1 On page 98 of this volume the reader will find a note, in which the leading facts in regard to Lncius are mentioned. Our author, of course, had a peifect right to de- volve the burden of proof upon his opponent, and to insist upon histoiical evidence of the correspondence between the British prince and Eleutherius. He does not venture upon an unqualified denial of all tlie tradition, contenting himself with indicating his " suspicion," on various weighty grounds, that the stoi'y had much of the fabulous about it. That no author worthy of cicdit, before the days of Bede, should have recorded this alleged second conversion of our island to the Christian faith ; and that among all the Latin authors — by one reckoning twenty-six, and by another fifty in number — who subsequently, up to the time of Usher, have endorsed the story, there should be a dis- crepancy in regard to the chi-onology of the events in question, so great as to cover nearly a century between the earliest and latest dates assigned ; are the main difficulties which impede our unhesitating reception of the narrative, even when carefully sifted and stripped of the accessories with which monkish fiction has invested it. Among Protestant authors, howevei', who have investigated the subject, a decided impi'ession seems to prevail that some degree of credit is due to the substance of the ancient tradi- tion. This view has been held bj' some, who reject as spurious the epistle of Eleutherius to wliich Dr Owen takes just exception, on several other grounds besides those whidi are urged in the text above. The epistle speaks as if all Britain were under the sway of Lucius, whereas but a small part of it was subject to him ; and several expressions in it betray a strong trace of Englisli law and Norman idiom, indicative of a far later origin
898 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
only in Elijah, bnt in the meanest of those seven thousand who, with- in the small precincts of that kingdom, had not bowed the knee to Baal. I never in the least questioned but that in that declension of Christianity which I intimated, and remission of the most from their pristine zeal, there were thousands and ten thousands that kept their integrity, and mourned for all the abominations that they saAV practised in the world. Pray, reflect a little upon the condition of the Asian churches mentioned in the Revelation. The discovery made of their spiritual state by Christ himself, chap. ii. iii., was Avithin less than forty years after their first planting ; and yet you see most of them had left their "first love," and were decayed in their faith and zeal. In one of them there were but " a fcAV names " remaining that had any life or integrity for Christ, — the body of the church hav- ing only " a name to live," being truly and really " dead" as to any acts of spiritual life, wherein our communion with God consists. And do you make it so strange, that whereas the churches that were planted and watered by the apostles themselves, and enriched with many excellent gifts and graces, should, within the space of less tlmn forty years, by the testimony of the Lord Christ himself, so decay and fall off from their first purity, faith, and works, other churches, who had not their advantages, should do so within the space of four hun- dred years, of which season I speak? I fear your vain conceit of be- ing " rich and wanting nothing," of infallibility and impossibility to stand in need of any reformation, of being as good as ever any church was, or as you need to be, is that which hath more prejudiced your church in particular than you can readily imagine. And what I affirmed of those other churches, I know well enough how to prove out of the best and most approved authors of those days. If, besides
than is claimed for it. Tlie external evidence is equally decisive. The epistle is found in no author for a thousand years after tne age of Eleutherius; it is not knovm under whose auspices it first came to light ; and the learned antiquarian Spelman pronounced the only manuscript copy of it extant, and preserved first in the archives of the Lon- don Guild, and latterly in the Cotton library, to be. in liis day not more than two centuries old. The main facts of the story, however, are not dependent upon the atithenticity of this document, nor is their credibility seriously shaken by the argument that the existence of a native king in any part of Britain, at the time referred to, can- not be reconciled with the fact that the island was then but a province of the Roman empire. Tacitus speaks of Prasutagus and Cogidunus as British kings, retaining some shadow of royal state and dignity, while subject, nevertheless, to the imperial yoke, (" Annal.," lib. xiv. cap. 31, and " Vit. Agric," cap. 14). The case of Herod in Judea sup- plies another analogy. The strength of our author's reply to the Romish plea, which he is engaged in rebutting, lies in the fact that Britain in those days must have received Christianity, not Romanism, from Eleutherius ; while, even according to the tenor of the tradition itself, in every form in which it has been preserved. Christianity previously ex- isted in the island. It is safe enough to conclude, with an old writer, that the tradition aljout Lucius contains " multa falsa, alia incerta, nonnulla etiam vei'a vel .saltem proba- bilia! " These words are quoted from the " i'rgelectiones Ecclesiasticce " of John Richard- son of Cambridge, 1725 (vol. i. p. 2.51), to which the reader may be referred for a judi- cious and comprehensive discussion of this interesting historical question. — Ed.