For my part I ask very much for monev,
that I may have a boy to help me, that I may work well.
‘Salute for me, &c.’
The following are literal translations of letters received from native
catechists, and will serve to show the tone of thought which I have en
deavoured to cherish among them, down to the last hour of my residence
in Natal.
(viii) ‘ 0 Nkosi [Sir] do you remember us here ? 0 Nkosi, I trust indeed
that v ou do 1 emember us. Ah I but, Nkosi, I am grieved because no tiding's
come to say when you will return. Bo not delay, Nkosi, lest it should seem
that you have gone away altogether. But, Nkosi, know this that there is a
longing, I cannot say how great, for you, ever since you went away. In
truth, there is a painful sense of desolation at your departure.
‘ Well, Nkosi, your people are living comfortably at present; but they are
looking for your return. It seems as if, when you shall have come, what
has now come short will be made to meet, what has bent down will be lifted
up, what is unfinished will be completed, yes, and what is sleeping by the
way will arrive.
But, Nkosi, as to the people in Maritzburg,—I mean, those who worship
in oui chapel [whom he taught],—they are doing well at all times; their
business goes steadily forward continually. There are also some of them
who are particularly attentive. There are five, too, who wish to be baptized.
But among those who wish to be baptized, one is very ill indeed in his
lungs.
‘ I salute all those of your house, yourself, and the Inkosikazi, and the boys
and the young ladies. All of my house salute; they look for your return;
and I, too, am looking for a word to say, “ I will return at such and such a
time.” ’
(ix) . . . Again, Nkosi, I hoped very much that, as soon as you reached
England, you would send a man at once, coming from you, to help me in
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Maritzburg, according to what we planned. And even now, Nkosi, if you
send him, I should be very glad.
Fuither, Nkosi, know that we all here desire to hear your word, that you
should send it among your people, and they may hear it, and rejoice at it.
By that they will think that you still remember them, and will rejoice at it,
just as that Paul did, you know, to his people. [The writer greatly admired
that Paul ; but he said that his epistles always made his headache,”
while helping me to translate them.] For there are many who worry us,
saying, 11 Sobantu will not return again ”; others say, “Sobantu—he is now
turned out”; others say, “ Sobantu—he is no longer a Bishop; he is no
longer a minister; he is just nobody. . . .”
1 Nkosi, farewell! May God, whom you serve, deal with you as He sees
good,—help you with His glorious might in all which you are doing,—be a
Father to you, and you be a child to Him, in the name of Jesus Christ our
Lord, who gives to us all! Amen.
‘'As to us here, we are living happily; but the one thing that we are
looking for is your coming. That is the one great thing above all others.
Farewell, my Lord.’
‘ Jan. 28, 1864.
(x) 1 May it please you, Nkosi, to answer a little to this which I am saying.
You know, however, that I would not urge you about answering if it cannot
be done. I desire to ask, “ When will you at length return ? Can you not
promise a little ? ” For you must know, Nkosi, from the time you went
away, people are talking continually, saying, “ Sobantu will never come
back.” But we, your flock, are looking for you with red [straining] eyes all
the days,—I say, all the months,—I say, all the years—of our life; we are
looking for your return, Nkosi Sobantu. However, Nkosi, supposing that
you will not return, say so, or supposing that you will return, say so, a
little. But Nkosi, do not think that I shall be satisfied to write to you
merely. No ! I don’t desire that at all. For the one thing, which I look
for more than anything else, is your coming—that alone, Nkosi. For, as to
this your departure, in you is the very sole excellence of our work, as to
which we had looked continually that it should go on and prosper,—I mean,
of course, the excellent great work, which is through our Lord Jesus
Christ.
So it is, Nkosi Sobantu., beloved by the baud of faith! I have no wish to
be [merely] writing to you continually. For I look for one thing, to be
brought about through the name of the Living God, which is looked for by
all the believers of ours—I mean, your return. For, Nkosi, it seems to me
that, if your return shall only be heard of as certain, it would be as if the
rain came, as if the sun shone, as if an eclipse happened, as if the earth were
overturned, as if the rivers had run dry, as if the sea had stilled its roaring,
as if all winds had ceased to blow, as if all were fair, as if all were clear-.
Foi, suiely, it is plain that it is right that one, who is a Bishop, should be
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here in the land; since he works for men, because that is his office, to
manage men. For some, truly, are trusted with the management of men :
others are trusted with the collecting of money. There are offices and
offices established in the workings of men. Farewell, my Lord ! I am still
alive, and I am one of yours at Ekukanyeni.’
