THE INCARNATION AND THE BIBLE 83

"So then we are ambassadors for Christ" (20). St. Paul uses the
regular word employed in the Greek-speaking world to describe the
emperor's legate. He calls himself a legate in the Kingdom of God,
an accredited representative of the Emperor Jesus. The reference is
primarily to the apostles and to the ministry of the New Covenant
whose glorious superiority to the ministry of the Old Paul has elabor-
ated in chapter 3 of this epistle. Nevertheless, these words may be
applied to the duty of the whole Church.
God is not content with devising and effecting our reconciliation.
He also makes provision for its promulgation. Its heralds are mortal
men. He gives us the reconciliation itself ; He gives us the ministry
of reconciliation (18) ; and He gives us the message of reconciliation
(19). Whereas He made His peace with us through Christ, He makes
His appeal to others through us (20). For our sake He made Christ
sin; but for Christ's sake He makes us ambassadors. The business
of the Christian minister is not just to lead the worship, to comfort the
sad, to shepherd the flock and .to teach the faithful, but to implore
men and women to be reconciled to God. Our message is a declaration
first : " All is of God. God has acted in Christ. God has reconciled
the world to Himself. God has not imputed your trespasses to you.
God has made Christ sin". Then it becomes an urgent invitation:
"We beseech you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God".
The transformation is complete. The rebel who has become a
friend, becomes his former enemy's ambassador. Once we are "in
Christ " for salvation, we are " for Christ " for service. Although
God is the author of our reconciliation, and Christ is its agent, we poor,
sinful, stupid, stammering mortals are its privileged ambassadors.

