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its bearings on some matter of interest at the present time. In doing this I should, of course, have to draw my materials entirely from the works of other men, as I had neither time nor opportunity to search out materials from original sources; so I chose as my subject the story of the Ancient Church in Wales, and then set myself to see what light that story throws upon the situation of the Christian Churches in Wales at the present day.

The story is a most interesting story. There can be no doubt but that Christianity arrived in Britain very early in the Christian era. It seems uncertain who first brought Christianity to Britain. The story of the conversion of the Britons by Joseph of Arimathæa, and the foundation by him of the monastery of Glastonbury, I suppose we all reject. The tradition of St. Paul having converted the Britons, although it has the support of Stillingfleet in his Origines Brittanica, and of Archbishops Parker and Usher, and of Camden, Gibson, Cave, Nelson, Burgess, as mentioned in Hore's Eighteen Centuries of the Church of England, hardly seems to be of the substance of history. We must be content, apparently, in our present state of knowledge, to say that it is uncertain who first brought Christianity to Britain; but it seems to be a historical fact resting on unusually substantial evidence, connecting the date of the events and the place of them, that by the third century Christianity had obtained a firm footing in Britain. It also seems reasonably clear that the mission to Britain was of Eastern and not of Western origin, and came, not from Rome, but from the churches of Asia Minor and Syria. The conclusion as to the date depends on evidence of historical facts. The conclusion as to the source of conversion depends rather on inferences to be drawn from the customs and uses of the British Church, such as its liturgy, the Judaic mode of computing Easter, the form of tonsure,

the appellation of churches, the simple immersion at baptisin -all of which seem to point to an Oriental origin of the British Church. The facts as to the date of the introduction of Christianity into Britain are, as I have said, singularly well established. I do not propose to go through them in detail. It is enough to say that the testimony of Tertullian and Origen, coupled with the evidence of the presence of British bishops at the councils of Arles (A.D. 314), Nice (A.D. 325), Sardica (A.D. 347), and Ariminum (A.D. 360), form a strong chain of evidence. If any one wishes to satisfy himself on the point let him read the Origines Brittanica of Stillingfleet and the first two chapters of Eighteen Centuries of the Church of England, by the Rev. A. H. Hore, of Trinity College, Oxford, and I do not think he will have any further doubt in the matter.

The fact is, that the difficulties with regard to the history of the early Welsh Church are not, as is so often the case with regard to ancient history of nations themselves possessing but little civilisation, difficulties arising from a want of credible authorities, writing about or soon after the event which they narrate, or arising from the absence of well-established historic facts. The difficulties arise rather from the authorities and established facts being overlaid and choked by a mass of stories told by monkish historians, most of them of later date. The narratives of these historians consist largely of stories of the Lives of Saints and of the miracles performed by them. They were written, for the most part, after Papal supremacy had been claimed by the Bishop of Rome, with the object of supporting that claim; and although archæological research may tend to show that local saints really did exist, having the names of the subjects of some of these stories, yet the historical value of such narratives is almost entirely marred by the obvious desire of the writers to establish either the

Roman origin of the British Church, or the antiquity and glory of the particular monastic foundation to which the writer was attached. One may take as an example of a monkish story, told for the purpose of giving Rome the credit of the conversion of the Britons, the story told by Bede, "that during the reign of the Emperor Aurelius, and while Eleutherius was Bishop of Rome, i.e., between the years A.D. 177 and A.D. 181, a British king of the name of Lucius sent messengers to Rome with a request that he might be admitted within the pale of Christianity, and that the request was joyfully received, and missionaries ordained and sent to Britain, and that Lucius was baptized, and that the new worship was propagated without impediment among the natives." This is Bede's story, as quoted by Dr. Lingard. The story seems also to appear in the Book of Llandaf, as quoted by Stillingfleet, who, however, gives no credence to it. This story seems now, for reasons with which I will not trouble you, to be thoroughly discredited. For my own part, I confess that I should have wished to disbelieve such a story, quite apart from its inherent difficulties, and the great probability of its being an invention of those who wished to attribute a Roman origin to the British Church. I should be unwilling to believe it, because I would much rather believe of our Welsh forefathers that Christianity was established by missionaries preaching to the people, as St. Paul and the Apostles did, rather than by the conversion of a king, whom the people followed like a flock of sheep, be he Ethelbert of Kent, Edwin of Northumbria, or Henry the Eighth. The story of Joseph of Arimathæa coming to Britain and founding the monastery at Glastonbury, is an instance, probably, of a story being invented to glorify and give antiquity to the monastery.

The reason why I have dwelt on these two points

I mean the early date of the establishment of Christianity in Wales, and the Eastern source of the conversion-is because I wish to establish the early independence of the Welsh Church, and that it had its own ecclesiastical customs and uses. If it is said, what does it matter whether or not the church was an independent church in those early times, I answer that it is of great importance to trace the early sentiments of a nation, whether you are dealing with its political or with its ecclesiastical history. Who would say, in dealing with the political history of England, that it is a matter of no importance to trace back the English love of independence and representative government to those early Anglo-Saxon institutions which survived and have ultimately superseded the feudal institutions of their Norman conquerors. Just so I think it important to trace back to the very foundation of the Welsh Church its independence, and its domestic local character.

The policy of the Roman Catholic Church has always been to establish unity at the expense of Nationality, and to efface local customs and uses as far as possible; whereas the genius of the Eastern Church, from which I claim that the Welsh Church derives its origin, and, indeed, I may say the genius of St. Paul, seems to have been to recognise local Christian churches, and favour their peculiar customs and uses.

In these matters of national sentiment, and I would suggest to you, above all, in matters of national religious sentiment, we should remember that the direction given to the tree in its early growth is a hard matter to alter.

The next point I would make is, that whatever was the origin of the Christian Church in Britain, the whole history of the British Church, from the arrival of St. Augustine in Kent in A.D. 597, down to the twelfth century, was one continued struggle of the local church, first, against the supremacy of Rome, and later on against the jurisdiction

of Canterbury. The struggle against the supremacy of Rome was not confined to Wales, nor even to Britain. It was common to all the Celtic Churches, which all sprung from an Eastern source. You find it in the Gallican Church, said to have had its origin in the conversion of the Celts of Gaul by St. John. You find it in Ireland, which owed its Christian Church to missionaries from the Celtic Church in Britain. This struggle for independence must have made a lasting impression on the Celtic race; and if you would fathom religious sentiment in Wales in the nineteenth century, you must not forget this struggle for independence, this struggle to maintain the local character of the Welsh Church against the universality set up by Rome as an essential characteristic of the Church of Christ.

But to return to the story of the Welsh Church. It must be remembered that from its origin down to the arrival of Augustine, Christianity in Britain was exclusively Celtic. There is, I believe, no historic evidence whatever of any jurisdiction being exercised or even claimed during that period by the Bishop of Rome. The British Church was local. I do not, of course, mean that the British Church was not living in communion with the other Christian Churches, or that the British Church held itself aloof from the councils of the Early Church. On the contrary, as we have seen, British bishops attended the councils of Arles, Nice, Sardica, and Ariminum. Nay, more, the British Church, along with other Christian Churches, was affected by the great heresies which arose from time to time. The Arian heresy and the Pelagian heresy, each for a time, took deep root in the British Church, the latter heresy being in its origin a Welsh heresy, originated by Morgan, a Welshman, whose name in its Greek form was Pelagius. It is worthy of note that the heresy of Pelagius in Britain was successfully counteracted from within the Celtic Churches

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