The Henson Journals

[202]

Wednesday, November 29th, 1916.

849th day

The morning post brought me a further letter from Temple explaining his religious position still more carefully:

"On the whole, to make matters quite clear, the man with whose views I find myself in fullest sympathy is the Bishop of Oxford, though I think that he perpetually expresses himself in such a way as to make his opinions sound much more rigid and inelastic than in fact they are."

I have always suspected this essential agreement with Gore: and I think as much is probably the case with all the writers of "Foundations", including the editor, Streeter. We are 'up against' a new 'Oxford Movement', which labels itself 'Liberal Catholick', but which is properly neither liberal nor catholick. A press–cutting agency sends me an article which appeared in yesterday's "Daily Telegraph", headed "Authority and the Church". It is written on the text of my letter to the "Times", and generally supports me. The difficulty is to get the clergy to declare themselves. When once the Archbishops have spoken, it becomes a grave matter for the 'inferior clergy' to express dissent. They will certainly give offence by doing so; is there any probability that they will obtain support in any quarter? Many, very many, of the younger men, especially the Seminarists from Cuddesden, Ely, Mirfield, Wells, Lincoln, Lichfield, & other homes of sacerdotalist doctrine – are enthusiastic advocates of the new servility. They have used auricular confession since boyhood: their devotional life is fed by a materialistic sacramentalism: they shrink from self–direction as from the deadliest of sins!

[200]

I spent the morning in putting together materials for my lecture. The temptation to 'browze' promiscuously is very strong. Fuller's account of De Dominis is extremely entertaining.

I attended Mattins and Evensong: walked with Logic: & wrote letters. The Preface to Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World' contains some excellent good stuff:

"Now for King Henry VIII, if all the Pictures & Patterns of a merciless Prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this King."

The entire description of the gross Tudor is expressed with such severity that James I (always sensitive when kings were criticised) took alarm.

There is a reference to 'the Pictures of Queen Elizabeth, made by unskilful & common painters, which, by her own commandment, were knocked in pieces, & cast into the fire.' This is a curious illustration of the great Queen's personal vanity. There are some striking observations on the advantages of the union between England and Scotland, which the accession of James to the English throne had secured:–

'Neither ought we to forget, or neglect our thankfulness to God for the uniting of the Northern parts of Brittanny to the South, to wit, of Scotland to England, which, though they were severed but by small brooks and banks, yet, by reason of the long–continued War, and the cruelties exercised upon each other, they were infinitely severed. No, put all our petty grievances together, & heap them up to the height, they will appear as a Mole–hill, compared with the Mountain of this Concord.'

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