The Incarnation and the Bible

A SYMPOSIUM EDITED BY THE REV. G. w. BROMILEY,
M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt.
INTRODUCTION
may be remembered that in the last issue of The Churchman it was
ItheTsuggested that there should be further discussion of section iv of
article on the Authority of Scripture in The New Bible Commentary.
The main drift of this section is to the effect that the problem of the
Bible should be " studied in the light of the similar problem of the
incarnation ", and that " with the incarnation as our guide, it may well
be that the way will open up to a truer and fuller understanding, one
which is orthodox, and which safeguards the authority and integrity of
the Scriptures, not in content only but also in historical form ". Contri-
butions have now been invited and submitted by three theological
teachers, in which there is a preliminary discussion and development of
the comparison. Rather strangely, attention focuses on the objective
84 THE CHURCHMAN
nature of Scripture rather than its subjective effect, which is perhaps
the starting point in the article quoted. And for the most part, it is
hardly possible to go beyond general considerations : whether the
comparison ought to be made at all, and if so in what general context
and with what general conclusion. The articles have been arranged in
what appears to be the logical order dictated by their substance, and
in a final survey an attempt is made to assess the views and arguments
advanced and to come to some sort of conclusion. The problem has
not been exhaustively treated. Indeed, a detailed consideration has
hardly begun. But the basic issues have been uncovered and it is
hoped that these preliminary studies will show the direction which we
ought to take.
I
BY THE REV. J. W. WENHAM, M.A., B.D.
Vice-Principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol
R. BROMILEY'S article seems to me to be admirable, but in point
D of its actual wording I think that his suggestion that " a true
doctrine of history and revelation in the Bible will be formulated only
when the problem is studied in the light of the similar problem of the
incarnation " needs to be accepted with reserve. There is indeed a
remarkable parallel between the catholic doctrine of the Person of
Christ and the catholic doctrine of Scripture. In the one, two natures,
Divine and human, are bound together in One Person; in the other,
two authors, Divine and human, have combined at every point to
produce a single scripture, which is truly the Word of God and truly
the work of man. Yet it is a false methodology to assume such a
parallelism a priori, or to try to apply the parallel in every detail. A
truly Biblical Theology must proceed by strict induction from the
Bible itself, each doctrine being built up independently, without
allowing suspected parallels to affect the inductive process.
That the catholic doctrines are the Biblical doctrines, I have little
doubt. The Bible's owu doctrine of Scripture that emerges from an
examination of the many hundreds of relevant references-particularly
the references of our Lord and the New Testament writers to the Old
Testament-is (to my mind) one of the plainest doctrines in the Bible.
Without any qualifications Scripture is regarded as being true in its
record of facts and authoritative in its interpretations, because the
God of Truth is the ultimate author working through the human
authors. It is the great merit of B. B. Warfield's collected articles,
recently reprinted as The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, that
this induction is carried through with massive scholarship and relent-
less logic. (In the nature of the case it is impossible to summarize an
inductive argument without robbing it of its force. But everyone who
wishes to study the doctrine of inspiration seriously has a bounden
duty to master this volume.) Warfield is simply the latest of a long
line of great Christian thinkers, Biblical, Patristic, Mediaeval, Roman
Catholic and Protestant, who till the nineteenth century were unani-
mous on this doctrine in spite of their radical differences on so much
else. It may be possible to improve on even the best statements of
 THE INCARNATION AND THE BIBLE 85
the catholic doctrine by careful refinements in the statement of detail,
but to allow the foreseeable difficulties in the defence of the doctrine
to cause one to abandon the doctrine is simply to abandon Biblical
Theology.
With regard to the catholic doctrine of the Person of Christ, I feel
less competent to judge, though I know no reason to doubt the historic
doctrine and I have strong suspicions that the modern tendencies to
depart from the Chalcedonian position arise, not from a Biblical
induction more thorough than that of the early Fathers, but from a
realization of the difficulties attendant upon its retention.
The heart of the trouble in the modern theological debate seems to
lie in the pressure that so-called scientific criticism has brought to bear
on theologians to make them modify the historic positions. In the
Liberal era this was simple enough. Infallible Scripture was thrown
overboard as demonstrably absurd. Our Lord's testimony to the Old
Testament created some momentary difficulty, as it was scarcely
possible to deny His belief in its Divine authorship. But with the aid
of Kenosis, His infallibility was readily jettisoned also. Now, however,
with the whole Church turning to Biblical Theology, the problem is far
more difficult. How can we assert the authority of the Bible and
accept scientific criticism ? If I understand it aright, the modern line
is to try to show from the Bible itself that our Lord was necessarily
fallible--and of course the scriptures also. See, for instance, T. F.
Torrance's recent attempt to confute Warfield by use of the notion that
Christ assumed a fallen humanity. 1 But, whatever the truth may be
with regard to our Lord's humanity, His infallibility is a clear Biblical
doctrine, and to abandon it is to abandon Biblical Theology. The
Synoptic Gospels represent our Lord as saying : " Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my words shall in no wise pass away" (Mark 13.
31, etc.) ; " Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine,
and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, which built his house
upon the rock" (Matt. 7. 24, cf. Luke 6. 46 ff.) ; "All things have
been delivered unto me of my Father" (Matt. 11. 27, Luke 10. 22);
He says of the law, "One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away"
(Matt. 5. 18), and then He proceeds with His magisterial, " But I say
unto you". The Fourth Gospel repeats over and over again such
statements as, "My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me" (7.
16) ; " As the Father taught me, I speak" (8. 28) ; " I say truth . . .
the words of God " (8. 46f.) ; " The words which thou gavest me I
have given unto them" (17. 8); "To this end am I come into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is
of the truth heareth my voice " (18. 37).
If Biblical Theology is to be followed, both the infallibility of Christ
and the infallibility of Scripture must be retained ; and, in addition,
1 Scottish Journal of Theology, March 1954, p. 106. J. A. T. Robinson, The
Body, p. 38n, refers to the "disreputable ancestry" of this theory of our Lord's
fallen humanity. Though ancestry and associations provide no disproof of a
doctrine, it is well to be wary of a theory originating in Adoptionism, and taken
up by Irvingites and Seventh Day Adventists, before using it to confute long
established doctrines. Incidentally, if the notion of fallen humanity requires
that our Lord should be guilty of error like other men, does it not also require
that He should be guilty of sin like other men ? What then is left of His Deity ?
86 THE CHURCHMAN
a strong doctrine of the fallibility of criticism must be established !
Most of the plausible arguments against the infallibility of Scripture lie
plainly upon its surface, and have been well known to the great minds
-and, be it noted, the critical minds-who down the centuries have
held the doctrine. The task of Biblical Theology is to go over to the
attack and to demonstrate the sub-Christian doctrines of God and of
revelation upon which the nineteenth century critical assault on the
Bible was based ; and to call upon the critics to criticize their own
arguments, and to produce proved errors and contradictions in the
Bible. (Modest attempts at such a call have been made in the I.V.F.
and Catholic One Volume Commentaries.) My experience is that when
one seriously grapples with them, these supposedly inescapable errors
simply do not stand up to a strict scientific examination. It will be a
great day when the Church gives Wellhausen a decent burial and
another great day when she ceases to read her Scriptures through
Kierkegaardian spectacles. Such revolutions do not come in a day.
But the Spirit of God has set on foot the revival of Biblical Theology,
and Biblical Theology leads back irresistibly to catholic orthodoxy.
II
BY THE REv. W. M. F. ScoTT, M.A.
Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead
HE comparison between the incarnation and the Bible will, I
T believe, be found to be a helpful analogy. But as Dr. Bromiley
says it " must not be pressed too far ". How misleading it can
1

