The Henson Journals

[376]

Monday, February 28th, 1927.

A dull wet morning, unpromising enough to provide an excuse for "crying off" my promise to attend the function of the 1st Bishop of Blackburn's enthronement. I send a hypocritical telegram accordingly: and then set myself to clearing up things [by] way of leaving the slate clean before going to London for the Bishops' Meeting.

I wrote at some length to Fawkes: and walked round the Park in the afternoon.

Arthur Headlam has another very useful and well–written letter in the Times. His experience as a Theological Professor at Oxford, in which he not only accumulated much knowledge, but also mastered the didactic method, serves him in good stead. An exact acquaintance with theology is not a common profession in these days: but the kind of discussions which Prayer Book Revision occasions really requires it: and Headlam is at a great advantage in possessing it in rather unusual degree. But, of course, his arguments are addressed in vain to the Romanizing faction with whom he contends, and probably it is true to say that they fail to meet the precise case (a truly preposterous one) which the Romanizers present. Given the Divine institution of the episcopate as the constituting factor of the Catholic Church: and given the Divine institution of a supremacy therein vested in S. Peter, & in the Bishops of Rome, his successors: and given a continuing development inspired by the Holy Spirit within the Catholick Church – how can you simply sweep away as either erroneous or without obligation the entire mass of dogma & practice distinctive of the Roman Communion at the present time? The assumptions are no doubt extremely questionable, but if they be made they do carry the super–structure reared on them. I do not myself see how the Anglo–Catholicks can, on their professed principles, yield obedience to the command of a merely National Hierarchy: nor do I think obedience yielded under the pressure of public opinion will be able to maintain itself against the pressure of the logic. The reason why extremist minorities always win in the end against the majorities, who begin by repudiating and end by obeying them, is, precisely, their possession of the logical advantage. The muddleheadedness of the most part of men blinds them to the critical importance of making sure that the assumptions of conduct are sound.

---