At the outset of this essay it should be understood that its author does not claim to have derived any special pleasure from writing it. In fact, he would not have written it at all if in the time since publication one single voice had come to his ears, theologically challenging the title Honest to God given to his book by the Bishop of Woolwich. In time past the author of this essay was a lecturer in Roman Law, and he is now endeavouring to be a Church historian. He thus takes a much greater pleasure in resolving the problems which are set by ‘The first two years of the reign of the emperor Theodosius I'1 or in outlining The Framework of the New Testament Stories2, than in indulging in the rabies theologorum, the fury of the theologians, which was bitterly denounced already by Philip Melanchthon, the German reformer. The author of this essay would, therefore, willingly have left the task of expounding the Church's doctrine to those to whom it by right belongs, the bishops and the doctors of the Church.