This is the last letter of the same catechist, just arrived, which will show
the kind of work which the Bishop of Capetown has thought it right to
do among my poor native flock. Quid non relligio potuit!
1 Mav 29, 1864.
(xi) 11 have received your letter, Nkosi; I am very thankful for it. I
rejoice also because I find that you are well, both in body and soul. For
indeed, so it is, upon my word, that there is a great noise among all people
about you : some say, 11 Sobantu has rebelled ”; others say, u Sobantu goes
astray ” : ’tis so continually with them all.
‘But, Nkosi, see! do, I entreat, make a guess, and promise about your
return. For, you know, Nkosi, to expect and wait for you is but a short
matter: but, according to their talk, you will never more return at all.
‘Also the other day there arrived the Bishop of Capetown ; he just came
to have a look at Ekukanyeni, accompanied by Mr. Robertson. They went
also to the place of worship [St. Mary’s Native Chapel] in town, going to see
the people. We asked about Sobantu. But Mr. Robertson [by the Bishop’s
direction, of course, the latter not speaking Zulu] made a long discourse to
all the people : he said, “ Sobantu will never again come back : Sobantu
has rebelled entirely, he has gone astray. His going astray we white people
don’t wonder at; for it has been always so among the white people; there
are always arising people such as he.’’ Whereupon I asked, and said to
Mr. Robertson, “ What then ? do not you know Sobantu, that he is a
man who believes entirely in God?” He assented. Then said I, “Well
then, when did he begin to rebel, when he was in England, or here ? ” Said
he, “At the time he left this country, he had already begun to rebel; but,
when he arrived in England, be rebelled altogether.” I contradicted. But,
Nkosi, there was more which I cannot possibly write, the whole of it. ... .
‘Nkosi, I salute you very much. I remember you every day; I don’t
forget you for one single day. But to see a letter coming from you is quite
as if I were dreaming. Salute for me kindly to the Inkosikazi, salute for
me to the young ladies, salute for me to the boys, salute all those who love
us together with you. Oui’ Father, who is over all, preserve you, deliver
you from all, grant you that the wealth of the Holy Spirit may abound to
you.’
Here, lastly, is a note from another native catechist, who has been equally
disturbed by Bishop Gray’s proceedings.
(xii) ‘ My Lord,—It was pleasant to hear your words: for we were in a
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state of great excitement, not knowing what is the real state of the case. I
also said about you, Nkosi, it cannot possibly be true for us: for you had come
to bring light among those in darkness. I say, your doing was not like a
white-man ; it was like the words which say, 11 He sends forth His sun upon
evil and upon good,”—the way by which you came among us continually.
But before God our Father we may be comforted about you until we see
your face. . . . The sea is a great thing ; because, although we love you so
much, we cannot see you. Salute, &c.’
I venture to believe that the above letters give evidence of a solid and
permanent work, wrought by God’s grace, in preparing these natives for
future usefulness among their people. Their intellectual powers have been
cultivated, as well as their hearts : they have been taught to think about
religion, and not merely crammed with dogmatic formulae, although, in such
exercise of their reasoning powers, they have compelled me to give close
attention to difficulties, which in English teaching are too commonly passed
over or altogether ignored. But the reader will perceive that a tone of true
Christian feeling—of simple healthy piety—characterizes all these letters;
and the steady industry of the young printer, amidst all his difficulties and
discouragements, is to me most refreshing and hopeful, as a sign of real
‘ progress. ’
6. Proposed alteration of the Supreme Court of Appeal :
p.63.
