The Henson Journals

[179]

Friday, March 19th, 1926.

Carafa laid down that the sources of heresy were threefold: bad preaching, bad books, and bad ways of living.

v. Pastor's Hist. of the Popes. X. 421.

No doubt these were potent enough, but there were at least two other causes of "heresy", which the ardent Carafa did not perceive – the intellectual rottenness of the established theology, the violence done to national feeling by the established ecclesiastical system. The Medieval Church fell, not merely because it had fallen into a very corrupt condition, but also because it no longer commanded the respect of educated men, or satisfied the requirements of patriotism. Europe had outgrown medievalism both in the intellectual and in the political sphere. The scandals of the Papal Curia, & the enormous practical abuses of the hierarchy were, no doubt, fruitful sources of popular disaffection, & they predisposed men to listen to the moral and doctrinal criticisms which the Reformers hurled at the Church, but they could not of themselves have provoked the Reformation, or caused the disruption of Western Christendom.

[180]

Knight sent me a cutting from "The Christian World" (March 11th 1926) headed "Younger Voices: the Rt. Rev. Herbert Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham", which was a descriptive account of my precious performance in the Westminster Chapel, & of myself. It was not precisely flattering, though not intended to be unkind.

"Of personal magnetism, appeal, charm, there is scarcely anything. His appeal is to the intellect, & it is purely through his intellectual personality, if one may use such a term, that he arouses one's interest and curiosity. His clear voice, with its tone of persuasive but firm reasonableness & its hints of scholarly culture, is the only physical point of contact between him & his audience. He does not bring with him into the pulpit any air of "proud prelacy" in spite of his episcopal robes, but he does stand in that atmosphere of aloofness which belongs to the man whose highly trained mind is habitually employed on great public issues."

There is much more, but all with the same insistence on my nakedly intellectual quality: whereas the fact is that I suffer from "cardiac affection" more than most men, & am ludicrously dependent on emotional & sentimental conditions.

[181] [symbol]

I wrote letters, and read all the morning: at 2 p.m. I left the Castle, & motored to Barnard Castle, where I confirmed 28 boys in the chapel of the School. After tea with Mrs Coombes, I returned to Auckland.

Rather to my disappointment the "Spectator" disapproves the conduct of the House of Lords in throwing out the Shrewsbury Bishopric Measure. The fact is that the personal influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury is so great that the non–ecclesiastical world needs no other assurance of the soundness of anything than that his Grace approves of it. More disconcerting is the evident alarm of Liberal Churchmen like Major, who are just white with fear at any course, however right in itself, which may have the effect of precipitating the disaster of Disestablishment. They do not realize the change that has been brought about by the demonstration provided by the short experience of Labour government, that the Church can no longer depend on an honest exercise of the Royal Perogative: nor do they understand that no court, however constituted, could do other than condemn them as hereticks, if once this teaching were brought into legal question. But they are timorous and bat's–eyed folk.

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