THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

N° XXV. OCTOBER 1881.

ART. I.-THE BRITISH CHURCH.

1. Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates. By Archbishop USSHER. (Dublin, 1639.)

2. Origines Britannica. By STILLINGFleet.

1685.)

(London,

3. Concilia, &c. By Sir H. SPELMAN. (London, 1639.) 4. Concilia, &c. By WILKINS. (London, 1737.)

5. Tracts on the Origin and Independence of the British Church. By Bishop BURGESS. (London, 1815.)

6. Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Edited, after Spelman and WEST HADDAN, B.D., and (Oxford, 1869.)

Britain and Ireland. Wilkins, by ARTHUR WILLIAM STUBBS, M.A. 7. Remains of the Late Rev.

Arthur West Haddan, B.D. Edited by A. P. FORBES, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. (Oxford and London, 1876.)

8. Early English Church History. By WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D. (Oxford, 1878.)

9. The Ancient British Church. By JOHN PRYCE, M.A., Vicar of Bangor. (London, 1878.)

THOUGH the most important origin of our English Christianity may have been the Roman mission through S. Augustine, and though into the Church founded by that mission all the earlier Christianity in these islands was eventually absorbed, yet the sources and history of this primitive Gospel cannot but be subjects of great interest and importance. We propose, therefore, to collect together for the advantage of the general reader what is known or conjectured about the origin, the progress, and the condition before and after Augustine's arrival, of the Early British Church; not that of the Scots (ie. the Christians, whether in Ireland or after migration into Scotland, of Irish race), but of the Britons. The subject is

confessedly one of much uncertainty; it leads us, as we trace it back, into a region of hazy legend and more or less probable conjecture, rather than of clear historic light. But even as a matter of mere antiquarian research, it cannot fail to be of intense interest to some minds, its very dimness lending it a sort of mysterious charm; and as to the lasting results of that original evangelization of the British race, they may have been greater than history shows, or than is generally supposed. At any rate, the Church in Wales has descended lineally from the British, in the sense of not having been an offshoot of that of England, but representing an earlier Christianity, overshadowed and absorbed by it. And even to the main stream of faith, that gradually, after Augustine, overspread the island, the old British Church may have contributed more rills than we know of. The principal feeders of a great river are alone prominent on the map of history, though unnoticed tributaries may have also fed it. Certainly the Scots, representing a Christianity long anterior to, and independent of, the Roman mission, were important agents in the conversion of our English ancestors; more so than the accounts left by writers under the Roman obedience may have led many of us to suppose. And though the British Christians, depressed by defeat, driven into the hill-country of the West, and distracted by internal feuds, are not shown to have helped the work, yet at any rate they made common cause with the Scots in resisting at first the claims and usages of Rome; they subsequently (as will be seen) acted beneficially on the Scots themselves, and spread themselves elsewhere, however small might be their direct influence on their Teutonic conquerors. And in any case the very fact of the existence of an ancient native Church with its saints, martyrs, and traditions, must, we conceive, be a factor to be considered in regard to the success of a new mission to the island. Independently, however, of such considerations, and even though the early British Church had been, as it certainly was not, a plant that died away without permanent fruit, the history of a growth so venerable in its antiquity must ever, as has been said, be full of interest, and worth a full investigation.

The subject before us has long occupied the attention of the learned, a controversial spirit in connection with the claims of Rome having sometimes lent an interest to the investigation, and a bias to the views entertained. It has lately been taken up afresh, and very fully and impartially considered, especially by Mr. Haddan and Professor Stubbs, in their most valuable edition of Councils and Ecclesiastical Docu

ments relating to Great Britain and Ireland, in which all existing information bearing on the subject has been collected and arranged. Mr. Haddan's Remains also contain notices and views on the subject, which is treated too by Dr. Bright in his Early English Church History, and by the Rev. John Pryce in his recent work on the Ancient British Church, being the successful essay submitted for competition at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1876.

...

