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conversion of the emperors to the faith, intrusted them witli outward peace and prosperity. I desire not to make naked their miscarriages whom I doubt not but in mercy God hath long since pardoned; but it cannot be denied that the stories of those days are full of nothing more than the oppressions, luxury, and sloth of rulers; the pride, ambition and unseemly, scandalous contests for pre-eminence of sees and extent of jurisdiction, among bishops; the sensuality and igno- rance of the most of men. In this season it was that the bishop of Rome, advantaged by the prerogative of the city, the ancient seat and spring of the empire, began gradually to attempt a superintend- ency over his brethren, according as any advantages for that end (which coidd not be wanting in the intestine tumults and seditions wherewith Christians Avere turmoiled) offered themselves unto him. Wherever an opportunity could be spied, he was still interposing his umpirage and authority amongst them, and that sometimes not with- out sinful artifices and downright forgeries; wherein he was always accepted or refused, according as the interest' of them required with whom he had to do. What the lives of priests and people, what their knowledge and profession of the gospel, of the poor Britons espe- cially, in those days were, our OAvn countryman, Gildas, doth suffi- ciently testify and bewail. Salvianus doth the same for other parts of the world ; and, generally, all the pious men of those ages. Whilst the priests strove for sovereignty and power, the people perished through ignorance and sensuality. Neither can we possibly have a more full conviction of what was the state of Christians and Christ- ianity in those days in the world, than may be seen and read in the hoiTible judgments of God, wherewith he punished their wickedness and ingratitude. When he could no longer bear the provocations of his people, he stirred up those swarms of northern nations, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Longobards, Alans, Saxons, etc., — some few of them Arians, the most Pagans, — and poured them out upon the western empire, to the utter ruin of it, and the division of the pro- vinces amongst themselves. After a while, these fierce, cruel, and barbarous nations, having executed the judgments of God against the vuigodliness of men, — seating themselves in the warmer climates of those whom they had in part subdued, in part extirpated, as is the manner of all persons in transmigration from one country to another, — began to unlearn their ancient barbarism, and to incline to the man- ners, fasliions, and religion of the people to Avhom they were come, and with whom, after their heats were over and lusts satisfied, they began to incorporate and coalesce; together, I say, with their man- ners they took up, by various ways and means, the religion which they did profess. And the bishop of Rome having kept his outward station in that famous city during all those turmoils, becoming vene- rable unto them, unto him were many applications made; and his
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authority was first signally advanced by this new race of Christians. The religion they thus took up was not a little degenerated from its primitive apostolical purity and splendour. And they were among the first who felt the effects of their former barbarous inhumanity, in their sedulous endeavour to destroy all books and learning out of the world, which lirought that darkness upon mankind wherewith they wrestled for many succeeding generations; for, having them- selves made an intercision of the current and progress of studies and learning, they were forced to make use, in their entertainment of Christianity, of men meanly skilled in the knowledge of God or themselves, who, some of them, knew little more of the gospel than what they had learned in the outward observances and practices of the places where they had been educated. Towards the beginning of this hurry of the world, this shuffling of the nations, was the pro- vince of Britain, — not long before exhausted of its stores of men and arms and defeated by the Romans, — invaded by the Saxons, Picts, Angles, and others out of Germany, who, accomplishing the will of God, extirpated the greatest part of the British nation, and drove the remainders of them to shelter themselves in the western mountainous parts of this island. These new inhabitants, after they were some- what civilised by the vicinity of the provincials, and had got a little breathing from their own intestine feuds, by fixing the limits of their leaders' dominions, which they called kingdoms, began to be in some preparedness to receive impressions of religion above that rude Pa- ganism which they had before served Satan in. These were they to whom came Austin from Rome ;— a man, as far as appears by the story ,^ little acquainted with the mystery of the gospel; yet one whom
1 The Saxon invasion sufficiently accounts for the degree of barbarism and heathen- ism into which the most of Britain had relapsed before Augustine, ■with a commission from Gregoi-y the Great, visited it to engage in the Avork of converting its inhabitants to the Christian faith. Galled by the repeated incursions of the Scots and Picts on the north, when the Koman soldiery had been I'ecalled from the island to protect the sink- ing empire against the threatened descent of the Huns, the Bi-itons invited the Saxons to assist thern in repressing the encroachments of their warlike neighbours. The Saxons soon gained the ascendency ; and the Britons, instead of being secured in the peaceable enjoyment of their territories, were driven to the west of the island, whilst their treach- erous allies seized upon the largest portion of it. The arrival of the first Saxon army, at the invitation of Vortigern, was in the year 449. It was in the year 597 that the Eoman abbot, Augustine, reached our island. In the interval, Christianity had been obliterated from Saxon England.