The Bishop of Capetown says of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council, Charge, p.12:—‘ The Judgment, which it has just given, in oppo
sition to the Archbishops and the voice of Convocation, has convulsed the
Church of England, and is forcing her to repudiate its decision, and to
demand an alteration in the Court of Appeal
*
* The Bishop also says, Charge, p.12:—‘Is not the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council the final Court of Appeal for the Church of England ? In certain
cases it is so, with the presence of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and
the Bishop of London. For the last thirty years, by a mere oversight, as Lord
Brougham has stated publicly in the House of Lords, it has been so.’ It must,
have been, however, a happy oversight, even in the opinion of Lord Brougham, if
the following statement of Dr. Manning is correct, Letter, &e., p.7: ‘The late
Bishop Blomfiekd introduced into Parliament a Bill to amend the Appellate
Jurisdiction of the Crown in matters of Doctrine. By that Bill it was provided
that in all such questions the matter of Doctrine should be divided from the matter
of Law, and that the Doctrine should be adjudged by the Bishops, the Law by the
Judges of the Privy Council. . . . Lord Brougham spoke against the Bill. He
said, with plain English common sense, that the Bishops would constitute no
sufficient tribunal for questions of controverted Doctrine, because they might divide
in equal numbers, and give, therefore, no decision, or by a bare majority, which
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There is certainly & party in the Church which ‘demands’ such an altera
tion, and in no very mild terms. Thus Dr. Plsey writes in his recent
manifesto,, p. 18:—'■ Will the Church of England require that the Court,
which has shown itself so partial, so dishonest,—which, had it been a
matter of human property, would not have dared so openly to profane
justice,—should be reformed?’ But the following are the views of the
Bishop (Waldegrave) of Carlisle on this question, Charge, p.48 :—
1 A third party have—without avowing the purpose, though I can hardly
think without contemplating the result—availed themselves of the present
season of disquiet, for advocating a modification of the constitution of the
Court of Appeal, which would certainly issue, and that at no distant date,
in the dis-establishment—and, be it well remembered, in the dis-endow
ment also—of our National Church............. This would be nothing less than
to supersede the teaching of our written formularies, unmoved as they ever
are and must be by the tempests of party and passion, by the opinion of
living men, who cannot but be liable to be swayed by all the tumultuous gusts
of the fleeting hour. Would our Laity, think you, for one moment tolerate
the existence of such a tribunal ? . . . I, for one, can have no sympathy
with men, who had rather that all things should be brought to a standstill,
than that any the least alteration should be made which does not fully and
exactly tally with the day-dreams of their own ambitious imaginations.
And such men there still are at work amongst us. They were, until recently,
regarded with a just and an universal suspicion, as animated by that spirit of
sacerdotal absolutism, which, more than two centuries ago, involved our
Church and Kingdom in a common overthrow. The notable zeal with
which, all the while retaining a cordial dislike to the distinguishing
doctrines of the Reformation, they have thrown themselves into the antirationalistic movement, has caused too many to condone their errors, and
thus given them the opportunity, of which they have been by no means
backward to avail themselves, of silently urging onward their cherished
scheme of un-protestantizing the National Church. Of this scheme it is
difficult not to believe that this plan of ecclesiastical-law-reform is an inte
gral portion.’
Among those, who are most violent in ‘ demanding ’ this reform, is
the Ven. Archdeacon Denison, one who signed the famous Anglican
‘ Declaration,’ with reference to the ‘ Gorham Judgment,’ in common with
Dr. Ptjsey, Dr. Newman, Dr. Manning, and nine others, of whom, says Dr.
Manning,
to an Anglican Friend, p.l, ‘six afterwards submitted to
would carry no moral conviction to any one, or the majority, however great, would
not tell by number against a minority, in which were found the few of known
learning and influence, with whom public opinion would certainly go. The end of
the Bill might have been foreseen. It was rejected with an overwhelming rejection,
not only of opposition, but of arguments.’
�96
APPENDIX.
the Catholic [Boman] Church, four are no more, and five are still Angli
cans.’ By the ‘ Declaration ’ it was affirmed, that, if the Church of England
acquiesced in the Gorham Judgment, ‘by such conscious, wilful, and
deliberate act’ it would ‘become formally separated from the Catholic
Body, and could no longer assure to its members the Grace of the Sacraments
and the Demission of Sins.’ The Church of England has acquiesced in
that judgment: but both Dr. Pvsey and Archdeacon Denison still remain
as clergymen of the Church of England. It is to Archdeacon Denison,
however, that the Bishop of Capetown has applied, for six additional
clergy to be planted in my diocese : so at least I infer from a letter in the
Guardian of Aug.31, bearing, as signature, the motto of the Archdeacon’s
journal (Church and State Review), ‘ Pro Ecclesia Dei.’ At any rate, it
is plain that it is intended to take advantage of my absence, to force upon
my diocese, if possible, a number of clergy holding ‘extreme views of
Church and State,’ such as those which are held by Archdeacon Denison
and Dr. Prsey, as well as by Bishop Gray and the Natal correspondent of
the Guardian.
With reference to this point, I think it right to say that, it is my purpose,
with the Divine assistance, on my return to my diocese, both to maintain
inviolate, as far as shall lie in my power, all rights, spiritual or temporal,
belonging to me as its Bishop, and, at the same time, to consult for its
religious peace and quietness, by overlooking, wherever possible, all offences
against its ecclesiastical order, which may have been committed during my
absence. These offences have mainly arisen from the intrusion of another
Bishop into the affairs of my diocese.
