The Henson Journals

[465]

Saturday, October 30th, 1915.

453rd day

This day was altogether wasted, for I was feeling utterly wretched. After lunch I came to the decision that it would be impossible for me to carry out the engagements which I had made for tomorrow. Accordingly I caused telegrams to be sent to Canon Scott at Norton, & to Mr Loney at St. James's, Stockton, pleading indisposition, & cancelling my promises. The Bishop of Jarrow came in to see me. He said that his son has become a Roman Catholic: & is going to Rome as a Seminarist. Apparently, he fell under Papist influences at Oxford, & now finds the conduct of Germany a full confirmation of all their calumnies about Luther, & the Reformation, of which Luther was the protagonist. It is an odd thing, not easy of explanation, that Luther's blunders should provoke such deep & lasting resentment, while those of his adversaries, not only graver in themselves but far less excusable in the circumstances, should by comparison be so easily condoned. Clement VII passes muster as the resolute [467] champion of Holy Matrimony against the lustful violence of Henry VIII, while Luther is pilloried as the complaisant sensualist who scrupled not to sacrifice Holy Matrimony itself in order to secure the political support of Philip of Hesse! Yet Clement is credibly believed to have suggested bigamy to Henry, & owed his failure less to the vices of the Tudor than to his extraordinary regard to Matrimony; & Luther's unfortunate 'opinion', which condoned Philip's bigamy, was based on an honest but mistaken reading of the Bible. Besides, while Clement claimed a special measure of Spiritual illumination & a supreme authority in the domain of morals: Luther made no such extraordinary claims, & was entitled to the excuses which ordinary men may offer for their mistakes. Perhaps the explanation of the difference lies in the fact that Luther was an individual: Clement an institution. The one loses power as time passes, the other is always in some sense a new force, for it adapts itself afresh to the new situations of history.

The sons of Bishops would seem to yield with special facility to the Roman appeal. Archbishop Benson, coiner of the notorious phrase 'The Italian Mission', could not retain his son Hugh within the Anglican pale: nor could Archbishop Maclagan restrain his son Eric from renouncing his father's communion: nor could Bishop Thorold of Winchester communicate his own anti–Roman conviction to his son. Young Quirk will find himself welcomed into the Roman fold by a squad of bishop–born neophytes. Is it that the atmosphere of episcopal palaces is unfavourable to depth of conviction? or that the view of Anglicanism gained therein is not helpful to constancy in the Anglican profession?

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