CHURCH HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

THE BRITISH CHURCH BEFORE THE MISSION OF AUGUSTINE.

In writing a history of the Church of England, it is necessary to guard against two opposite errors, which are generally entertained, even among well educated men, with respect to this subject. It is notorious that many persons consider the Church of England to be a national institution, which had its first origin from the despotic will of one sovereign, Henry VIII., which was brought very near to maturity in the happier reign of his son, and which, having been suppressed for a time during the persecutions of Mary, substantially attained the form in which it now exists, under the auspices of the glorious Queen Elizabeth. This representation of the case, which is obviously founded on a narrow and mistaken definition of the word Church, as comprehending a certain form of doctrine and ritual, and nothing more, naturally gives offence to all who have been taught to regard the Church of Christ, in its scriptural idea, as a body belonging to all times and places, as an edifice "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." Such persons feel that, if the present Church of England be a true and living member of that body, it must trace its origin from a higher source than the will of sovereigns or parliaments; that it must at least have something in common with the Church

that went before it; that it must ultimately be connected by sure and firm links with that little flock, that met in an upper chamber in Jerusalem to choose a successor to the traitor Judas. In tracing this connection, a question involving much controversy arises, as to the relations existing between the Church of England before the Reformation, and the see of Rome, whether our ancestors merely looked to the Pope for guidance, direction, and counsel, or whether the acknowledgment of his supremacy was made then, as it is in the modern Church of Rome, a necessary condition of communion, without which there was no salvation. Some of our divines, anxious to diminish, as far as possible, the revolutionary nature of the change made in our Church at the Reformation, have fallen into the second error to which allusion has been made above, by representing that change, not so much in the light of a return to the doctrines of the primitive Christian Church of the first three centuries, as of a restoration to such a state of independence of the Church of Rome and comparative freedom from her corruptions, as they suppose to have existed in England previously to the Norman Conquest. Some of these writers have dwelt more exclusively on the probable independence of the ancient British Church, as it existed before the Saxon invasion, and have constructed a magnificent theory out of the very slender historical materials that have survived that period: others have gone so far as to deny in part the religious debt that England owes to Rome for the conversion of the AngloSaxons, and in their anxiety to make out an exact identity between the Church of Elizabeth's time, and that of the Anglo-Saxon period, have shut their eyes to the most striking proofs of the dependence of the Saxon Church on the see of Rome. The vindication of the proper position of the Anglican Church, as a member of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, seems hardly to require such reasoning as this.

A member of the Anglican communion may be firmly per

suaded that the supremacy of the Pope is an usurpation, unknown to the first three or four centuries of Christianity, founded on falsehood, supported in some instances by fraud, and imposed upon a simple and uninquiring age with all the prestige derived from the name of an imperial city, once the queen of nations, and even in its decay nearly the first city of the world; and yet he may very probably conclude that the gradual union of the nations of Western Europe under one spiritual head, during the interval between the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire and the Papacy of Hildebrand, was a very natural result, and may even regard it in the light of a providential arrangement for the security of the relics of Scriptural truth, against the barbarism of the rudest period of the world. In like manner with respect to corruptions of doctrine, while he cordially protests against those additions to the faith, which first received the stamp of authority at the Council of Trent, he may admit, without compromising his position in the least, that many of those errors were in their first origin to be ascribed, not altogether so much to Romish influence, as to the general ignorance that prevailed through the world for many centuries; and if his Anglo-Saxon ancestors partook of that ignorance, while he laments their errors, he durst not misrepresent the facts.

Having stated these general principles, which Protestant historians, in the heat of controversy, seem to me to have too much lost sight of, I proceed to give a brief sketch of the history of the Church of Christ, as it existed in England, from the earliest times. And if I mistake not, it will not be difficult, without adopting any far-fetched theory on the subject, to show, that some at least of the broad principles maintained at the Reformation were not new in England, but had been acted upon in old times by men whom the historians of the Romish communion have delighted to honour, and whose memory should be precious to every true Englishman. We have no certain testimony either as to the time at

which, or the persons by whom, the gospel of Christ was first conveyed to the ancient inhabitants of Britain. Some traditions have ascribed the work of Britain's conversion to Joseph of Arimathea, but modern criticism has pronounced this tale certainly fabulous. James the elder, Simon Zelotes, and St. Peter, have also been named as the apostles of Britain, but without any authority. There seems more probability in the tradition, which says that St. Philip preached the gospel in Gaul and afterwards in Britain.' From a passage of Clement of Rome (a writer of the apostolic age, and a companion of St. Paul), in which he speaks of that apostle having taught the whole world righteousness, and for that end travelled even to the utmost bounds of the west, the conversion of Britain has been plausibly ascribed to the great Apostle of the Gentiles. A similar inference has been drawn from two passages of St. Jerome, in which he speaks of St. Paul's preaching in the western parts, and from the eastern to the western ocean. Whatever degree of plausibility there may be in this conjecture, it seems very probable, that converts to the faith were made from among the natives of Britain during the lifetime of that apostle.2 When we come to the 2nd century, we find Justin Martyr asserting in very comprehensive terms, which may fairly be taken to include Britain, that there was no race of men existing anywhere in his time, among whom prayers and thanksgivings were not offered up to the Father and Creator of the universe, through the name of the crucified Jesus. Irenæus, a writer somewhat later than Justin, speaks of the faith of the German, Spanish, and Celtic Churches in language which, as a Celtic race then inhabited Britain, may be regarded as equally comprehensive with that of Justin. Tertullian, who wrote at the end of the same century, puts

'Burton's Eccles. Hist. p. 213.

2 Compare 2 Tim. iv. 21. with Martial's Epigrams, lib. iv. 13., xi. 55.; Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 2.