The Bishop of Capetown, however, has no more authority over my
diocese, than I have over his, except so far as it shall have been lawfully
given him by the Crown, of which the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s
Privy Council will be the judges. Accordingly, his appointment of clergy
to minister in the diocese of Natal would, if illegal, give them no mission :
in pretending to give it, he would be the author of a Schism: his own clergy,
who might affect to support him, and any Society at home, which should
furnish stipends to persons so nominated, and exercising their functions
without my Licence, would be its abettors.
In many periods of ecclesiastical history we meet with examples of
Bishops charging each other with heresy, and defying each other with
mutual excommunications. I shall endeavour always to avoid following the
example of this unseemly kind of warfare. But I feel called upon to
caution some, who might, perhaps, otherwise be led away, against abetting
proceedings ecclesiastically irregular and schismatical,—politically seditious,
—injurious to the cause of religion and to the progress of Christianity,—
and hurtful individually to the religious life of all who promote them.
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., PRINTERS, NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Remarks upon the recent proceedings and charge of Robert Lord Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan at his primary metropolitan visitation of the diocese of Natal
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Colenso, John William [1814-1883]
Gray, Robert [Bishop of Cape Town]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: [4], 96 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Appendix 1: extracts from the Bishop of Natal's Books. 2: Opinions of Various Writers in the Church of England Respecting the Authorship of the Pentateuch. 3: Extracts from the Fathers and Others, Shewing their Views as to the Limitation of our Lord's Knowledge as the Son of Man. 4: Correspondence of the Bishop of Natal with the Bishop of Capetown. 5: Letters from Native Converts, received by the Bishop of Natal while in England. 6: Proposed Alteration of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New Street Square, London.
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Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green
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1864
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G5199
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Heresy
Trials
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Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Robert Gray
Trials (Heresy)
-
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Text
THE
THE CASE OE MR VOISEY.
SOME REMARKS BY
J. D. LA TOUCHE,
VICAR OF STOKBSAY, SALOP.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price, Threepence.
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�PREFACE.
T AM anxious to state, that in sending the following
pages to the press, I do so after the most deliberate
consideration. The substance of them has been a
constant theme of thought for many years, and the
subject of frequent conversation with friends of every
shade of opinion.
Many reasons have been suggested both by myself
and by others, why I should -not thus come forward,
and I have felt as if some excuse is due for so doing,
since it cannot be concealed that any one who attacks
what he conceives to be serious popular error, is him
self on his trial, and in the public estimation, is
already condemned as a disturber of the peace—one
of those who would turn the world upside down.
But after all, though satisfied that a good and
sound defence of my position is possible, it will
perhaps be best to rest entirely on the justice of the
cause,—avoid any appeal to complicated reasons
which might not convince one person who already
thinks I am wrong, and to look steadily to. the call
of clear duty.
�4
Preface.
I must, however, before going further, express
sorrow that.this task is necessary. I grieve when I
think of the people to whom this paper will give
pain, for I know their real worth, and how sincerely
they hold the views here attacked. I am sorry for
the alienation which may be hereby caused between
myself and some of my brother clergy, men whom I
sincerely love and respect, whose friendship I value,
and with whom I have hitherto worked in harmony.
It is not, however, the first time in the world’s
history, when a choice has had to be made between
even near and dear relations, and the path of duty.
Whether this is mere sentiment, and whether or
not I have made a wanton attack on unimportant
blemishes in men’s faith, can alone be determined by
fair and free discussion, and to this I am content to
leave it, in perfect confidence that what is superficial
will be eliminated, but what is true and sound will
stand the test.
�THE
JUDGMENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
‘
IN THE CASE OF MR VOYSEY.
—>-----CLERGYMAN, the rector of a large and impor
tant parish,
said to
in the
of
Aconversation, “oncethere anymepassage incourse New
Is
the
Testament where Christ declares himself to be God?”
This is a very suggestive question, for there is,
absolutely, none. On the other hand, at least one
notable passage may be brought forward to the con
trary. Christ was once accused by the Jews of blas
phemy, of making himself, as they said, equal with
God. In reply, he justifies his words by the following
argument. These words occur in your sacred writings,
“ I said ye are Gods;” now there can be no blasphemy
in my calling myself a son of God if that term is ap
plied in your own Scriptures to other men.
