Page:Remarks on Some Late Decisions Respecting the Colonial Church.djvu/16

 do I see that they could be said to have one which is common, or the same. A Wesleyan in Natal is probably liable to be censured or expelled from communion by the very same persons who would censure or expel, for like cause, a Wesleyan in England; just as a Presbyterian minister in Lancashire is, or was, liable to be cited before a Presbytery in Edinburgh, and to be declared out of communion by a General Assembly in Scotland. But in the English Church jurisdiction is diocesan and provincial; and a Churchman in Natal, even ordained and with cure of souls, is not subject to the same jurisdiction as if he were in London or York. Not even when he reaches the last appeal open to him does he find himself before the same Court. For nobody, I suppose, will contend (though I am here partly anticipating what I shall have to say by-and-by)—nobody will seriously contend that an appeal would lie from a sentence of deprivation by a Bishop of Natal or any Bishop similarly situated to the Queen in Council, or will confuse with such a proceeding an appeal from a civil tribunal, like that prosecuted by Mr. Long. In the former case there would be, in the eye of the law, no Court, no cause, no judgment, and therefore no appeal: in the latter, the appeal is not from the Bishop's judgment, nor to the Crown as an ecclesiastical judge. It is not then, I conceive, strictly accurate to say that inhabitants of a colony, who may call themselves members of the Church of England, or of the United Church of England and Ireland, are bound by the tenets and discipline of that Church by reason of their being actually a portion of it. They incur, in fact, by calling themselves so, no legal obligations which they would not have incurred