British Church, the churches of the Cambro-Britons. On the abandonment of Britain by the Romans, intestine divisions, the irruptions of the Picts and the Scots, and finally, the Saxon invasions, replunged the country into barbarism; and the shortlived hierarchy of Constantine was annihilated. By the conclusion of the sixth century, South Britain, in consequence of the predominance of the Anglo-Saxons, had relapsed into Paganism. In Wales, and those parts of the Island of which the native Britons retained possession, the forms of Christianity were still preserved. They had regular diocesan bishops, besides the various orders of inferior clergy, sent out, in general from the religious houses with which Wales and Cornwall abounded. The bishoprics of Landaff, Margam, Lanbadarn, St. David's, St. Asaph, and Bangor, with that of St. Cebius in Anglesea, were now established and endowed. Columba, Kentigern, and Ninian, had evangelized the Northern Britons. From the account that Gildas gives of all classes, clergy as well as laity, the corruption of manners appears to have become general; and religion seems to have had a very faint influence on the community as a practical principle....... The clergy are charged (by him) with ignorance, insolence, and rapaciousness: he calls them haters of the truth, and lovers of falsehood, exhibiting the worst examples to the flock, and therefore unfit to reprove them for their vices. He charges them with the most shameful avarice, sensuality, and dissimulation. He bids the people beware of such ravening wolves, or otherwise that the blind, being led by the blind, would fall into the pit of hell. As to the few whom he exempts from the heavy charges which he brings against the generality, he blames them for their supineness in not reproving others, and compares them to Eli, with whom God was so displeased for conniving at the wickedness of his sons. We may be disposed to blame the warmth and asperity of this old Briton, and the abruptness of his manner; but he lived in turbulent times; and things were getting to a most awful state, as it respected both the leading characters of the age and the community at large. Lands were freely given to the church, and this might be thought to argue great liberality and respect for religion: but this was not always the cause of those donations, or rather alienations. When the great men had been guilty of any enormities, in order to expiate the offence, and be liberated from ecclesiastical censures, they gave up certain parts of their property as devoted to "God and the Church." Whole districts were thus alienated to the Church, of which the names are retained in the old Landaff manuscript; so that the Silurian clergy in the sixth and seventh centuries, were rendered exceedingly opulent. The consequence was, that wealth begot avarice and sensuality, and the ministers of the sanctuary became earthly-minded.' Hughes. Vol. II. pp. 249,-241, 2. Such was the state of things when Augustine landed in Kent, and, by effecting the conversion of the Saxon monarch, Ethel bert, laid the foundations of the English hierarchy, in subordination to the Roman See. Pope Gregory had directed him to make choice of London for the metropolitan seat; but, whether by the choice of Augustine or that of Ethelbert, Canterbury, which had been the residence of the King, and which, together with the surrounding country, was bestowed upon the missionaries, received the honours of the primacy. The attempt of that haughty and ambitious prelate to subjugate to his metropolitan authority, the old British clergy,' is, by the learned but partial historian to whose pages we have so often referred, glossed over with palpable disingenuousness. From the conversion of the Saxons,' says Mr. Lingard, the zeal of Augustine was directed to the reformation of the Britons. During one hundred and fifty years of unsuccessful warfare, the ancient discipline of their church had been nearly abolished, and the lives of their clergy were disgraced by vices the most repugnant to their profession. To which of the British sees the archiepiscopal jurisdiction had been originally attached, is at present unknown; but Gregory had written to Augustine, that he had subjected all the bishops of Britain to his authority. The missionary, with the aid of Ethelbert, prevailed on the British prelates to meet him at a place which has since been called Augustine's oak in Worcestershire -After a long and unavailing debate, the conference was adjourned to another day. In the interval the Britons consulted a neighbouring hermit, who advised them to watch the behaviour of Augustine; if he rose to meet them, they were to consider him as a man of unassuming disposition, and to listen to his demands: but if he kept his seat, they should condemn him of pride, and reject his authority. With this sapient admonition, which left the decision of the controversy to accident, seven bishops, with Dinoth, abbot of Bangor, repaired to the place of conference. Augustine happened to be seated; and did not rise at their arrival. Both his reasons and his authority were consequently despised. In points of doctrine there had been no difference between them and to facilitate their compliance in other matters, the archbishop had reduced his demands to three heads: that they should observe the Catholic computation of Easter; should adopt the Roman rite in the administration of baptism; and should join with the missionaries in preaching to the Saxons. Each of these requests, in obedience to the advice of the hermit, was pertinaciously refused. "Know then," exclaimed the missionary with the tone of a prophet, "that if you will not assist me in pointing out to the Saxons the way of life, they, by the just judgement of God, will prove to you the ministers of death." He did not live to see the prediction verified.'t : * The British historians state, that Dinoth, in disputing at large against receiving the authority of the Pope, with Augustine, defended the prerogatives of the archbishop of St. David's, affirming it not to be for the British interest to own either the Roman pride, or the Saxon tyranny. Hist. of England. Vol. I. pp. 83, 4.. VOL. XVI. N.S. On this version of Bede's more honest statement, we have only to remark in a few words: 1. That if the reformation' of the British clergy had been the missionary's object, it is strange that all his zeal should have been wasted on mere ceremonial differences. Of the three points to which, we are told, Augustine reduced his demands, two were not of the slightest import ance except as affecting the question of uniformity, and as to bave yielded to the Church of Rome in those matters, would have been to acknowledge its jurisdiction. The third demand was only a more specious mode of requiring their recognition of the Saxon government as well as the Roman supremacy. 