The Henson Journals

[75]

Thursday, March 4th, 1920.

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"The Renaissance and the Reformation lie in the transition from the medieval to the modern age of European civilization; they do not belong to the modern age. This is peculiarly true of the Reformation".

Moore. p. 368.

"The question has been much controverted whether the Reformation is to be reckoned to the Middle Ages or to modern history. Not a little may be urged in support of either position".

Williston Walker. p. 481.

Americans are, perhaps, more ready to "cut the painter" with the past than Europeans, on whom the hand of the past rests more heavily. W. Walker allows that "the Reformation broke the dominance of the sacramental system which had controlled Christianity East & West certainly since the second century".

"Yet if one strikes a balance, & remembers, also, how largely the worldly tendencies of humanism were suppressed by the Reformation the movement in its first century & a half must be reckoned in great measure a continuance of the Middle Ages".

On the whole the theology of the Reformers is more remote from modern ways of thought than that of the Fathers, and, perhaps, than that of the Schoolmen. At least while it does not seem quite absurd to propose the latter, the former has only to be named in order to be laughed out of court. There are still readers of "the Fathers", but where can one find any who will or can read Calvin, Luther, Zwingli's, & the rest?

[76] I started to work on a sermon for the Congregationalists in Bradford: but I made woefully little progress. My old power of sermon–composition seems to have vanished. Ella went to Leysters to address a Mothers' Meeting. Wright came to lunch: and afterwards Mr Bickham came to explain why it was practically impossible to have Easter Offerings at Ledbury!

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