From this the plain inference is, that Jesus himself
disclaimed any other divinity than that which is
possible to the rest of mankind, and this is fqlly
borne out by other passages which are, strangely
enough, often brought up to prove his exceptional
divinity ; such as, “ I and my Father are one,” when
his meaning is explained by the parallel passage, in
his prayer for his disciples, “ That we all may be one
as Thou Father art in me, and I in Thee,” when this
“oneness” in the former is explained, and extended to
all who are of a similar mind to himself.
If these simple statements are compared with those
�6 The "Judgment of the Committee of Council
of the Nicene Creed and much of the popular theology
of the day, a marked difference must be observed.
The worship of Christ is for the most part the centre
of Christian devotion, and to deny to him the title
of the supreme God, is to incur the most serioils.impu
tation, if not personal harm. On what does this vast
structure of the worship of Jesus rest ? It rests on ideas
which sprung into existence shortly after his death, and
for which he himself appears in no way responsible.
His followers were partly of J ewish and partly of
Pagan origin. The more educated among the former
were imbued with the sublime Platonic philosophy,
which was now beginning to influence all thoughtful
men, and the latter could hardly be expected to lay
aside all the influence of their previous lives. These
men pondered on the pure and self devoted life of Jesus
with extreme reverence. The Jewish converts saw
in him the expected Messiah so vividly described in
the then lately published book of Enoch, and the
Pagan converts would naturally deify him as they
had been accustomed to do the heroes of their own
antiquity. The germ of this seed thus early planted
has borne its natural fruit, and at this day the worship
of the person of Christ, whether under a sensuous
substantial form, or the not less subtle forms of an
ideal man, who appeared on the earth some centuries
ago, is being developed to an extraordinary degree.
That such a state of things can last very long is
not probable. The very nervousness with which any
discussion on the subject is met by those who affect
to be most confident, is a proof that they distrust it in
their inmost hearts. Like all other idolatries, this
must fall when the true facts of the case are known—
when, it is thoroughly understood what are its founda
tions, of what stuff it is made; no chain can be
stronger than its weakest link, and when the. uncer
tainty of the origin of the fourth gospel, and, indeed,
of much of the New Testament, is admitted, as a fact
�In the Case of Mr Voysey.
7
which cannot be denied by any competent person, all
but the wilfully blind, and ignorant, and superstitious
must abandon the present popular view.* The church
which would uphold it would be a church to which
no honest man could wish to belong, as it would be
merely a state engine of the most corrupt kind, to keep
things quiet and influence the ignorant. Abandoning
truth in the most shameless way, it would take its
stand on the quicksands of popular prejudices, and
must infallibly fall.
And yet, what might not a truly national church
be ! Its roots sustained in truth, its branches and
leaves nourished in charity as in an atmosphere, it
would bring blessings to countless thousands who at
present ignore or reject it with ill-disguised contempt,
it would be the channel of every good to the lowest
and poorest, helping forward the weak, and testifying
in no faltering tones against sin and oppression—the
true mother of all who could claim human brotherhood.
The recent judgment of the Privy Council in the
case of Mr Voysey, among other things, declares it
to be part of the doctrine of the national Church,
1. That we ought to worship Christ as God. 2. That
it is contrary to the articles to hold that God is not
wroth with every human being born into this world.
3. That we must hold that God needed to be recon
ciled to man, not man to God.'
Now, in relation to the first, and to my mind, the
most important of these points, the worship of Christ,
* I must refer to Canon Westcott’s Introduction to the study
of the Gospels (Macmillan & Co.), Tischendorff’s origin of the
Gospels (Jackson, Walford, and Hodder), and above all, Tayler’s Treatise on the Gospel of St John (Williams and Nor
gate). The facts so clearly stated in the first two, despite the
previous opinions of their authors, fully bear out, I maintain,
the above statement, while the last, a most able and thoughtful
essay, by a learned man, and written in a truly reverent
spirit, is to my mind conclusive against the authenticity of
the fourth gospel.
�8
The Judgment of the Committee of Council
it must be observed that, unless the terms are further
defined, it is impossible to know how they are to be
obeyed, or whether they are infringed or not in any
particular case. But they are not defined. “ Worship ”
is an act varying in degree from the most profound re
spect for a noble and holy person, to what passes under
the name, in abject prostration before an idol. How
many men “worship” God sincerely and effectually,
when their souls are penetrated by his greatness and
goodness seen on every hand in nature; nay, how
much more worthy of the name of “worship” is
that silent adoration of the heart, than the genu
flexions of priests and devotees before decorated altars.
