THE LIFE OF St. Augustine, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, APOSTLE OF THE ENGLISH. CHAPTER I. THE BRITISH CHURCH.-ITS FIRST TEACHERS. A.D. 51-A.D. 182. NEVER was the face of a country more speedily and entirely changed than was that of our own island by the inroads of its Saxon conquerors in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian æra. Secular historians have recounted how those fierce invaders swept all before them like a torrent; drove the ancient people of the land into its farthest recesses, or compelled them to take shelter behind its mountain-fastnesses; establishing themselves in the places which they had laid waste, and demolishing with ruthless hands the comely fabric of civilization and social order which had been gradually growing up in Britain since its subjugation to the Roman power. They, meanwhile, who read the history of their country with a Christian and Catholic eye, will regard with an interest, such as no mere record of political changes and worldly reverses can inspire, the effect of this sudden and mighty revolution upon the religious condition B and destinies of Britain. To them, the contest between the aboriginal inhabitants of the island and their impetuous conquerors, if contest it can be called, where the parties were so unequally matched in numbers and resources, will seem chiefly memorable, not as it was a trial of human strength, or a struggle for national ascendancy, but as it was a war of extermination waged by a heathen people against one, which, however miserably debased in practice, was yet in name and privilege, Christian. The Church, which had dislodged, by little and little, one vast system of idolatry, was now in turn to be herself displaced by another, less compact and imposing indeed, but not less wicked. Our own venerable historian, St. Bede, in describing the religious consequences of this great national visitation (for such he accounts it), speaks of "buildings public and private, levelled to the ground; priests everywhere massacred at the very altars; and prelates with their flocks swept away by fire and sword."1 It seemed like a new fulfilment of the prophet's words: "Ascendit contra eam gens ab Aquilone, quæ ponet terram ejus in solitudinem et non erit qui habitet in eâ ab homine usque ad pecus, et moti sunt, et abierunt."2 Thus was heathenism once more dominant in the land which had been trodden by saintly footsteps, and watered by Martyrs' blood. It is true that our Lord did not, even in this gloomy interval, leave Himself without witness in Britain; and so gave a pledge that He still watched over it, and would one day come to its help. Yet the prospects of His Church in this our island, during the period to which we are referring, were to human eyes sufficiently 2 Jer. L. 3. 1 S. Bede, Hist. Eccl. Gent. Ang. lib. i. c. 15. dismal. The land, in its length and breadth, was overspread by darkness; gross, palpable, darkness. The light of God's Lamp, though not extinct, was pent up where it could not be seen; the Church, whose place is everywhere, was, in England, imprisoned within fixed, and, for all that appeared, impassable, barriers; it was but coextensive with the now shrivelled boundaries of the ancient British name. As the war drew to a close, and the aboriginal islanders resigned their former possessions into the hands of an enemy whom they could no longer resist, settled heart-burnings, and jealousies, of which it is painful even to think, took the place of more active and sanguinary hostilities. Britain was now a nation divided against itself; and pride and resentment interposed an effectual obstacle to the reconciliation of the conquerors and the conquered within that universal Fold, "where there is neither barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free;" in which all worldly distinctions are neutralized, and all narrowing prejudices overruled. At this critical juncture, it pleased Almighty God to move the heart of His servant St. Gregory, the first of that name who filled the chair of St. Peter, and, for his eminent virtues, surnamed the Great, with compassion towards our afflicted country; and to direct hither the steps of that blessed Saint, whose life is to form the subject of these humble pages. Happily for England, she had before established, against this her hour of need, a title to those especial favours which are ever in store for a Church of Martyrs. The seed whose manifold return, how long soever delayed, is never-failing in the end, had already been profusely sown in her own soil. And thus, "after many days," the blood of holy Alban and his companions which had "cried from the ground" for mercy upon desolate England, was to receive its answer in the mission of a new Apostle to these shores. Even, as the blood of Stephen, first heir of his Master's Cross, had its abundant harvest in the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul, did the sufferings of our glorious Protomartyr win for England the pitying regards of St. Gregory and the Apostolic labours of his blessed son in the faith. For many ages, St. Alban was accounted the Patron of England, and great national blessings were traced, by religious men of old, to the effect of his death, or looked upon as answers to his continual prayers.3 Nor can we doubt that, among the chief fruits of his sufferings and intercession is to be numbered that gracious interposition of our Lord in behalf of His Church, by which this island was for the second time wrested from the Enemy's grasp, and brought under the healing shade of the True Vine. Although, then, the ancient Church of Britain presented no visible tokens of life to the eyes of our Saint, upon his landing on English ground, we may not question that the way had been really, though secretly, prepared for him, through the power of Divine Grace manifested in the works and sufferings of those who had preceded him in this scene of his labours. And, accordingly, some notice of the ancient Church of Britain, its origin, rise, and decline, seems a fitting, if not necessary, introduction to the history of one, whose very title to our veneration, as the second Founder of the Church in our island, suggests the grateful remembrance of mercies vouchsafed to Britain in the ages before him. As it is due to his memory, to point out 3 See his Life by the Rev. A. Butler. (June 22.) how entirely the vestiges of Christ had disappeared from that portion, at least, of the island, into which he was immediately called, and thus how strictly his labours were of a Missionary and Apostolic character; so does it seem due to theirs, who went before him, to begin our narrative with some connected account of those earlier triumphs of faith, by which his course was smoothed, rather than with the abrupt mention of the degeneracy, which created the necessity for his mission. The light of the Gospel is believed to have dawned upon Britain as early as the age of the Apostles. St. Bede, indeed, takes no notice of a Church here, till the time of King Lucius, or towards the end of the second century; but a yet earlier historian, whose name, like his own, is invested with the honours of sanctity, St. Gildas, makes the introduction of Christianity into Britain anterior to a great revolt of the inhabitants, evidently corresponding with that under Boadicea, in a.D. 61. The same historian appears to direct us for the origin of Christianity in Britain to some epoch midway between a certain great national convulsion, and the abovementioned rise; and it has been thought that, by the former of these critical events, St. Gildas intends the victory obtained over Caractacus by the Emperor Claudius, in the year of our Lord 51;5 as a result of which the British king was taken captive, and carried, with his family and retinue, to Rome. Concurrent with this account of St. Gildas are many ancient traditions which, together with such other proofs as the case admits, seem to make it highly probable, that the introduction of Christianity into Britain was nearly contemporaneous + S. Gildas de Excid. Brit. § 8, compared with § 6 and § 7. |