become if exalted into a ruling principle, can be seen from the way the
comparison of the incarnation with the sacraments has been developed.
If it is held that the Word and the Sacraments are fundamentally akin,
that the Sacraments are but the Word made visible, there would seem
to be just as much reason to apply this comparison to the Sacraments
as to the Word. Indeed in the pamphlet where the present writer
first met the comparison between the incarnation and the Bible the
same comparison was made with the Sacraments, and· it was main-
tained that in each case there was a "hypostatic union ". 1
If we shrink from such statements as that "Christ unites Himself,
body, soul and divinity, in an ineffable manner with the elements of
bread and wine·",• we ought to hesitate before committing ourselves
to a similarly thorough-going application of the analogy to the Bible.
Indeed many of the successors of the Tractarians, such as Bishop Gore,
eventually came to admit that the parallel between the incarnation
and the Sacraments " does not admit of being carried out in detail ",
though they still held that " there is an analogy in fundamental
principle ". 4
What Gore wrote about the incarnation and the Sacraments seems
to me to apply even more to the incarnation and the Bible. The logic
New New Bible Commentary, p. 23.
1

Modern Theological Debate, p. 18, by T. F. Torrance.

2
3 Quoted from 0. Shipley by W. H. Mackean in The Eucharistic Doctrine of the

Oxford Movement, p. 167.

• The Body of Christ, p. 133.
 THE INCARNATION AND THE BIBLE 87
of the statement (to which I hold) that the Bible is the Word of God is
that there is an analogy in fundamental principle between it and Him
who is the Word of God incarnate. But we have always to remember
that the Bible merits the title only in a derived sense, because of its
direct relation to Him, because it is the unique embodiment in literature
of the incarnate Word, not because all its separate statements are in
their individual right words of God. While there is an analogy between
the two there is also a great difference, the difference between the
incarnation and inspiration. The Church's condemnation of Nestorian-
ism is a standing witness that there is a great gulf fixed between these
two things. If this is forgotten we shall be in danger either of falling
into a Nestorian Christology and regarding Jesus as the summit of
inspiration or of the practical substitution of the Bible for the Third
Person of the Trinity even though the formulre of orthodoxy are still
retained.
In spite of this fundamental difference between the two there is, in
my opinion, great value in the analogy. God's ways of dealing with
man must be all of a piece. The Incarnation is basic and fundamental.
Bible, Church and Sacraments, and all other means through which
that incarnation is brought to bear on men, will be consistent with that
which they express and convey. We have, therefore, to avoid views of
Holy Scripture corresponding on the one hand to the Nestorian heresy
and the other to the Monophysite. By the former I mean any view
which so far separates the Divine and human in the Bible as to en·
courage the idea that there is a divine kernel which we can retain while
we throw away the human husks. The Word of God speaks to us
through the words of men. Moreover, because the whole Bible is
connected with our Lord, God has something to say to His people
through every part, though, of course, it needs to be read in the light
of its relation to Him and not all parts are to be regarded as possessing
the same degree of authority and inspiration. (Dr. Bromiley's treat-
ment of this last point on p. 18 of the article under discussion seems to
me admirable.)
Equally we must avoid the Monophysite view which swallows up
the human in the Divine. This is found wherever divine inspiration
is held to overshadow human characteristics and individuality. A
further difference between the incarnation of our Lord and the inspir-
ation of the Bible may be considered under this heading, namely that
though our Lord was made sin for us He Himself was without sin.
But the Biblical writers, though inspired, were sinful, with the in-
evitable result that they were also fallible. Any doctrine of inspiration
which claims that this result of original sin was over-ridden must, in my
opinion, come under the condemnation of Monophysitism. The
Roman dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary has
been held to come under the same condemnation. But what shall we
say of the view that the writers of all sixty-six books of the Bible were
miraculously freed from this taint of original sin ?1 There is the
further pragmate objection that an infallible book would be fallibly
interpreted by fallible sinful men. Therefore if the infallibility is to
reach us we need an infallible interpreter. It is perhaps not without
1 Cf. T. F. Torrance in Scottish Journal of Theology, March 1954, pp. 104-108.
88 THE CHURCHMAN
significance that the Church of Rome alone of all the great communions
is committed to biblical infallibility.
A truer view of inspiration is to be found in Brunner's simile of the
gramophone record in which we hear surface scratch, sometimes more,
sometimes less, but through the scratch we hear the voice. The
sensible man does not refuse to listen because of the scratch, nor does
he listen to the scratch : he listens to the voice through the scratch.
The application of the simile is obvious. Denney made fundamentally
the same point when he wrote, "I should not hesitate to say that the
man who cannot hear God speak to him in the story of creation and
the fall will never hear God's voice anywhere, but that does not make
the first chapter of Genesis science, nor the third chapter history ". 1
" God has actually taken these weak things of the world and things
that are despised, and has drawn near to us, and spoken to our hearts
through them."•
III
THE REv. M. F. WILES, M.A.
Chaplain of Ridley Hall, Cambridge

