IN considering the subject of the introduction of The Christian Faith into Britain, it is necessary not only to picture the condition of the country in the first three centuries of our era, but also to have in view the religious condition of the Romans, and the state of the Church at that period.
Britain was peopled by various tribes, some of which were little better than savages, while others were moderately civilized. Within the tribes was the circle of the druids, who had their three orders, and whose priests were subject to one head. The druids possessed considerable knowledge of astronomy and mechanics, which was utilized for religious purposes. They had also the knowledge of writing, but as they encouraged memory to a wonderful extent, they did not favor the pen. They held great festivals in different parts of the country at set seasons, and their temples were very vast in area. In the innermost part the altar was placed. Here the sacrifice was offered up by the white-robed priest. "They hold," said Caesar, "that the wrath of the immortal gods can only be appeased and man's life redeemed by offering up human sacrifice, and it is part of their national institutions to hold fixed solemnities for this purpose.”
Cesar further tells us that the druids held the immortality of the soul, and that because of this, virtue was inculcated. Their doctrines, he adds, also treated of the power and the attributes of the immortal gods. We know that the ancient nations of the East, long before the time of Moses, believed these things; and we may say, therefore, that these druidic faiths, overlaid though they were with horrible and cruel superstition, evidence a great antiquity.
In the year 59 the power of the druids was broken. The tribes had joined together to cast off the Roman yoke, and were defeated in their stronghold in Wales. The sacred groves were felled and the authority of the druids was destroyed. By this great victory the druid spell, which was a terrible hindrance to the entrance of The Faith amongst the un-subdued tribes, was removed from over the Britons.
Let us now glance at Rome and its religion. Temples abounded in the imperial city and numerous gods were adored; but, strangely enough, at least in the first century, there was a disrespectful feeling in regard to some of these deities, while the habit of the people and the craving of the time led to the importation of new gods and the erection of fresh temples. Processions, gorgeously robed priests, the glamour of sacred personages, and sacred shows, upon which all the art of Rome was lavished, were to be found without stint in the imperial city; but such as would know what its paganism really was should read the latter verses of the first chapter of St Paul's epistle to the Romans.
A very remarkable event occurred in the year 70. Jerusalem fell, and Rome regarded her god, Jupiter, as the victor of the God of the Jews, Jehovah I His temple was burned to the ground, and the city of His people razed. The defiant Jews were either dead in the Holy Land, or were being slaughtered in the pagan arenas to amuse the populace. The few sacred vessels from the temple that escaped the flames had been carried as divine spoils in triumph through Rome, and had been presented before Rome's gods in the temples, even the Book of the Law being thus treated. Paganism seemed triumphant.
We glance over the world of the first century, and we inquire, What should speak to man in his moral darkness and lift him up out from his baseness— whether barbarian or civilized—and set him upon his feet before God?
The Jew, with Jerusalem fallen and the temple destroyed, was religiously set aside, and he could offer nothing to man. What could the Church offer at the close of the first century?
A general insight into the condition of the Church in those times is necessary in order to satisfactorily answer this question.
All the apostles had died, or had suffered martyrdom, in the first century, the aged apostle John falling asleep about the year 100. With the apostles gone, the Church had lost her miraculous powers, and, still more, her divinely inspired directors and guides, and her mighty missioners, who, when preaching Christ to the heathen, received from on high the witness of signs and wonders. The Church without the apostles was as is the Church amongst the heathen, and under heathen government, today. But not only was the Church thus bereft: wave after wave of persecution was rolling over her—the confessors of Christ were mutilated, destroyed, and thrown to wild beasts. There was no Government to fight her battles; she had God alone in Whom to hope. Yet day by day the Church grew in numbers—day by day the heathen, whether barbarian or civilized, were attracted from their idols, their sensuality, and their selfishness, to purity, and love, and peace!
Notwithstanding that the apostles were gone, and miraculous powers had ceased, the Church grew! How could this be? This is the reason for the marvel—the Church had the Truth. The apostles and the men inspired of God had left the written Word of Truth with the Church, and by The Word of God, the Sword of the Spirit, the marvelous victory was wrought. Born of that Word, the lives of the confessors of Christ of all ranks, ages, and peoples, proclaimed purity, love, and immortality, and the pagans were astonished. That Word proclaimed salvation from sin and from the power of self; alike in Caesar's household and in the shepherd's hut, alike in the sun-worshipping East and in the islands of the West.
The Faith, with its love and holiness, was illegal in the Roman Empire, and its confessors were therefore liable to death at the hands of the State. Conquered nations were permitted by Rome to maintain their own religions; but the Church was not a nation—it was a family composed of members of all classes from all nations, bound together by bonds of love and common faith. The Christians refused the idols of every nation, rejected the philosophy of the day, and refrained from the sins in which the people delighted. Thus they were looked upon as a huge secret society.
They were said to be subversive of law and order, to their charge all kinds of abominations were laid, and over and over again they were tortured, in order that their secret might be discovered.
