The Henson Journals

[59]

Monday, September 10th, 1928.

Christianity was proscribed, not as a religion, but as interfering with that organization of society which the Empire inculcated and protected…… The proscription exercised a strong influence on the Church, causing it to unite still more closely through mutual sympathy & the tendency among the persecuted to help one another: but it was unable to diminish seriously the number of the Christians. It merely made the Church stronger, more self–reliant, & more spirited.

Ramsay, "The Church in the Roman Empire" p. 372, 374

Cock went off after breakfast: & was soon followed by Mrs. Rolt & her two boys.

I worked at the Congress Paper, but I cannot get on. I don't really know what I want to say!

Lacey writes to me: ––

I am not happy about Cosmo going to Canterbury. My feelings about him have always been queerly mixed,—agreement without confidence. There are others who suggest much less agreement & very great confidence. Some years ago I would not have liked to see you in [60] that throne: all this year I have been desiring you."

This is equally surprising and disconcerting, for Lacey is certainly a very rigid "Anglo–Catholick", and that he should profess confidence in me suggests that I must have given a very false impression of myself to him.

The Secretary of the 'Church Reform League' sends me a very civilly expressed invitation to join that body, but I dictated a polite but decisive refusal. What have I to do with those bustling agitators to whom we owe The Enabling Act?

The situation is extraordinarily perplexing. On the one hand, the tests of Church membership which alone can be observed – Communicants, parish electors &c – are fearfully untrustworthy. On the other hand the very notion of the spiritual society, such as, on any showing, a Christian Church must be, is contradicted by the action of the House of Commons. If I believed in the possibility of maintaining the Establishment self–respectingly in the future, I would bring myself to acquiescence in the situation which has been disclosed, but I cannot bring myself to believe this.

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