2. That the reformation of the Britons was not his real object, is evident from his errand. Mr. Lingard tells us, that Pope Gregory had subjected to his authority, all the bishops of Britain. To assert this prerogative and receive their homage, was the purpose he had in view, and to carry it, or, as Mr. L. shrewdly phrases it, to facilitate their compliance in other matters,' he had recourse alternately to the appearance of moderation, and the language of vindictive menace. 3. His keeping his seat was a tolerably intelligible indication that he did not meet the British prelates as his equals: it was one of those 'accidents' which betray the character. 4. If this took place, as Mr. L. states, at a second interview, it could not be the cause of their rejecting his demands and disputing his authority in the first long and 'unavailing debate. 5. The passage in Bede, which states Augustine to have died before the slaughter of the monks at Chester, contrary to the testimony of other writers, is maintained by several eminent antiquaries to be an interpolation in the Latin copies. There is reason to believe, both that he lived to. see bis imprecation verified, and that he had some share in promoting its accomplishment, by instigating Ethelbert to encourage the Northumbrian invasion. Thus nobly,' says Mr. Hughes, did the Cambro-Britons stand up for the independency of their churches;' and as martyrs in the cause of civil and religious liberty, they are entitled to our admiration and sympathy. But in this light only can the characters of the Cambrian prelates be regarded with complacent feelings. Religion had little share in this struggle for ecclesiastical independence. We have but too certain evidence, that the corruption of Christianity by monkery and paganism, among the British Christians, and the disolute lives of their clergy, kept pace with the progress of the Romish apostacy. After the death of Augustine, Paganism revived in Kent, and the people of Essex and Middlesex, having also relapsed into. idolatry, long continued obstinate in their hostility to Christianity. The Saxon kings who were nominally Christians, were for the most part no better than heathens. Towards the close of the seventh century, however, the whole of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy had received the Christian religion as it was taught by the priests of Rome. But Monkish Christianity,' remarks the elegant historian of the Anglo-Saxons, was not Apostolic Christianity. The system which the Papal hierarchy esta⚫lished in England and in Europe, was an attempt to transfer the government of the world into the hands of ecclesiastics, under the name of Christianity, but by a complete departure from its spirit and precepts.' Ages of Gothic darkness ensued; the Churches of Cambria at length bowed to the yoke of Papal bondage, and the ecclesiastical history of the country from that time to the appearance of Wicklif, is but the history of Popery. The biographical sketches which occupy the greater part of Mr. Richards's volume, commence with the seventeenth century. They supply some interesting illustrations of the history of the Welsh Baptists, who, Mr. Richards complains, have been by no means fairly dealed with by Neale and Calamy. Vavasor Powell, in particular, is stigmatised in Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial, as a fifth monarchy man, apparently without any justice. The materials collected by Mr. Richards, form an acceptable supplement to the history of the English Dissenters, and will be of service to future compilers. Mr. Richards has displayed much candour and some industry in these sketches, in which he is more at home than in disquisitions on Druidical antiquities.. The true Cambro-Briton is discernible throughout, in the Author's zeal for religious liberty, and his sensitive jealousy of every thing bordering on ecclesiastical encroachment. We question whether he would have given Augustine the monk, a second meeting. Should this volume reach a second edition, we would suggest to the Editor, the expediency of reducing its bulk, and thereby its price, by omitting the disquisition, pp. 11-19., and the whole of the appendix, and curtailing the prefatory matter. The only part of the appendix that is at all worthy of preservation, should have found a place in the memoirs of the Author. Art. XIII. The True Age of Reason; or a fair Challenge to Deists. A candid Examination of the Claims of Modern Deism, containing a Demonstration of the Insufficiency of unassisted Reason to lead Mankind to Virtue, to Happiness, and to God. By George Redford, A. M. 12mo. pp. 44. Price 1s. London. 1821. THE HE Author of this Tract avows his conviction of the impolicy and inconsistency of all attempts to suppress Infidelity by criminal prosecutions; and he is on this account anxious to shew, that persons holding this sentiment are not indif ferent to the success of Divine truth, or unmindful of the infuriated attacks which it has recently sustained. If all Christians who possess the ability and the opportunity, would resist infidelity by sound argument, and prove themselves faithful to their own profession, the occasion for legal prosecutions—those libels upon the best of causes, which are infinitely more pernicious than all the open attacks of unbelievers,-would speedily be taken away by the decline of the evil against which they are professedly employed.' Mr. Redford has confined himself to the examination of what he regards as the essential principle of Deism, the sufficiency ' of unassisted reason.' Going back to that period in the history of human nature, in which the mind of man seems to have arrived at the very zenith of its self-sustained glory,' he shews how utterly inadequate, in that true age of reason,' the combined genius, and learning, and wisdom of the most admired sages were to discover the simplest principles of true religion. This he shews in detail in reference to, 1. the Divine Unity; 2. the worship of a Supreme Being; 3. the standard of morals; 4. the moral government of the world; 5. the Divine Placability; 6. the immortality of the soul. Mr. R. acknowledges his obligations for some of his statements to Dr. Dwight's " Na"ture and Danger of the Infidel Philosophy." He would have done his readers a service by referring them also to Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philosopher; a work highly deserving of being reprinted. We cordially recommend the present Tract as a concise and well written exposition of the argument selected for illustration. The classical references should have been more specific, in order to be of any use to the studious inquirer. |