T HE incarnation is the perfect example of the coming together of

the human and the divine. Thus Dr. Bromiley's suggestion that
we should study the doctrine of history and revelation in the Bible in
the light of it is theoretically sound. Empirically also it appears weH
founded, in that there does seem in practice to be a certain correlation
between men's views on the two subjects. The differences between
the Antiochene and Alexandrine understandings of the Bible were by
no means unconnected with the Christological controversies of the early
centuries. Barth's view that "so far as we can get back to the
historical Jesus, there is nothing remarkable to be found in His life and
character and teaching "a has obvious affinities with his disparagement
of the objective Word, of the Bible merely as a book.
But, of course, the incarnation and the Bible are not the only places
at which there is a special coming together of the human and the divine.
The same is clearly true of the Church and of the sacraments. They
too have been studied in the light of the incarnation. And it is right
and proper that they should be, even though we may regard some of
the conclusions that have been drawn from the idea of an extension
of the incarnation as invalid and unfortunate.
The parallel of the Church is an instructive one. She is the body of
Christ; some theologians have therefore wanted to say that she cannot
sin. But history shows incontrovertibly that she does. Her
"empirical manifestation" we are then told, "may often belie her
true essence ". 4 But this evades the problem. We cannot force the
facts to fit our theory. We have to admit that, although the Church
is an expression of the divine in the human, it is one that is compatible
with no small measure of sin. There are points of analogy, real
1 Studies in Theology, p. 219.

• Op. cit. p. 218.

8 D. M. Bailie : God was in Christ, p. 36.
' Mascall: quoted without reference by Newbigin, Household of God, p. 81.
 THE INCARNATION AND THE BIBLE 89
parallels betweenthe Church and the incarnation, but the parallel must
not be pressed too far.
And the same is, of course, true of the Bible. As Dr. Bromiley
recognizes, the crucial question is how far the parallel can be pressed.
The Bible is the Word of God : does it then follow that it cannot err?
Pope Pius XII, in Divino Afflante Spiritu, declares that it does :
" Just as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things
'without sin', so the words of God, expressed in human language,
became in all things like to human speech except error ". Is this a
legitimate use of the analogy or is it pressing the parallel too far?
That question, like the question of the sinlessness of the Church, cannot
be answered a priori but only empirically.
Thus when Geldenhuys tells us that "the fact as such that Jesus
possessed supreme divine authority . . . gives us the assurance that
the Lord of all authority would have seen to it that . . . an adequate
and completely reliable account of . . . His life and work were written
and preserved for the ages to come " 1, and goes on to say that this
" follows logically " from the once for all nature of the revelation of
God in Christ, we must demur. It does not follow logically. We might
expect God to have provided such a revelation (though on epistemo-
logical grounds even such an expectation would be highly questionable)
but it does not follow logically that He has done so, any more than it
follows logically that those who are born of God (note again the obvious
parallel with the incarnation) cannot sin. (Here again there have
always been those who have thought that this is how Gpd must have
revealed Himself, but it is quite clear that He has not.) The precise
relation of revelation and history in the Bible, as elsewhere, can
ultimately be determined by empirical study and no other way.
To sum up: in the Word made flesh, there is a perfect coming
together of the human and the divine in a human life ; it is unique, its
manner defies analysis, but by faith we believe it, because nothing else
is adequate to account for all the facts. In the Bible, there is also a
special coming together of human and divine, its manner too defies
analysis, but it is not a perfect union, because it is not an incarnation.
The precise points of analogy and difference can only be determined
by detailed study. Its relation to the incarnation reminds us that the
Bible has a special authority, not per se but derived from its unique
relation to that perfect coming together of the hnman and the divine
once for all in the life of Jesus Christ.