But still more important is it to observe that there
is no definition of the term “ God.” Is that term to
be taken in the sense in which it is used in the pas
sage, “ I said ye are Gods,” or is it to represent the
eternal, omnipresent Creator, the unseen, in whom we
live and move and have our being ? Between these
two ideas there is an almost infinite interval, and un
reservedly to declare that Christ is to be worshipped
as God, is to leave us in utter perplexity.
Now, if I am referred to the Articles, is the matter
made much clearer ? The first Article defines the liv
ing and true God to be without body, parts, or pas
sions, whereas Christ in the fourth article is said to
have “ taken his body with flesh and bones and all
things pertaining to the perfection of man’s nature to
heaven, where he now sitteth,” from which it is clear
that the authors of the Articles did not consider Christ
as God in the fourth, in the same sense as God is defined
in the first. Am I to worship Christ as God as defined
in the first, or in the condition described in the fourth?
Theologians may tell me that these are very foolish
questions, and show a shallow mind, and I well know
how much may be written on them, what elaborate
arguments may be spun by way of explanation of
them ! I have read, I daresay, quite as much as
�In the Case of Mr Voysey.
z
,
*
9
most men, of this sort of thing ; yet, I must sincerely
say, I doubt whether I ever understood it. A young
man studying divinity often fancies he does so, that
he has got hold of some theological axioms upon
which he can construct certain theorems with a kind of
mathematical exactness. But when he finds by expe
rience in after years, that his axioms have none of that
universal assent and obvious truth which are essential
to axioms, his elaborate theories must fall to pieces.
Once more, I am told to worship Christ as God. Is
my worship to be of the nature of a sincere affection
for the noble character embodied in Jesus, a practical
desire, like him to live for the sake of others, and like
him to despise all present ease in comparison, or is it to
be the prostration of my body before certain emblems
of him, and my mind before certain dogmas relating to
him—dogmas, for the most part, begotten in times of
fierce party warfare and bitter theological zeal, out of
the brains of cruel men, and used by them as engines
to crush their enemies 1 Again, is the object of my
worship to be the eternal God, without body, parts,
or passions of the first Article, or that Christ who
“ took his body with flesh and bones to heaven,”
spoken of in the fourth ?
These are questions which the Judicial Committee,
having introduced an expression not occurring else
where in the formularies of the Church, will perhaps
have to elucidate by some further declaration of doc
trine. In the meantime I must repudiate one kind of
worship while I hold to the other. I worship what was
divine in Jesus in the sense of profound reverence, and
a life’s devotion, as far as may be, to the ideal of purity
and love which he presents to my mind. Worship in
any other sense is reserved for the spiritual, eternal
God, such a God as is defined in the first article.
Then, again, with respect to that divine wrath
which I am told to believe in, what does it mean 1—Is it a cold, forensic kind of wrath such as a judge
�io The Judgment of the Committee of Council
passing sentence on a criminal might be supposed to
bear towards him 2 or is it that of a person highly
indignant ? It is not easy to imagine wrath except
in the latter sense, and yet can anything be more
derogatory to the divine character ? The Almighty
creating men, and then being wroth with them,
and requiring some rites to be performed on them by
their fellow-men to bring them into favour again with
Him. If this, or anything like this, be the doctrine
endorsed by the late judgment, my soul rises in indig
nation against it, and I protest against it as dishonour
ing God and tending to the grossest superstition.
Again, it is reiterated in the judgment that it needed
the sacrifice of Christ to reconcile God to man ; but it
has been maintained by the Dean of Westminster that
such a statement is as contrary to Scripture as to all
just views of the relation of God to man, made known
to us. I shall not do more than insert here a passage
from a letter by Dean Stanley which appeared in the
Guardian of May 3d, in relation to this subject, as no
arguments of mine could strengthen the position
taken in this controversy by that learned and able
divine. “ To take a single instance of the charges
against Mr Voysey by way of illustration. He is
condemned for having contradicted a paragraph in
the Second Article, which declares, that the object
of the Redemption was to reconcile the Father, to
mankind. I need hardly say that this contradiction
is one which appears not only in the writings of the
greatest divines of the early Church, but also in. some
■of the most eminent of our own. It appears in the
statements of theologians as far removed from each
other as Alexander Knox and Dr Arnold, Dr Mason
Neale and Dean Alford, and was set forth not many
years ago with the utmost precision, in a sermon (to
which I have often referred) by the late Professor
Hussey, preached at Oxford before, the present
Bishop of Winchester, published at his desire, and
�In the Case of Mr Voysey.
