cuap. 1] THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS 1433 
decided by the Courts according to the agreement, or 
according to the legislative enactment. 
It is the more important that the real status and condition 
»f the Colonial Churches should be constantly present to the 
mind, because, as it appears to me, erroneous notions prevail 
bo a great extent on this subject. Some persons seem to 
imagine that they were founded and endowed in order that 
the association in each Colony should form a separate and 
independent Church. So far has this been carried that it 
seems to be supposed that, if the members of such Colonial 
Church, or a majority of them, should so think fit, they might, 
if dissatisfied with the person whom the Crown has appointed 
to be their bishop, withdraw from his superintendence and 
elect a bishop for themselves. 
That any number of persons, if they so pleased, might, 
though holding the doctrines of the Church of England, reject, 
either wholly or in part, the discipline and government of the 
Church, though they preserved still the creed, faith, and 
doctrines of the Church of England, is unquestionable. Such 
an association might elect their own bishop; they might 
divide the district in which they reside into sees, and elect 
a bishop for each ; they might parcel the district out into 
parishes and appoint a minister to officiate in each parish ; 
all this they might do, and all this would be perfectly legal, 
and all this would be binding on the members of the associa- 
tion who assented to it—as it is now in the Episcopal Church 
in Scotland, which is not, and by the Act of Union is pro- 
hibited from being, a part of the Church of England, and in 
which the Crown is prohibited from appointing or nominating 
any bishop. If dissensions arose amongst the members of 
such a Church, they must have recourse to the civil tribunals ; 
but when they did so the question would be tried by their 
own rules and ordinances, which would have to be proved 
by evidence in the usual manner. But this association would 
not be a branch of the Church of England, although it might 
call itself in union and full communion with it! By the law 
¢ Judged by this standard, the Australian churches would already have 
seased to be parts of the Church of England, and the judgement is incon- 
sistent here with Merriman v. Williams, 7 App. Cas. 484, which recognizes 
shat these differences in the election of bishops or the constitution of new 
soclesiastical tribunals in the Church of the Province of South Africa (see 
C. 979, pp. 36, 37) would not sever connexion with the Church of Eng- 
land, since these differences were unavoidable, but severance was effected 
by the rule (Art. I (3)) that the Church did not follow in matters of doc- 
trine the decisions of the English Courts.