SUMMING-UP BY DR. BROMILEY

E have reason to be grateful to our three contributors for carrying
W further, and from different standpoints, the question of the
relationship of the living Word to the written Word. Between them
they have focussed attention on what are surely the critical points in
the carrying through of this comparison. Therefore, even if the
present discussion does not lead to any very conclusive result, it should
at least serve to clarify and, to some extent, control our thinking.
The first and fundamental point is raised at once in the first article,
1 Geldenhuys: Supreme Authority, p. 43.
90 THE CHURCHMAN
in which it is questioned whether the analogy can ever be anything
more than a "remarkable parallel" which we may suspect but which
we cannot assume a priori. The view propounded in this article is that
Christian doctrines (including the doctrines of the incarnation and
scripture) must be built up inductively and independently from the
Bible itself. Th~ obvious and fatal weakness of this teaching is that it
does not take seriously the fact that Jesus Christ is Himself in person
the Word of God. This means that the parallel between Christ and the
Bible is posed a priori "by the very nature of the case. Both are the
word of God to man : Christ originally, the Bible secondarily, as that
which testifies to Christ. But it also means that all Christian doctrine
is necessarily and organically related to Jesus Christ, who is the Word
in content as well as in form. No Christian doctrine can be built up
without reference to Jesus Christ, and therefore to His redemptive
mission fulfilled in the incarnation and atonement.
The dangers of denying this centrality of the Logos are very manifest
in the article, as they are in the seventeenth century Protestantism
from which it ultimately derives. Impeccable answers are given to
the detailed questions of inspiration, as they would be to other doctrinal
issues, but we may doubt whether they are given in answer to the right
questions or on the right presuppositions. For one thing, the Bible
itself has evidently replaced Christ, and therefore God, as the basis
and centre. Christian doctrine is coherent because it is all inductively
built up from the one book, not because it relates to the one God and
His work. The doctrine of the Bible is necessarily the first article of
the creed, as with the seventeenth century confessions, and in marked
contrast to Calvin and the confessions of the Reformation. But this
in itself is not the worst danger, for so long as we stick to the Bible we
are led back willy-nilly to Christ. The worst danger is that inductive
reasoning is made the ultimate criterion to which both our acceptance
of the authority of the Bible and our development of Bibli~l doctrines
must make total submission. Rationalism is none the less dangerous
because it is impressed into the service of orthodoxy. It is still reason
which is the final arbiter and manipulates the Biblical doctrine. The
Christian way is the very different one of letting every thought be made
captive to Christ. But this brings us back to our starting-point, that
all our doctrines (including the doctrine of the Bible itself) must be
brought into the strictest relationship to God's saving Word and work
in Jesus Christ. To be sure, this does not mean that the Bible can be
by-passed, for it is in and through the Bible that God meets us. What
it does mean is that Jesus Christ is the subject as well as the subject-
matter of the Bible. The Bible is His Word only as He Himself is the
Word.
The other two articles both accept that there is more than an
accidental analogy between the living Word and the written word, and
they go on to discuss the limitations and qualifications which we need
to make. The ultimate questions which emerge are twofold : In what
form the parallel can properly be developed? and To what extent, if
any, the Bible can be isolated from the general life and witness of the
Church and given a particular authority by virtue of the christological
analogy?
 THE INCARNATION AND THE BIBLE 91
The first point that is made is the good one that in a strict sense we
cannot speak of incarnation, or even of divine nature, in relation to the
Bible, the Church and so forth. Whatever we do, we must not allow
the Bible to be God. My own feeling is that the danger in this respect
is a little exaggerated. It is significant that a doctrine of transub-
stantiation has never emerged in relation to the word as it has in
relation to the sacrament. Even if an almost superstitious respect has
sometimes been paid to the Bible there has never been any actual
confusion with Deity. All the same, when we apply the incarnational
parallel, we have to keep a keen awareness that we are moving, as it
were, on a different level. The Bible is God's word in a human form,
but it is not the Incarnate Logos.
The second point is also true that we cannot restrict this analogy to
the Bible : we have to apply it to the sacraments, and indeed to the
Church and the individual Christian. We do not need to shrink from
this thought, although we must be careful to understand it correctly.
Indeed, as I see it, it takes us to the very core of the salvation we have
in Jesus Christ. It is the purpose of God that we should be as Jesus
Christ is. We are His witnesses. In our life as the people of God and
individuals, and in our witness of word and action we show forth Jesus
Christ. But this means that necessarily we and our witness, as God's
word in the world, reflect the supreme witness of God's Word in the
world. In a very real, if derived and secondary sense, the Church is a
divine-human institution, the sacraments are divine-human actions,
and the Bible, and even preaching, is a divine-human word. The
thought can be worked out in many different ways, and from many
different angles. But of the truth of the thought there can be little
question.
The third point which is emphasized in both papers is that, if this is
the case, the christological parallel does not enable us to claim for the
Bible any greater freedom from error than for the Church or individual
Christians or, shall we say, preaching. The extension of the parallel
seems to be urged partly with a view to this conclusion, although it is
true enough in itself. Two not very good arguments are used to
support it : the heresy of the Immaculate Conception, which is not a
true parallel, because in the Bible we have to do only with individual
works, not with a whole life ; and the fact that even Christians who
are born of the spirit can sin, which is true, but needs to be weighed
carefully against 1 John 3. 6 and 9. The third paper betrays a danger-
ous tendency to a final empiricism, and I cannot think that either
writer considers sufficiently the peculiar function and authority and
the special spiritual gifts of the apostles, which puts their work and
witness, and therefore the apostolic writing, in a class apart (possibly
according to promise, cf. John 14. 26). Nor is it considered that while
the dichotomy of a justified-sinful or regenerate-natural Church and
its witness does in one sense reflect the incarnation from afar, there is a
more perfect reflection in the Church and its witness when or to the
extent that in individual words and actions a concrete manifestation is
given of the new life of the Spirit, the life which it has with Christ in
God. After all, it is in this way that consistently and perfectly we shall
reflect Jesus Christ when we see Him face to face and are like Him.
92 THE CHURCHMAN
To sum up : we can hardly escape bringing our doctrine of the word
into relation with the Incarnate Word, and we must think twice before
committing ourselves to any form of rationalism, however correct and
orthodox. The danger of deifying Bible, Church or sacrament must
be avoided, and the Bible cannot be completely isolated from its
setting in the whole witness to Jesus Christ. On the other hand, may
it not be that (objectively) as the prophetic and apostolic word, the
Bible is like all the charismatic acts and words of the apostles and
prophets a particular work of the Holy Spirit reflecting in a particular
way the incarnation of the living Word. In this respect is it not per-
haps a normative example of the words and works of the Spirit in
Christian life and a prototype of the perfect christological reflection
of the Church in heaven.

