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men; who, indeed, rose not in that respect superior to the age in which they lived, but, in the sincerity of their purpose, were worthy of a better. If the first interview was not decisive, the subsequent progress of the mission was, nevertheless, rapid. Augustine promised fair, and exacted no very severe probation from his converts. tained their festivals. He spared their vices. The season devoted to Eostre was superseded by the Christian festival which still retains her name. Odin and Thor vacated, indeed, their temples, but a sprinkling of holy-water consecrated them to the service of the Church, and the graven images of saints almost as fabulous, usurped their pedestals. It would have been unreasonable to expect too much, and it is manifest, from the irreverent precipitancy with which multitudes were admitted into the Church by baptism, that too much was not exacted. Ethelbert devoted himself to their views, and relinquishing to them the palace in his capital, withdrew to Reculver. Augustine passed over to France, and receiving consecration from the Bishop of Arles, despatched Laurentius and Justus, two of his fellow-labourers, to Rome, with the triumphant report of his success. Historians are fond of exposing the frivolity of the epistles which passed on this occasion; but there are redeeming passages which bespeak Gregory to have been no unworthy founder of the Church of England. He disclaims the wish to reduce the new converts to the model of any specific church. "Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loca sunt amanda," he writes. "Ex singulis ergo quibusque ecclesiis, quæ pia, quæ religiosa, quæ recta sunt elige, et hæc quasi in fasciculum collecta, apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudine depone." Unhappily the mind of Augustine could conceive nothing to be consistent with piety and right that derogated either from the doctrinal purity or the jurisdiction of the see of Rome. His companions returned with a reinforcement of missionaries, among whom was Paulinus, the future Archbishop of York, with books, and, the scarcely less essential furniture of their churches, relies. By this time the little church of St. Martin had become incompetent to the worship of its widely encreasing congregation, and the metropolitan church of Canterbury, whose foundations had been laid within the precincts of the royal palace, was consecrated in honour. of Christ our Saviour. The chief thing insisted on by Gregory, when he gave commission to bishops to consecrate oratories and churches, was to take care that no dead body were buried in the palace;" consistently with which, the site of the rival monastery of St. Augustine was, probably at this time, set apart as a place of Christian burial. Thus firmly established in the kingdom of Kent, Augustine was encouraged to prosecute his mission into the parts of Britain. The Saxon Chronicle assigns the year 601 as the date of his receiving the pall, the investiture with which was regarded by his successors as the papal delegation of archiepiscopal authority. The symbol, however, was accompanied by a letter or, if it is to be so designated, a Bull of Jurisdiction, by which not only his converts among the Anglo-Saxons, but the bishops of the primitive Church, in whatsoever part of the British Isles, were committed to his fraternal charge, "ut indocti doceantur, infirmi roboren

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tur, perversi corrigantur." Whether or not Gregory imagined that the colleges of Iona and of Bangor would submit to this extravagant assumption, it is manifest that Augustine was resolved to act under his commission, and consecrating Justus to the bishopric of Rochester, and Mellitus to that of London, the capital of the kingdom of Essex, which was then held by Sebert a nephew of Ethelbert, he advanced, under the effectual protection of the latter, into the other Anglo-Saxon states. The relation of his having baptized ten thousand converts in the river Swall, is not essentially contradicted by the fact of the Northumbrians remaining unconverted to a much later period. Their very numbers is a convincing proof with how little judgment they had been admitted to that holy rite, and how far more zealous were Augustine and his fellow-labourers to multiply nominal Christians, than in instructing them to walk worthy of their vocation. The heaviest imputation upon the British churches is, that they suffered their Anglo-Saxon neighbours to continue so long in Paganism. But, not only had they too recently fled before the face of their sanguinary invaders to attempt their conversion; but they were manifestly too artless to succeed to any great extent; and, moreover, strongly opposed to the Church of Rome in their mode of conferring baptism. Some alliance with the tenets of Pelagius is perhaps to be traced in the demand of a course of holy living previous to the administration of the appointed means of grace; but it was surely preferable to the opposite course of the Romish missionaries, in the indiscriminate proffer of the washing of regeneration to those whom they were utterly reckless to rear in "the knowledge of the Son of God, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." The subject is one of unaffected embarrasment, involved on either side in doctrinal or practical error. We find a recent missionary, richly endowed with human learning and actuated by the purest motives, halting in his work of conversion under the difficulty it presented to his own mind; and cannot, therefore, be surprised at the conflict to which it contributed between the primitive Christians in Britain and their newly constituted Primate. But chrismation and unetion, and all the accompaniments of the Roman ritual, had their share in aggravating the schism. The reform, too, of the Roman Calendar had increased the difficulty of reconciling the ancient breach between the Western and the Asiatic churches, relative to the celebration of the Paschal Feast, in which the Britons adhered to the tradition of the latter, in opposition to the practice of Augustine. When, in the course of his apostolical circuit, he first came in collision with the British clergy, an interview which is recorded as the synod of Augustine's Oak, he is said to have condescended in minor points, and, from the silence of Dinoth of Bangor, who was deputed by the bishops to conduct the conference on their part, might be supposed to have conceded these two also, but that it is manifest that the issue depended upon one vital position from which Dinoth would not suffer himself to be diverted “Obedience to the into unprofitable controversies. That point was Church of Rome," the first in the estimation of Augustine, for it comprehended the recognition of his primacy; the most offensive to the

