The Henson Journals

[48]

Monday, February 5th, 1917.

917th day

The frost is harder than ever, the morning very white, bright, & bitter. I spent the morning in writing two important letters 1) to Mr Robson, the Vicar of West Malvern, answering his letter as to the Bishop of Worcester's Lenten counsels, 2) to the Bishop of Manchester, answering his request for advice as to the best course to adopt in order to restrain the Archbishops in their frenzied advocacy of the autonomist scheme recommended by the Selborne Report. Of the last I made a copy. Then, after lunch, I went on a tour of inspection to the quarters of the troops now in Durham. At the carpet factory I found Colonel Herne [Hearne], who showed me everything, & finally walked me to the officers' head–quarters, where I had tea with him & his colleagues.

Baxter's treatise, "The true Catholic and Catholic Church described; and the vanity of the Papists, and all other schismatics, that confine the Catholic Church to their Sect, discovered and shamed", is really very well worth reading. The Preface is dated December 12th 1659.

"I must profess, after long, impartial studies, if I were of the opinion that most of the Christian world are out of the Catholic Church, I could not believe that the papists are in it".

"It is not the Papists that are the catholic church, nor is it the Greeks, no, nor the Protestants, much less the new prelates alone; but it is all Christians throughout the world, of whom the Protestants are the soundest part, but not the whole".

"To believe that Christ died, & made so much ado for so small a part of the world, as comes not to one if forty, or fifty, or an hundred thousand, is next to flat "infidelity" itself, which thinks he died for none at all".

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