The Henson Journals

Sat 29 September 1923

Volume 35, Pages 239 to 240

[239]

Saturday, September 29th, 1923.

Old Canon Hopkinson, whose resignation of Whitburn Rectory takes effect tomorrow, writes an affectionately worded letter, Thanking me for my kindness both as Dean and as Bishop.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in Carissima's bedroom.

Then I completed a sermon for the Freemasons.

I received from Laws, a cheque from the butcher for £13:10:0, the price of the pig. I gave him a commission of 5%: i.e. 13/6.

It is not quite clear what line it will be advisable to take in the "Introduction" which I must write for the little book in answer to the Bishop of Zanzibar. I want to ^be^ clear, and at the same time persuasive: and the combination is not easy.

Johnson and his wife arrived before dinner. They are both getting very old, and she is also lame and slightly deaf. He will be 79 next February so that his appearance is warranted by his years. We had some talk about the effect of the changes made in Oxford by the Commission will have on All Souls College. He tells me that the Bible Clerk are to be abolished, and their rooms occupied y "senior students", who will not be Fellows, nor indeed in the true sense members of the College at all, but men pursuing special studies for whom the College provides facilities in funds and lodgings. The use of the glorious Chapel has become a difficult question.

^[240]^

There are no greater dividers of the Church in the world than they that overdo in their pretendings to unity, and lay the Unity of the Church upon that which will not bear it.

R. Baxter. The Reformed Pastor. p. 371.

The most ignorant and simplest papist that is knoweth that the communion is not the mass.

Abp. Whitgift. Defence. Part iii. p. 95

I defy any one to see any difference between Mass as it is said in the parish church at Hickleton (with the acquiescence of ecclesiastical authority) and Mass as one might hear in in any village church in France.

Lord Halifax "Further Considerations" p.9. 1923

And we also deny that the elements still retain the nature of sacraments, when not used according to divine institution, that is, given by Christ's ministers, and received by His people; so that Christ in the consecrated bread ought not – cannot be kept and preserved to be carried about, because He is present only to the communicants.

Bishop Cosin 1676. Works iv. 174