EPISCOPACY IN SCOTLAND.
[To TRH EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR:I Sin,—Pray allow me to disown the protest you have attributed to me, perhaps by mistake for Canon Tristram. I am not a member of Convocation, and was not present at the debate you refer to. If I had been privileged to take part in it, I must have supported the censure passed on Dr. Beckles, and the English prelatists who invited him to Scotland. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and in bishops, as its chief executive and re- presentative officers ; but I have no faith in bishops in partibus,--- bishops without a see and without relations to the body of the Church. I know what confirmation is, when administered by an actual bishop in the diocese committed to his oversight: I can understand the Pope sending his blessing by telegraph to people who believe him to be the Vicar of Christ, but 1 fail to conceive what is meant by fetching an episcopal blessing from London to Edinburgh, bottled up in an English clergyman, by reason of his having once been a bishop in Western Africa. If I lived in Scot- land, I think I should prefer Presbyterianism to the ultra-sacer- dotal theory, which supposes a man to be charged with episcopacy at his consecration like a Leyden vial with electricity, and to go about the world ever after emitting it by sparks, wherever a com- munication can be effected. Surely a pair of cast-off lawn sleeves
would do as well.—I am, Sir, &c., GP:OROE TREVOR.
[" Canon Trevor" was a mistake for " Canon Tristram." We cannot see the distinction in principle between a Bishop attached traditionally to a certain district, and through the district to its Churches, and a Bishop triditionally attached directly to Churches
without mention of any geographical area.—En. Spectator.] -
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