"RELIGION WITHOUT THE CREEDS " [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR, —A correspondent (on my article " Religion without the Creeds ") " complains " of my statement that the Bishop of Birmingham, in dismissing Italy and all the Mediterranean , peoples with contempt, was lacking in the historical sense. He omits the ground of my criticism, and his only answer is to put into my mouth a statement which I never made. My, thesis was that contempt for the Italy of Michelangelo and Dante is foolish, and I emphasized this by speaking of " that Italy from which the first Christian mission came to a Britain populated by (savages and barbarians." Your correspondent thereupon says that I show my " ignorance " by thinking that there were no Christians in Britain before St. Augustine. The interesting point is that I myself did not mention St. Augustine in that connexion ; and that as soon as I said " first Christian mission " he himself promptly discovered that the cap fitted St. Augustine. Why ? How does he know I was not referring to one of those earlier missionaries sent by Pope Celestine, also of Italy ?
Because he knows very well that the first outstanding historical mission, in the broad sense of the single clause which I gave and the subject, was that first mission of St. Augustine whom the cap fitted. Anything else, in the sense of the context, would be a meticulous quibble, and any ordinary intelligent reader would understand that I meant this and no more.
And here an amusing thing happens. Your correspondent tells me that if I had read Bede I should know better. Bede writes, " When Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, assumed the episcopal throne, he recovered a Church which had been constructed by the original labours of Roman believers."
I thank your correspondent for reminding me of some of Bede's rich contexts by his easy repetition of its name.—I am,
Previous page
