Not only were his enemies thus forbidden to deprive him of his
salary, but their excommunication of him was made null and void;
it became, indeed, a subject of ridicule, and even a man so
nurtured in religious sentiment as John Keble confessed and
lamented that the English people no longer believed in
excommunication. The bitterness of the defeated found vent in the
utterances of the colonial metropolitan who had excommunicated
Colenso--Bishop Gray, "the Lion of Cape Town"--who denounced the
judgment as "awful and profane," and the Privy Council as "a
masterpiece of Satan" and "the great dragon of the English Church."
Even Wilberforce, careful as he was to avoid attacking anything
established, alluded with deep regret to "the devotion of the
English people to the law in matters of this sort."
Their failure in the courts only seemed to increase the violence of
the attacking party. The Anglican communion, both in England and
America, was stirred to its depths against the heretic, and various
dissenting bodies strove to show equal zeal.
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