Britons, for it involved in one sweeping renunciation the primitive simplicity of their ancient usages, and the conscientious exercise of their best judgment. How unwilling soever they might be to divide the bond of union in the Church, they would grant no jurisdiction over their own hierarchy to the Roman bishop. If, as has been gratuitously assumed, they were inferior in learning, they exhibited no imbecility of judgment, no discourtesy of manner, and we may venture to assert, no perverseness of heart. It it is related, indeed, that when his feeble arguments were found of no avail, Augustine, by his prayers, restored to sight a blind man in the midst of the assembly. They were momentarily staggered; but, if it did not carry conviction to their minds, we may reasonably impute it to a suspicion of the miracle which was calculated, rather, to excite their indignation. That feeling was heightened at a second conference, when, the British bishops, having taken the advice of an aged hermit, who had told them that the stranger, if a true disciple of their Lord and Master, would manifest it by a humble demeanour, Augustine was deficient in the common courtesy of rising to receive them. In vain he called upon them to conform to the Romish ritual, and aid him in the work of converting their Pagan neighbours they refused to listen to him, and, in the bitterness of his disappointment, he denounced war against them. "If the Britons will not have peace with us, they shall perish at the hand of the Saxons." It is variously related that Ethelfrid led his recent converts from Northumberland, and that Ethelbert instigated the expedition in which the slaughter of twelve hundred ecclesiastics, belonging to the college of Bangor, attested the prophetic spirit of Augustine. We may reasonably suppose that he was not indifferent to its completion, and it is manifest that the Anglo-Saxons were more easily prompted to take up arms than trained in the meekness of the Christian character. The above instance of Augustine's wonder-working craft would not have ́ found its place, but that Gregory lent himself to the pretensions of his emissary. If, at any time, a suspicion arose that they were cajoled, what could better satisfy the brutal ignorance of their converts, than that the holy Pontiff himself wrote of the miracles of Augustine, and warned the holy man not to be elated with the gift. It were hardly possible to conceive this blasphemous hypocrisy in men professedly devoted to the preaching of the gospel of truth, and, in the main, entitled to our respect, but for the knowledge of the principle then prevalent in the schools, that "it was lawful to promote truth by falsehood."

The last act of Augustine was the consecration of Laurentius. It is is said that, so sanguine were the expectations excited by the first report of the mission, that no less than three palls were despatched from Rome with a view to the investment of archbishops in London, York, and Caerleon. Augustine, had, prudently, established his seat in the capital of the kingdom in which his mission had met with the most unqualified success; indeed his suffragan could not maintain his post in London. The Northumbrians gave no encouragement to his fellow labourers to linger at York; and an heretical bishop still main

tained his primitive discipline in Caerleon. The scion from the stock of Rome, however, if it had not already overshadowed the land, had taken root. The superstitions of the Saxons finally gave way before it. The British churches withered beneath its shade. What, in the order of Providence, may be destined to work out the desired end, it is not given to man to calculate; rarely, in the retrospect, to trace the events that have conduced to it. But we are, surely, justified in pronouncing that the conservative principle, the salt of the earth, is, during many ages, to be sought for any where rather than in the visible Church. He will seek for it in vain, indeed, who in the perusal of history does not bear in mind that "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." The date of the death of Augus tine is uncertain. His declining health had, probably, rendered him incapable of attending to the duties of his office, some time before he died; and one of the unappropriated palls having been laid upon the shoulders of Laurentius, the work of conversion was prosecuted under his authority. Having consecrated a new church in honour of St. Peter and St. Paul, and deposited the body of Augustine, whose name, at a later period, superseded those of the apostles, within its porch, he extended his pastoral solicitude to the remotest bounds of his meditated jurisdiction.

