The Henson Journals
Fri 23 August 1929
Volume 48, Pages 274 to 276
[274]
Friday, August 23rd, 1929.
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The Journal of Theological Studies becomes ever more technical and disconcerting. An ever increasing number of clever young men is being turned on to the examination and editing of the multifarious scraps which have come down to us from Christian antiquity. Nothing is too small for their attention: nothing too trivial for their interest. They dogmatize as boldly on a fragment of papyrus as the anthropologists on a f tooth or a jaw–bone! The most formidable suggestions flow easily from their pens, & the whole argument is to the non–technical student infinitely tiresome and unintelligible. But to the students themselves it is of critical importance. It is a frightened disgust of this sacred antiquarianism, (from which the sanctions of belief must be derived by Protestants) that gives its most alluring aspect to the Claims of the Great Mother of Rome, who speaks with authority & has no use for these busy & meretricious scholars. For, indeed, the multitude and audacity of the revolutionary suggestions which these scholars advance are creating in the general mind a despondent feeling that there is no security in any religious position.
[275]
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I motored to Newcastle, left my watch for repairs at the goldsmith, had my hair cut, and arranged that Leng should take the car to the repairers for some small matters on Monday. Then I returned, traversing the distance of nearly 25 miles in 45 minutes.
Rain fell sufficiently to hinder any play but not ̭to̭ restrain a number of visitors.
The Bishop of Jarrow came to dine & sleep. We spent a good deal of time in discussing the more urgent requirements of this unhappy diocese. The situation does not grow easier for being discussed. And, beyond all question, the root of all our graver difficulties is the lack of clergy. There is no sign whatever of any improvement in the recruiting for Holy Orders. If it were not for our diocesan grants, we should hardly have any Ordination candidates at all in this diocese.
Mr Speed packed the portrait, and sent it to the station. He proposes to carry it to town tomorrow with himself. Thus a considerable interruption of my normal employments will at last be ended: & I shall be able to resume my work. However there is the comfort of knowing that the portrait has been got out of the way.
[276]
"The words (in the oath of abjuration) which excluded fears were not intentionally directed at them; nor wd it seem that the question of the quality of religious belief apart from its political significance was ever raised before the case of Mr Bradlaugh. Nonconformists were never disqualified as such, except in so far as their religious convictions prevented them from taking any form of oath. The Acts exempting Quakers & others who were in this way of thinking were designed 'to put Quakers on a footing with all other dissenters in England'.'
v. Anson's Law & Custom of the Constitution
vol I. Parliament. p. 93
In Foxcroft's "Life & Letters of Lord Halifax" (vol I. p. 106) there is the following note:–
'The House of Commons had left it undecided whether the Act (i.e. the Test Act) extended to its own members as such. The Judges decided that it did so apply.'
This view does not appear to have prevailed. But the Toleration Act exacted orthodoxy in the liberated sectaries.