PROGRESS AND DECLENSION OF RELIGION. 407
considering the work he had in hand, discover somewhat besides learning and wisdom in him. So also did his driving of ten thousand men, besides an innumerable company of women and children, all to- gether, into the river Swale in Yorkshire, and there causing them to baptize one another. His contest with the British bishops about the time of the observation of Easter, breaking the peace for a circum- stance of a ceremony that hath cost the churcli twenty times more trouble than it is worth, is of the same nature. And I desire to know whence you have your story of his inexpressible suffering here amongst us. All that I can find informs us that he was right meetly entertained by King Ethelbert, at his first landing, by the means of Bertha, his wife, a Christian before his coming, with all plentiful pro- vision for himself and his companions. The next news we hear of him is about his archiepiscopacy, his pall, and his throne, from whence he would not rise to receive the poor Britons that came to confer with him ! Farther of his sufferings, as yet, I can meet with nothing.
And these are the things which you thought yourself able to ex- cept against in my story of the progress and declension of religion. The sum of it I shall now comprise in some few assertions; which you may do well to consider, and get them disproved : —
1. The first is, That the gospel was preached in this island, in the days of the apostles, by jjersons coming from the east, directed by the providence of God for that purpose, — most probably by Joseph of Arimathea in chief, — without any respect to Rome or mission from thence.
2. That the doctrine preached then by them was the same that is now publicly professed in England, and not that taught by the church of Rome, where there is a discrepancy between us.
3. That the story of the coming of Fugatius and Damianus into the province of Britain, sent by Eleutherius unto Lucius, is uncer- tain, improbable, and not to be reconciled unto the state and condi- tion of the affairs in these nations at the time supposed for its accom- plishment.
4. That about the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, the generality of the professors of Christian religion in the world were wofully de- clined from the primitive zeal, piety, faith, love, and purity in the worship of God, which their predecessors in the same profession glo- rified God by; and that in particular the British church Avas much degenerated.
5. That the bishops of Rome for five hundred years never laid claim unto that sovereign power and infallibility which they have challenged since the days of Pope Gregory VII,
6. That the bishops of Rome in that space of time, pretending
408 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
uuto some disordei^ly supremacy over other bishops and churches, though incomparably short of their after and present pretences, were rebuked and opposed by the best and most learned men of those days.
7. That the distraction of the provinces of the western part of tlie empire by Gotlis, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Alans, Franks, Longobards, and their associates, was no less just, in the holy providence of God, upon the account of the moral evils and superstitions of the professors of Christianity amongst them, than was that which afterward ensued of the eastern provinces by the Saracens and Turks.
8. That these nations having planted themselves in the provinces of the empire, together with Christianity, either received anew or retained many paganish customs, ceremonies, rites, and opinions therewithal.
9. That their kings, by grants of privileges, donations, and con- cessions of power, made partly out of blind zeal, partly to secure some interests of their own, exceedingly advanced the papal power, and confirmed their formerly rejected pretensions.
10. That when they began to perceive and feel the pernicious effects and consequences of their own facility, their grants being made a ground of farther encroachments, they opposed themselves, in their laws, and edicts, and practices, against them.
11. That there was on all hands a sad declension, in the western church, in doctrine, worship, and manners, continually progressive, unto the time of reformation.
These are the principal assertions on which my story is built, and which it supposeth. If you have a mind to get them, or any of them, called to an account and examined, I shall, if God will and I live, give them their confirmation from such undoubted records as you have no just cause to except against.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Reformation of religion — Papal contradictions — " Ejice ancillam."
Some of your following leaves are such as admit of no useful con- sideration. Wilful mistakes, diversions from the cause under debate, with vain flourishes, make up both pages in them. I shall pass through them briefly, and give you some account from them of your- self, and your prevarication in the cause whose defence you have undertaken. Page 75, you undertake the 12th chapter of the
REFORMATION OF RELIGION, ETC. 409
" Auimadversions/' wliicli discusseth the story of the reformation of rehgiou, which you took up on common fame, —
" Fama, maliuu quo iion aliud velocius uUiim." — Virg. ^n. iv. 174.