Henry Venn of Huddersfield

(1725-1797)
BY THE REv. M. M. HENNELL, M.A.

F ROM Queen Elizabeth I's reign till the present century at least one
member of the Venn family has been in Holy Orders. Henry
Venn's father, Richard Venn (1691-1739), for many years Rector of
St. Antholin's, Watling Street, was a strict High Churchman with
Jacobite leanings. He was the first London clergyman to refuse his
pulpit to George Whitefield. He also showed a High Churchman's
aversion to Dissenters, which was shared by his son, who constantly
assaulted the son of a Dissenting minister who lived in the same street,
and who, although two or three years Henry's senior, used to keep out
of the street if the Anglican champion was in it. Energy and high
spirits marked these early years; he was quick-witted and quick-
tempered, but capable of great affection and a great favourite in his
own family circle and outside it. His home was at Barnes and he
went first to school at Mortlake, till his father died when he was
fourteen. After brief periods of private tuition and in two other
schools he went up to Cambridge at the age of seventeen.
From 1742-47 Henry Venn was at Jesus College, where he was a
Rustat scholar. He was a keen cricketer and reckoned one of the best
players in the University. In the week before he was ordained he was
playing for Surrey against All England ; after the game he threw down
his bat, saying, " Whoever wants a bat which has done me good
service, may take that: as I have no further occasion for it". When
asked the reason he replied, " Because I am to be ordained on Sunday ;
and I will never have it said of me, 'Well strnck, parson' ". 1 He was
ordained by Bishop Gibson of London, but he served a curacy at
1 H. Venn, Life of H. Venn (1835), p. 13-14.