11
dedicated to him by his permission. I have myself
repeatedly stated this doctrine in my 1 Commentary on
the Corinthians,’ in speeches delivered in Convocation,
and in sermons preached before the University.”
It may be objected to what has been said, that the
most distorted phases of the doctrines in question
have been brought forward; that it is not fair to
hold up the exaggerated and often immoral excesses
to which ignorant men push them, as an objection to
them. It would not, I admit, be fair to charge these
distorted views on all the supporters of these doctrines,
yet, when the words used by the Judicial Committee
are such as, in the popular sense, might sanction what
would seem to be idolatry, the only resource left to
those who see and feel the evil is to protest strongly
against it. To speak of the worship of Christ as God,
and of the wrath of God, may with some have a very
innocent meaning; but with others, and those the
most ignorant, they are the channels of superstition.
Worship, in the popular sense of the term, is not the
act of a life, but that of a set time offered up in a
particular place. The wrath of God means in ordi
nary language the flames of hell fire and eternal
tortures; so that to say God is wroth with every
child till it is baptized, is to say that if it died then
it would go to hell. And this is the way infidels and
atheists are made—no one believes that God is so
bad as that: and so being taught that these ideas are
inseparable from Him, they are compelled to ignore
or disbelieve in Him altogether.
Once, in a school, I heard the master put the.
following question to the head class : “■ How many
Gods are there ?” The answer to which was “ three;”
and this was taken as quite orthodox and correct.
Perhaps it did really signify little to the poor
child whether he believed in three or in one God,
so confused are often the notions current on the
subject; but the answer makes one reflect whether
�12 The 'Judgment of the Committee of Council
we have advanced so very far beyond Polytheism
after all ? Can it be affirmed that children are always
taught to “ believe in one God; ” and if this is not
the case, at whose door will the dishonour lie 1—at
that of the schoolmaster ignorant of the nice subtleties
of theology, or of the heads of the church who tell
him to worship Christ as God ?
Nor is the foregoing a solitary instance ; my own
limited experience could supply others of the same
kind ; and from what school inspectors have told
me, they could supply a large number to show what
a distorted caricature of religious knowledge has often
been taught in schools, a fact which fully accounts for
the outcry which has of late arisen for purely secular
instruction ; since it must be felt that the effect of
such teaching on the minds of any thoughtful young
person must be the very reverse of religious.
Perhaps some may object, that, with the views I
have here advanced, it is inconsistent in me to con
tinue reading the church service : it certainly would
be so it these immoral and superstitious meanings
were distinctly declared by sufficient authority to be
essential to certain words and expressions in it. But
though the late judgment has apparently taken a
step in this direction, it remains to be seen whether
it can be maintained. It is hard to believe that a
permanent retrograde movement has been made
under the sanction of the highest authorities towards
heathenism ; whether the clergy are henceforth to
teach and believe in two gods ; whether Manichaeism
is again to be revived, and the world is to be held
as under the control of a demon, from whom, how
ever, a merciful JEon will deliver them. Expressions
which favour these views no doubt lurk in our Articles
and formularies; for it must not be forgotten that
they were the compilations of comparatively very
unenlightened times, and it would only be surprising
if they had been altogether free from the errors in the
�In the Case of Mr Voysey.
13
theology of the age in which they were composed.
But it is almost incredible that these expressions, so
long allowed to lie unobserved, are now to be disin
terred and dragged to light to quench that more liberal
and purer interpretation of the ancient dogmas which
was beginning to make itself felt—as incredible as that
the thumbscrew and the boot should, in this 19th
century, be brought from the glass-cases of a modern
museum to eke out the decision of a court of justice.
That a reasonable and edifying meaning may be
attached to the expressions in the church service, if
they are not pressed too literally, I would still fain
believe. With its general spirit I agree; since
through it I can worship, and ask others with me to
worship God. That is its central idea. I should,
however, in candour, except the Athanasian creed,
the damnatory clauses of which are so directly con
trary to what I hold as true, that I have not for
many years, and could not, use that formulary.
But as on the whole, the church service is to me a
real help, I shall not, by my own act, separate myself
from the church which has appointed it. Besides,
be it observed, that when I entered into my engage
ments as a clergyman, there was not that rigid defini
tion of these abstruse doctrines, there was not this new
formula which has now been introduced, and which
unquestionably modifies, by making more precise
and stringent, those tenets to which I gave my assent.
