The Henson Journals

[14]

Tuesday, January 13th, 1931.

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Frost with intermittent snow showers. Derek writes to me about "John Inglesant", which he has read evidently with intelligence and appreciation. He is puzzled by the role which Father Holt plays, & wants to know who the Jesuits were, and what they stood for. I wrote to him at some length, & so expended time which, perhaps might have been more usefully employed. I am not sure however, whether the best use to which an old & baffled man can put his time is not the instruction of the young. If only one could be sure that they are worth it!

Mr Wm Geo. Harrison, the 'Old Age' Pensioner in Butterknowle, concerning whom Spencer Wade wrote to me in favourable terms, sends me a long & curiously interesting letter containing his religious history.

I sent to Shebbeare the letter which I wrote last night remonstrating with him for becoming Master of the Wear Valley Beagles. It is doubtful whether it will do any good: certain that it will provoke resentment. Why then did I write it? Mainly I suppose because it seemed intolerable that the Bishop should take no notice of that kind of behaviour.

[15]

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["]In the fourth and fifth centuries, when the independence and power of the episcopate had reached its maximum, it was still customary for a bishop in writing to a presbyter, to address him as 'fellow presbyter', thus bearing testimony to a substantial identity of order. Nor does it appear that this view was ever questioned until the era of the Reformation. In the western Church at all events it carried the sanction of the highest ecclesiastical authorities and was maintained even by popes and councils.["]

Lightfoot's Dissertation

I suspect that the use of the term 'fellow presbyter' was merely a conventional adoption of the language of S. Peter, and was never seriously intended or understood to suggest an essential identity of the two orders. Lightfoot himself says that "though the courtesy of language by which the presbyters were recognised as 'fellow presbyters' was not laid aside", yet "for all practical ends the independent supremacy of the episcopate was completely established by the principles & the measures of Cyprian". There are not lacking signs in our disordered generation of a revolt against the episcopal doctrine & practice of Cyprian.

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