The Henson Journals

[22]

Thursday, December 19th, 1918.

A most lovely sun–rise. The flooded river, curving through the green country, looked like molten silver, and the sky was a changing pageant of colour. After breakfasting & doing my letters in bed, I got up, & came down. The sun was shining so alluringly that I donned an overcoat, and walked with Ernest in the garden.

I read through Gunning's and Burnet's answers to the "Naked Truth". Both were anonymous, & in neither case has the shadow of anonymity been altogether removed. They are not ineffectual from their own point of view. Croft was very vulnerable in detail, & probably his learning was neither accurate nor extensive. He was past 70, and his reading had probably not been kept up. But his opponents ignore the salient features of the situation to which he addressed himself. They assume that only the mulish obstinacy of the Nonconformists is at fault for the admittedly perilous state of religious discord, and they denounce as a blend of absurdity and treason the suggestion that some fault may lie also in the persecuting policy of the Church. Croft's true apology is provided by the actual course of events. The system, which he desired to change, had to be changed, and was changed at the Revolution.

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