At the beginning of the second century, Pliny thus wrote of the Christians in Bithynia—some of whom he had caused to be tortured in order to discover their practices—to Trajan, the Emperor: "The whole of these people's fault or error," he said, "is that they are accustomed, on an appointed day, to meet before dawn, to sing an ode to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by an oath—not to the commission of any enormity—but only, not to be guilty of any theft, or robbery, or adultery, and not to break their word, or withhold a pledge when re-demanded"; that when this was over they used to go away, and come together again to take food, but it was of a common kind, and harmless.
Intervals of peace came to the Church, but only to be succeeded by fresh persecutions. Sometimes these broke out in different parts of the world—in Asia Minor, Africa, and Europe; at others, the whole empire rose up against the Christians. In Lyons, in 177, the populace of that city rioted against the Church there, and one Christian after another was tortured, but only to obtain this confession: "I am a Christian; we commit no crimes.”
The third century tells the same tale of suffering. We read of the martyrs of Carthage, and of those of Egypt at its beginning, and of awful and widespread persecutions in the heart of the century. Again and again throughout the century the Christians were hunted out, tortured, and slain; and yet when its end arrived the number of those who professed The Faith was greater than when the century began.
The Church was outwardly prosperous at the commencement of the fourth century, and there were Christians at the Emperor's court who held high offices in the State. But in the army located in the West there was very severe persecution, and a whole legion composed of Christians was slaughtered. Britain, too, gave up her martyrs at this period—that is to say, to the Roman power.
A fierce effort was made to root out The Faith in 303. The Emperor Diocletian issued an edict, commanding the destruction of all churches and sacred writings, the degradation of all Christians, and the death of all who maintained The Faith. Some books were surrendered, but generally there was constant faith under the most ingenious cruelties. The rage against the Christians increased, and at length idolatry was so intimately connected with every duty and necessity of life that no one could escape sacrificing to, or in some way associating himself with idols. Even infants were fed with food which had been offered to idols, and everyone who refused idolatry was slain. The empire ran with blood.
But times of peace were about to dawn.
In 312 Maxentius and Constantine strove for the imperial crown. Maxentius persecuted the Church; Constantine favored the Christian religion. Maxentius was defeated, and the next year Constantine issued edicts favorable to the profession of Christianity. From this date, excepting during a short period of relapse, the Christian religion took its place amongst the accepted religions of the world, It is necessary to keep these broad facts before the mind in considering the entrance of Christianity into Britain. Under the Roman occupation The Faith had no rights in the island and no protection. Neither is there much ground for believing that Christians from imperial Rome were largely instrumental in spreading it in Britain, as we shall point out later. There are remains in England which mark the devotion of Roman soldiers of different nations to their gods, but monumental remains indicating The Faith of Christ are very rare.
We fall back upon the little that the writers of the early Church have to tell us on the matter, and very interesting it is to hear of The Faith prospering in the island outside the limits of the Roman sway. Tertullian, in or about the year 208, wrote in favor of The Christian Faith with the view of seeking to quiet pagan hostility and injustice towards its confessors; and, referring to its world-wide conquests, he speaks of " districts of Britain inaccessible to the Romans, but subdued to Christ... “and how "the kingdom and name of Christ are venerated" there. He wrote in a similar manner, we should judge, to that which in our day might be adopted as to parts of China where Christian missionaries are at work. He did not imply that Britain had become Christianized, but that many true Christians were the fruit of missionary labor in Britain. It is wise to keep this in view in reference to the position of the Church in Britain in later years. In 239 Origen says, "The power of the Savior is felt even among those who are divided from our world in Britain," and he adds, that very many in that country had not heard of Christ. Tertullian was of Africa, and Origen of Asia Minor, but evidently they were each in some way in touch with missionary work in Britain. This fact certainly points to the belief that to the East and its early apostolic energy Britain was indebted for "The Word of the Truth of the Gospel.”
And here we would add that as the origin of the more ancient of the Britons was the East, and as the druid religion had in it, doctrines as ancient as those held in Egypt before the time of Moses, there was a sort of affinity between the islands of the West and the Africa of Tertullian's days. Christianity shone the fairest in the early centuries of our era in the East, and the East rejoiced over the salvation of the children of the West. In some ways the religion of Britain offered ideas which the missionary could use in teaching the Truth of the Gospel. Certainly the religion of the druids was not so debased as that of imperial Rome, for it contained, in spite of all its horrors, the conception of a deity requiring from the guilty a sacrifice of the most important nature the human race could offer, and of the deity overseeing man's actions and motives, and of a coming day when man should be judged by him. And when the priestly power of the druids was broken, as it was midway in the first century, it is not so difficult to follow the missionary from the Far East, proclaiming to the oppressed Britons the Truth by which men are made free forever, as it is to follow him in his labors amongst the luxury and debasement of the worshippers of the gods of Rome.