Black Shepherds | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 28, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 33.

Black Shepherds.

A CURIOUS transaction recently occupied the attention of the Convocation at Canterbury. The Lower House presented a "gravamen," and a most serious one, to the Upper. A clergyman was recently convicted of bigamy. He was guilty even of worse crimes. The judge, who passed sentence of penal servitude, had taken the opportunity of animadverting severely on the weakness of ecclesiastical discipline. Only in the clerical profession could a criminal, when released, resume his profession, and find employment in district after district. In the army, the law, in medical practice, the profession can expel members who have disgraced it, but it is only now that the Church of England is even seeking permission to act thus in relation to disgraced ministers. The Bishop of Exeter rightly declared it to be monstrous that a man who had committed a gross crime should retain his orders.