The Henson Journals

[38]

Wednesday, May 2nd, 1923.

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My talk with Lang last night left me with the impression that we are very far apart. He is obsessed with the notion that the 'Alpha & Omega' of ecclesiastical statesmanship is to avoid secession. I hold that only secession can save the Church of England. The test of statesmanship is to create a situation in which the right persons will secede, & enough of them .

Convocation, i.e. the Upper House, concerned itself with the Workers' Educational Association. Temple led off, and was seconded by Strong. I followed with some gentle criticism, & then the Bishop of Sodor & man bleated after his fashion: and the Archbishop wound up. Then we considered in camerâ the question of allowing the suffragan bishops to take part in our debates, and unanimously decided not to do so. I returned to Darlington, where William met me with the car. The weather was brilliant and warm: the country looked bewitchingly beautiful.

I took occasion of the gathering of the bishops at Bishopthorpe to sound them as to the advisability of using the session of the National Assembly in July, when the House of Bishops will have nothing to do, for a thorough discussion of the crucially important question of the Reform of the Courts. I found that without exception they were well–disposed towards this suggestion.

[39]

Even in the 4th and 5th centuries, when the independence & power of the episcopate had reached its maximum, it was still customary for a bishop writing to a presbyter to address him as 'fellow–presbyter', thus bearing testimony to a substantial identity of order. Nor does it appear that this view was ever questioned until the era of the Reformation. In the western Church at all events it carried the sanction of the highest ecclesiastical authorities and was maintained even by popes and councils…As a general rule, however, even those writers who maintain a substantial identity in the offices of the bishop and presbyter reserve the power of ordaining the former. This distinction in fact may be regarded as a settled maxim of Church polity in the fourth and later centuries…

As Cyprian crowned the edifice of episcopal power, so also was he the first to put forward without relief or disguise these sacerdotal assumptions; & so uncompromising was the tone in which he asserted them, that nothing was left to his successors but to enforce his principles & reiterate his language…By the union of Gentile sentiment with the ordinances of the Old Dispensation, the doctrine of an exclusive priesthood found its way into the Church of Christ…Nor is this the only instance where a false conception has seemed to maintain a long–lived domination over the church.'

Bp. Lightfoot. "The Christian Ministry".

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