The Henson Journals

[84]

Saturday, September 17th, 1927.

The Quakers are not fewer, by the lowest computation, than one hundred thousand here in England.

Leslie. 'The snake in the Grass'

Works iv. 338 (1697)

I never knew before the authority on which the statement, that there were 100,000 Quakers in England at the end of the 17th century, rested. What Leslie's authority was I don't know. It may have been no more than current gossip.

Kenneth Hodgson came to lunch, and walked round the Park with me. I gave him much good advice, which he received with the demure acquiescence of oblivious youth!! He is so full of Enthusiasm at the prospect of getting to Oxford that it is impossible (impossible) not to be carried away.

The Times prints in large type a long letter from M.E. Aubrey addressed from 'The Baptist Union of Great Britain & Ireland', and headed ' Parliament & the Free Churches'. It denounces the Revised Book, announces immitigable opposition, & generally beats the Protestant drum.

"We therefore ask that the proposals should be divided into two measures, one dealing with non–controversial alterations & the other with the doctrinal changes. Otherwise we have no course open to us but to seek, as Englishmen & Protestants, the rejection of the whole".

How will this impudent secretary impress average folks? It is an odd situation that the practically unanimous opinion of the Episcopate should seem to count for nothing in the discussion. Yet in an episcopal church, the virtual repudiation of the episcopate means revolution.