The Henson Journals

[340]

Thursday, November 26th, 1925.

By way of "drawing a bow at a venture" i.e. angling for opinions on "The Bishoprick", I sent copies to:

Lord Haldane

" Oxford

" Balfour

" Selborne

" Hugh Cecil

Bishop Talbot

George Macmillan

I have certainly a sufficient personal acquaintance with them all to justify me in sending them anything that I have written, but whether they will rise to my bait remains to be seen!

Lord Thurlow called, & assisted to dissipate my morning. I gave him a copy of my "Notes". Then I wrote a number of letters, & ended the time by achieving nothing!

After lunch I walked in the Park for more than an hour. The crispness of the freezing snow, the brilliance of the sun–setting, & the wintry look of the pit–ponies & cattle gave piquancy of interest to my constitutional. Why should I not definitely assume what is probable as any terrestrial course can be that this is the last setting of my ministry?

As I read More's denunciations of the early Protestants the parallel between their situation and that of the Communists who were condemned to various terms of imprisonment yesterday is strangely and suggestively close. And what changes they portended! What do these portend?

[341]

For, so help me God, as I nothing find effectual amongst them all, but a shameless boldness, and unreasonable railing with Scriptures wrested away, and made to minister them matter unto their jesting, scoffing, and outrageous ribaldry, not only against every estate here on earth and that against them most that be most religious in living, but also against all those saints in heaven, and against the blessed Body of Christ in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. In which things they fare as folk that trust in nothing else, but to weary all writers at last with endless and importune babbling, & to overwhelm the whole world with words.

Sir Thomas More. Preface to the Confutation 351

Translate the whole controversy from the religious to the political–economic sphere, and is not this precisely what we feel about these disastrous sectaries of Communism? It is as impossible to argue with them as More found it to argue with Tindal's followers: and for the same reason, there were no common terms in the discussion. Controversy can only proceed on the basis of large fundamental agreement.

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