THE BISHOP OF NATAL ON THE CAPETOWN TRIAL. To THE
EDITOR OF " THE SPECTATOR."
SIR,—In your remarks last week upon the Capetown judgment
the following passage occurs :— ,
"With regard to the phrase of the Second Article, 'reconciling His Father to us,' no doubt they did prove that the Bishop of Natal disliked and declined to use it, preferring to substitute the phrase 'reconciling us to His Father,' and here was the only case, we think, of clear legal conviction. -. . . However, the Bishop had declined the language of the Second Article, and technically, we conclude, he was, therefore, in the wrong."
Will you allow me to draw your attention to the following passage which occurs in my letter to the Bishop of Capetown of August 7, 1861 ?
"As to the former portion of the Second Article, I am sorry that the expression is there used, 'to reconcile the Father to us,' because it is not Scriptural, and it is liable to be misinterpreted. But these words of our Church cannot be meant to contradict or set aside the Apostle's own words, when he says that ' all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ,' that ' God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.' There is, of course, a sense, in which a father displeased requires to be reconciled to his child, though tenderly loving him all the while that he corrects and manifests his anger towards him. I have taught that our Lord came, at His Father's own command, to reconcile His Father and our Father in this sense to us; and I have used the expression on p. 89, our reconciled, or, rather, reconciling Father and Mend.' "
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