To begin then with the earliest undoubted facts, we may regard it as historically certain that at the very beginning of the third century there was already a Church in Britain, though not certain how long it had been there, how it had come there, or how far it had extended. Our first evidence is that of Tertullian, who, in his Tract against the Jews, speaks of Parthians, &c. (quoting Acts ii. 9-10), varieties of the Gaetuli, many territories of the Mauri, all the confines of Spain, divers nations of Gaul, and places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans (inaccessa Romanis loca), as ‘subjected to Christ ;'—' in all which places the name of Christ reigns; . . . in all, a people of the name of Christ dwells; . . . the kingdom and name of Christ are everywhere extended, everywhere believed, and by all the nations above enumerated He is worshipped.' The tract in question was taken by Bishop Kaye (on Tertullian, p. 61) to have been written before the author became a Montanist, which was probably not later than A.D. 201. Haddan assigns it to the year 208. Next, Origen, a little later than Tertullian, confirms his testimony in three separate passages. Speaking, like him, of the world-wide diffusion of the faith, he says, in his fourth homily on Ezekiel, written about A.D. 239, 'For when before the advent of Christ did the land of Britain consent to the religion of one God? When did the land of the Mauri? When did all the world together? But now, on account of the Churches that possess the boundaries of the world, the entire earth cries with joy to the Lord of Israel.' Again, in his sixth homily on S. Luke, of which the exact date is uncertain, he writes: 'The power of the Saviour is even with those who in Britain are divided from our world, and with those who are in Mauritania, and with all who under the sun have believed in His name. See, then, the greatness of the Saviour, how it is diffused through the whole world.' His language,. like that of Tertullian, is somewhat rhetorical; but certainly neither of them would have in each case specified Britain, had it not been a known fact that there were Christians there. And lastly, Origen, in his third passage, which occurs in his commentary on S. Matthew, gives proof that he goes on more

than vague information by limiting the extent to which the Gospel had so far spread; 'What should I say of the Britons, or of the Germans, of whom the most (or, very many, plurimi,) have not yet heard the word of the Gospel?' A partial evangelization of Britain having taken place at least as early as A.D. 200 is therefore sufficiently attested to be accepted as an undoubted fact.

In the second place, we cannot without unreasonable scepticism refuse to believe that at the beginning of the following century the Church in Britain had become sufficiently important, and had been sufficiently faithful, to be the object of persecution, and to contribute its quota to the roll of martyrs. Bede's whole story about the British martyrdoms has indeed been discredited, on the ground that the persecution under Diocletian, to which he refers them, is said by Eusebius, Sozomen, and Lactantius, not to have extended into Britain, because Constantius, the father of Constantine, protected the persons of Christians in the provinces under him, though, according to Lactantius, he allowed their churches to be destroyed. There may, however, have been victims before, or notwithstanding, his intervention; and after all, the connection of the martyrdoms with this particular persecution seems to rest only on a conjecture of Gildas, whom Bede follows. For all that the former says is, 'in the above-named time of persecution we conjecture ('conjicimus' al. 'cognoscimus') it was that God lighted for us most bright lamps of holy martyrs;' and he then names Alban, Aaron, and Julius, who, with others of both sexes, in various places, suffered with great courage; adding, however, that the places of their suffering and burial were in his time unknown. Though uncertain about the exact time and the details, he evidently has no doubt about the martyrdoms themselves, which are supported also by earlier evidence. For Germanus, when he went to Britain in 439 (125 years after the latest date assigned to them) is said by Prosper, his contemporary, in his Chronicle, to have visited S. Alban's remains. It is surely irrelevant to the argument to say (as is said in the article on Albanus, in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography) that Gildas only transfers to Britain what Eusebius had written about the Diocletian persecution, which the latter had said did not apply to Britain. For he does this conjecturally only, because there was in Britain an independent tradition about certain martyrdoms, including especially that of Alban, about the time referred to. It may be noted further, as showing the uncertainty of the tradition as to the exact time and occasion in