To some who may read this paper, it will doubt- '
less give considerable pain, and they may ask, Why
write it ? Why incur the risk of so much trouble, and
perhaps serious loss, to yourself and others 1 My
answer is, That I am not accountable for this pain ;
its existence is no proof that these discussions are
not necessary. It is caused rather by the admission,
than by the existence of certain facts which have
hitherto been kept in the background, but are now
getting to be pretty generally known. But is there
�14 The Judgment of the Committee of Council.
not something unseasonable in this ? The opinions
of one or of any number of persons about these facts,
would not be any cause of concern if the facts them
selves could be disproved ; but if they are true, it is
madness not to give them their due weight and pro
minence. I am not accountable for facts. A fact is
the property, not of an individual, but of the world,
and those rush to certain shipwreck who would
blindly dash themselves against it. Is it e.g. true’or
not, that the origin of the gospels is such as Tischendorff and Westcott have stated it to be, viz., that
there is no direct evidence of the existence of any
one of them until the end of the first quarter of the
second century 1 Is it, or is it not true that, in Mr
Westcott’s words,—“ Hitherto all the evidence which
can be gathered from the circumstances of the early
church and the traditions of the origin of the gospels
has tended to establish the existence of an original
Oral Gospel, definite in general outline and even in
language with that which was committed to writing
in the lapse of time in various special shapes, accord
ing to the typical forms which it assumed in the
preaching of different apostles.” For if it be so, it is
obvious that, for the purpose of proving exact words
or exact events, such records fail; that even under
the most favourable circumstances, that is, supposing
that every one who transmitted this oral gospel was
influenced by the most conscientious motives, many
variations and errors must creep in; but when there
is no security against this, when it is well known that
these books were compiled in the days of the marvel
lous and that there was every temptation to
exaggerate, then it is a clear duty, as we. value the
truth, to scan them with care and to eliminate what
is untrustworthy from them.
Ao’ain, is it, or is it not a fact that the sense in
which Christ is said to have claimed divinity for him
self, was such as I have drawn attention to m the be-
�In the Case of Mr Voysey.
*5
ginning of this paper ? for if so, it is certainly incon
sistent with the popular views on the subject. Once
more, is it not a fact that the worship of Jesus as
God, has been a development, a growth in the
Christian Church, till in the present day it has
assumed a proportion never witnessed before, which
obscures the worship of the spiritual God, which can
not be justified by the “sure warranty” of Scripture,
and which is directly opposed to that essential
article of the Christian faith, without which it must
be one-sided and false, namely, the “ inferiority” of the
Son; that, in short, his complete humanity is lost
sight of and practically denied in the contemplation
of his divinity. And this last remark will be a
sufficient answer to an objection which has often been
made, that these views are destructive of the Christian
faith. What is in the present day popularly called
the Christian faith is not the faith of Jesus or of
Paul, nor even of the early Church. What is here
advocated is no subversion of that faith, but of the
errors which have overshadowed it, and is indeed a
return to its purity.
I cannot, therefore, apologise for thus coming
forward; it has been in some sort a necessity.
Of course it is most distressing to give pain, let
us trust that like all other pain in this world it
may be the transition to a more healthy state of
things than has hitherto been. I do not think
that anything can be more melancholy than the
kind of arguments or reasons for letting things
alone with which one is generally met. Even lead
ing journals, which might be expected to use some
thing like sound argument, have nothing better to
oppose to such views as are here put forth than the
wishes and inclinations of the unthinking multitude,
as if that indolence, to which all are but too prone,
is to be the measure of truth. This is indeed to
degrade the minister’s office, to bring it to the level
�16 The Judgment of the Committee of Council
of that of the public performer, whose life is spent
in catering for the entertainment of the multitude.
Against this I earnestly protest. The clergy can
not justify their existence unless they unflinchingly
tell the truth, discreetly indeed, but frankly and
sincerely. Such is the only means whereby that
hollow religion which all good men deplore, and
which, there is to reason to fear, has, in some
instances, eaten into the very core of society, can be
expelled, and the church can address herself to the
elevation of our race.
J. D. La Touche,
Vicar
of
Stokesay, Salop.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The judgment of the committee of council in the case of Mr Voysey: some remarks
Creator
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La Touche, James Digues [1824-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Tentative date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1871?]
Identifier
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G5539
Subject
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Heresy
Trials
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The judgment of the committee of council in the case of Mr Voysey: some remarks), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Charles Voysey
Conway Tracts
Trials (Heresy)