Page:Remarks on Some Late Decisions Respecting the Colonial Church.djvu/11

 Natal," unless it be true that the word jurisdiction, or the phrase "authority to deprive," is used by the Judicial Committee in one sense, and by the Master of the Rolls in another. Beyond this, there are in the two judgments dicta which, taken in their plain grammatical sense, seem to militate against each other, and can with difficulty, I venture to say, be reduced, or tortured, into harmony by the most skilful master of language.

The Master of the Rolls's judgment contains the following passages:—

"It would be erroneous to say that the Crown can create no See or Diocese within such a colony as Natal, or Capetown."

"It is not declared by the judgment of the Privy Council that the Bishop of Capetown has no effective ecclesiastical jurisdiction, unless in the word 'effective' is included the word 'irresponsible.'

"The Bishop of Capetown, the Bishop of Natal, the bishops of all colonies similarly circumstanced—i.e. having an established Legislature, but no established Church—can, as regards the ministers and congregations of the Church of England within their diocese, exercise all the powers of a bishop; they can ordain, confirm, and consecrate; they can do more; they can visit, investigate, reprove, suspend, and deprive; and if, in so doing, they keep within the due scope of their authority, as established by the discipline of the Church of England as by law established, and proceed in the exercise of that authority in a manner consonant with the principles of justice, their acts are valid, and will be enforced by the legal tribunals.

"The district or colony of Natal is a district presided over by a bishop of the Church of England, which is properly termed a see or diocese; the ministers, deacons, and priests, officiating within that district, and also all the laymen professing to be members of the Church of England, constitute not a Church in Natal in union and full communion with