Iona, certainly, retained its primitive simplicity and independence for another century; the foundation laid by Patricius in Ireland, was, probably, favourable to the admission of his pretensions; and, if the submission of the college of Bangor, had not been propitiated by his predecessor, its pertinacious ranks had been effectually thinned by the sword, and the scattered remnants of the British Church maintained their faith in private. That the comprehensive operations of Laurentiùs, however, were attended by so little evidence of success, is accounted for by the circumstances which recalled his attention to the Church of Canterbury. Ethelbert died in 616, and the whole fabric of the Anglo-Romish Church shook to its foundations. They were not laid in a national conviction of the beauty of holiness and a deep sense of human infirmity. The meagre summary of doctrine, which the clergy taught their catechumens, had not chased away the superstition of their ancestors, and the saints which had thrust Odin and his companions from their niches, held their places solely by the weight of royal example and authority. This was now withdrawn. Eadbald, who succeeded to the kingdom of Kent, formed an incestuous marriage, and resented the expostulation of Laurentius. The time was not yet arrived for fulminating an interdict; and the mission was already preparing to decamp, when the Primate, who had failed to rouse the conscience of Eadbald, succeeded in working upon his credulity. He rushed into his presence streaming with blood, and related, that St. Peter had thus chastised his meditated desertion of his post. It is no imputation upon the acuteness of Eadbald that he was convinced of the reality of the miracle. The visible, the palpable proof stood before him. We know that a shrewd logician may be satisfied of an animal having eaten up his own leg by its appearance before him, walking

sive.

upon three. The interposition of the Prince of the apostles was deciEadbald bowed to the sentence of Laurentius, and, in testimony of his contrition, endowed the cathedral with the extensive manor of Adisham, with an exemption from tribute and services that afforded a model for the numerous royal grants which subsequently swelled the revenues of that princely monastery. Nor was his favour confined to this ample grant. He did not indeed follow the example of his father in relinquishing his castles to the ecclesiastics; but the ancient church within the royal fortress of Dover was restored for their use; a society of female converts was assembled within the precincts of his castle of Folkstone; and his daughter Eanswythe, under whose rule they were placed, probably with just claims to the grateful memory of her sisterhood, was admitted, upon the more questionable testimony of miracles wrought at her grave, into the calendar of Romish saints. But the subserviency of Eadbald to the views of the Primate was not attended with any advantage beyond the frontiers of his own kingdom.

The talent and influence of Ethelbert had not descended to his son. Essex had driven out the Romish clergy, or, in the language of their own historians, relapsed into Paganism; and Mellitus, who had been prematurely appointed to the bishopric of London, was a wanderer without a flock, when the death of Laurentius, in 619, made an opening for his appointment to that of Canterbury. He was invested with Gregory's remaining pall, which he wore with dignity. That he maintained his ground at an unpropitious season were no negative praise; but it is probable that he, also, did more than either of his predecessors to strengthen the cause of the Romish clergy, within the narrow compass to which their Church was now contracted, inasmuch as he is celebrated for the suavity of his manners, the fervour of his piety, and, more specifically, for his care of the sick. From more active duties he was precluded by the disease of which he died, in 624. Boniface the 5th transmitted the pall to Justus, Bishop of Rochester. There is something almost ludicrous in the tone with which the Pope, in this season of despondency to his mission, "wills and commands," nay, "makes a perpetual and unchangeable decree that all the provinces of England, be for ever subject to the metropolitical church of Canterbury." Whether, indeed, the primitive British Church was not so utterly crushed as the contemptuous silence of the monkish historians would lead us to believe; whether Justus apprehended the rivalry of Paulinus, for whom he had obtained a short-lived footing at York, whither he had accompanied Eadburga, the sister of Eadbald, on her marriage with Edwin, king of Northumberland; or, whether the papal rescript be an impeachment rather of the honesty of a later age than the sanity of this, it is not easy to resolve.

Justus died in 627, and the same high-sounding jurisdiction and dignity were conferred upon Honorius; but, whilst he parcelled out the promised land into imaginary dioceses, his unsubstantial tenure was evinced by the expulsion of Paulinus from Northumberland; who, escaping by sea, with the wretched relict of Edwin, again sought the coast of Kent. They were received with honour by Eadbald.