CHAPTER XLVII.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

WE have seen the origin of the Church in the upper chamber at Jerusalem; we have seen it spread thence in widening circles to embrace different classes of men. First everywhere addressing itself to the Jews, the heirs of the promises; then spreading to Samaritans and proselytes; and lastly to the world-embracing circle of the Gentiles.

If we were tracing its spread in different countries we should take a different comparison, suggested by ancient symbolical representations; we should picture the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and twelve streams flowing from beneath His feet down the sides of the holy mount, to represent the teaching of the apostles, spreading in all directions, and flowing on to all the nations of the world. The twelve streams subdivide and spread in a great network designed by the providence of God to irrigate the world with the life-giving waters. Sometimes a channel after awhile closes up; sometimes a noble stream loses itself in a marsh, which stagnates and becomes unwholesome; sometimes the waters spread themselves in pure streams, and rise insensibly among the herbage, and cover the land with beauty and fruitfulness.

We proceed briefly to trace the waters of the Church of England up to their source in Jerusalem.

Christianity often followed the roads which commerce had already made for intercourse between different and distant The long-established intercourse between Asia

people.

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Minor and the south of Gaul seems to have led to the planting of a Christian Church from that part of the world in the commercial colonies of Lyons and Vienne. It is from the records of a bloody persecution of these churches in 177 that we gather our earliest knowledge of them. This account was sent to the Church of Smyrna, with which we conclude the churches of Lyons and Vienne had specially close relations-probably those of daughter and mother Church. A little after this time, Irenæus, the pupil of Polycarp (who had been Bishop of Smyrna), who was the pupil of St. John the Apostle, became the Bishop of the Church at Lyons. The Christianising of Gaul as a whole is due to a great missionary effort about the middle of the third century; and the probability is that, though there may have been isolated believers in Britain previous to that time, yet the planting of the Church in Britain is due to an extension of this missionary effort by the road of the commercial intercourse which had long existed between south Britain and the opposite coast of Gaul. The liturgy of the British Church was of that family of ancient liturgies which is called by the name of St. John, and is traced back to the group of churches of which Ephesus was the mother Church. And there are other peculiarities in the customs of the British Church which confirm the probability that of the twelve streams flowing down the sacred mount it is the one which flows from the doctrine of St. John, which at length brought the waters of the fountain of life into this remote part of the world. At the beginning of the fourth century it is quite certain that there was a branch of Christ's Church in this island, with the complete organisation of a Christian Church, and in full communion with the rest of the Church of Christ.

The conquest of the island by the heathen Saxons, extending over a period of near 200 years, gradually exterminated

Christianity from the conquered country, and pushed it back until it was only in the remote corners of the island in which the British race were at length able to make a stand—i.e., in Cornwall, Wales, and the north-that the Church continued to exist.

The conversion of the Saxons was due to two agencies : first, to missionaries sent from the Continent, and especially to a strong mission under Augustine, sent by Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome; and secondly, to missionaries from the old Celtic churches, and especially to a mission from Iona. But even before these began their work, the Gallic Church had a footing in the island. The most influential of the Saxon kings, Ethelbert, King of Kent, had married a Christian princess, Bertha, the daughter of a King of Paris, and she had a bishop for her chaplain, who, with his clergy, performed Divine service in one of the old British churches at Canterbury. The conversion of the king and the people of Kent was, however, due to Augustine, who thereupon received his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury from the Bishops of Gaul, so that even in the Italian mission the connection of the Church of this land with the Gallican Church was not lost. The Celtic mission also was derived from a Gallican origin, for Iona was founded by Columba, an Irish Scot, who was a pupil of Finan's, who was partly a pupil of St. David of Wales, and received Christianity through St. Patrick, a Scot, who received his training and consecration from the Church of Gaul. Ultimately we find that of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, the Italian missionaries Christianised Kent and Wessex; the Celtic missionaries Christianised Mercia; and a Northumbrian, with a Roman education, introduced Christianity into Sussex. The work of conversion was begun by the Italians, and finished by the Scots in Northumbria and Essex. So that about equal credit is due to Rome and to Iona; for if Rome may

claim the special merit of having been first to preach the Gospel to the heathen Saxons, Iona may, perhaps, fairly balance that claim by the fact that when the good work was finished, the Christianity of by far the larger portion of England was found to be due to her children. The East Anglican Church was founded by Felix, a Burgundian. At first the Church in each kingdom of the Heptarchy was independent of the rest, but those which owed their origin to the two great missions from Rome and from Iona naturally held together and formed two great groups-one under the special influence of Kent, the other under that of Northumbria.

At length the Kings of Kent and Northumbria, with the consent of the churches, agreed to select a man acceptable to all, and to send him to Rome, which was then looked up to by all the churches of the north and west, as England is looked up to now by her colonies in various parts of the world, as the centre of civilisation and Christianity; that then he might come back with all the experience to be gathered in the imperial city, and with all the prestige of consecration by the Bishop of the most famous see of Christendom, and regulate the affairs of the English churches. The man selected having died at Rome before consecration, Theodore of Tarsus was appointed. At a council of all the English churches held at Hertford in the year 673, a uniformity of customs was adopted, the rights of the several churches were defined, and their confederation into one province under the Archbishop of Canterbury as metropolitan was assented to. The Church thus organised helped largely to civilise the people of the Saxon heptarchy, and to mould their national growth, and to prepare their way for union into one nation and kingdom. For it is worthy of note that the union of the churches into one Church of England preceded the union of the kingdoms into one kingdom of England by 150 years.

From this period to the Norman Conquest England had little intercourse with the rest of the world, and the Church of England, though in full communion with the rest of the Church, had little intercourse with it. It was this conquest which brought England into the family of European nations, and brought its Church under the influence of the great ecclesiastical movement which was then, under the genius of Hildebrand, changing the ancient constitution of the Church, and organising the various national churches of Europe into one vast spiritual monarchy under the headship of the Bishop of Rome. In the earlier part of the ensuing period, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, the papal power continued to encroach upon the independent rights of the national churches; and the latter part of the period saw a gradual and successful resistance to these encroachments. Throughout the whole period corruptions of doctrine and many superstitious practices continued to grow and prevail.

In the early part of the sixteenth century the Church of England at length reformed itself. First it threw off the usurped authority of the Bishops of Rome; and then it rejected the corruptions of doctrine and the superstitious practices which had crept in during the medieval period; and restored both the constitution of the Church and its doctrine and ritual to the standard of the primitive Church.

The Church oscillated for a time between the two extremes of Popery and Puritanism; but at length, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, it was firmly established on the basis of Scripture and primitive antiquity, in that safe position midway between the two extremes, which it has retained ever since. Overthrown and persecuted for ten years by the Presbyterians and Independents during the Great Rebellion, on the restoration of the monarchy the Church also resumed its ancient place, and was adopted by the people, acting legally