The Henson Journals

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Thursday, October 4th, 1923.

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Dr Hort once suggested to Bishop Creighton in conversation that the true title for a book about English Church history from 1534–1662 would be "Experiments in Anglicanism". The Bishop, writing to Dr Cobb, approves the suggestion, & adds "The experiments are not yet finished. There was a lull from 1662 to 1832: now we are in the thick of a period of revision of them. Previous experiments ended in nonconformity of various sorts. Can this be averted now?" (Life. ii. 373) Surely the suggested title wd have been misleading. Anglicanism was fixed in its essentials when the Elizabethan Prayer Book was adopted in 1559 and the Elizabethan articles in 1562. Add the passing of the Canons in 1604, and the system of the Church of England was complete. Nothing of note was done in 1662, and the projected revision of 1689 miscarried. The great Apologies of the Church of England – Jewel's & Hooker's – were written in the 16th century. It is really quite false to the facts to picture the ecclesiastical situation in England as "experimental" up to the Restoration. On the contrary, the "golden age" of Anglicanism was the period between the Defeat of the Armada in 1588 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1641. But this version of English Church history as one of unsettlement falls in admirably with the policy of those who deny all authority to the Church of England, & seek to transform it.

[5]

I finished the "Introduction", and despatched it to the publishers by the evening post. It is very different from what I designed when I started to write, but it must serve.

The Church Gazette contains a reprint of the Archbishop of Armagh's excellent letter to the "Morning Post", which I heard of, but had not yet seen. His concluding paragraph runs thus:–

"Further, it is forgotten that this particular type of religion (i.e. Anglo–Catholicism) has been put to more repeated testing through the ages than any other kind, and has failed most signally. It is not too much to say that almost every advance, moral and intellectual, in the history of mankind, has been the result of a revolt against it".

That is decisive enough.

J. St Loe Strachey writes "I have been meaning for the last week to write & tell you what delight I got from your admirable article "The Go–as–you–please Church". It was unanswerable". He asks me whether I will write him an article on "Jeremy Taylor", & I rashly assented! It is these little "side shows" which fritter away one's time and energy. Probably, no one ever did anything permanent who had not strength of will enough to refuse to "turn to the right hand or to the left" until his task was finished. But I seem caught into a machine which deals with me as it will.

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