THE work instituted in Iona by Columba lived long after him, and Christianity made head, and supplanted much Saxan paganism in the kingdom of Northumbria. We are obliged to express ourselves in this unpleasing manner, and to speak of Christianity rather than The Faith of Christ, for in the early days under consideration, whole tribes would become "Christian" because their chief; or king, had changed his religion, and they would become once more pagan when their chief, or king, changed from Christian to pagan. This wholesale conversion to the Christian religion was one of the causes which led to the utter demoralization of the idea of the Christian faith as it is presented in the Scriptures. Aidan and Colman are names of earnest missionaries amongst the Angles and instructors of these heathen in the Christian religion. As successively Bishops of Lindisfarne, their time of labor extended from A.D. 635 to A.D. 664. Their sphere of work amongst the Angles was "the north country from the Forth to the Humber.”
We have, therefore, the fact before us, that the Christian religion, which had been driven to the west and south of Britain, was gradually entering the north, and other parts also of the territory in the hand of the Saxons. That some movement in the Saxons, upon the east coast of the island, or, at any rate, in their leaders, was also in progress, is evidenced by the Saxons sending to the Gauls to come and help them, which fact had come to the ears of Gregory the Great The hatred of the Saxons to Christianity at the end of the sixth century was not of its old fierce character; far from it, for Ethelbert, the Saxon King of Kent and the conqueror of other Saxon kings, married Bertha, a Christian, the daughter of a king of Paris, and permitted her to have as her chaplain Luidhard, a Gaulish bishop. In the British church then standing in Canterbury it is more than probable that Christian services were held.
Our chapter relates to the coming of Augustine, the monk, to the English, and as he was sent by the Pope of Rome, it is necessary, for the purpose before us, that we should now note how the original Bishop of Rome developed into the Pope, how the first humble overseer of the flock of God in the imperial city, became the imperial ruler of men's souls and bodies. We have no need at the present to inquire whether the apostle Peter was ever in Rome, but from the Scriptures we know, that the office and work of an apostle were very different from those of the bishop. Who were the first bishops of Rome is a question which can hardly be settled, for the lists are not alike, and are given thus Peter, Linus, Anacletus, Clemens—Peter, Clemens, Linus, Anacletus—Peter, Linus, Clemens, Anacletus. Some think there may have been two or more bishops together.
The overseer of the flock of God in apostolic days was without doubt a successor of the apostles, in the sense that he was a pious man, of high Christian character, and possibly of ability to teach, and certainly of moral weight. Further he would be a pattern in his household of Christian virtue with his wife and children.
We have not space here to trace the intensely fascinating story of the transformation or deformation of the holy man, the bishop of apostolic appointment, into his Holiness the Pope of ecclesiastical evolution. It must suffice to state, that the name "pope," as applied to the Bishop of Rome, appears first in the time of Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, 296-304, and that it was first formally adopted by Siricius, Bishop of Rome from 384 to 398, and officially used by Leo I. 440-461.
The pretensions of Papal power grew up gradually. The original bishop of the city became spiritual ruler of a province, then of various provinces, and at length the actual ruler of kings and of kingdoms. The pagan emperors of Rome were styled Pontifex Maximus—their title of religious supremacy; and the popes of Rome captured the title and the supremacy, and, to this day, brand their churches and erections, their names and tombs, with the pagan distinction.
When we come to the time of Pope Gregory called Gregory the Great, whose pontifical reign dates from 590 to 604, we have a man of mighty strength, whose ambition for supremacy in the Church, and for the rule of all bishops of all countries, were even more vigorous than those of his predecessors. He called himself; as Pope, the Servant of the Servants of God, and evidenced the humility of his service, by assuming it to be indisputable that every bishop accused should be subject to the see of Rome! He was the first of the popes who was practically a temporal sovereign. It may be said he did not court this position, but he used it, and did so in and around Rome with true patriotic force. Yet, supreme as he was, both by his own character and position, he declared: "No one in the Church has yet sacrilegiously dared to usurp the title of universal bishop; whoever calls himself universal bishop is Antichrist." For, as we have already pointed out, Papal power is the outcome of religious evolution, and is still in the process of reaching its final stage.
It was Gregory who, while yet a monk, saw the English or Angle slaves in Rome, and, severe as he was in monasticism, his heart was touched as he gazed upon the fair-faced, flaxen-haired captives. He inquired whence the lads had come, and was told Britain. "Are they Christians?" he asked, and was answered, "They are pagans." “Alas, that the prince of darkness should possess such forms of loveliness! that such beauty of countenance should want the better beauty of the soul!" Gregory rejoined; and then he inquired of what nation they were. "Angles "was the reply, and he wittily answered," They are angels. From what province?" he further questioned. "Deira," he was answered. "Then they must be rescued from de ira" (or "the ire of God"), he said, continuing his play upon words. And, learning at last, that the name of their Saxon king was Ælla, he declared "Alleluia" must be sung in that kingdom. And to the shores of England he determined to go—and, indeed, started thither—but the reverence in which he was held in Rome was such that he was brought back.
Shortly after the monk became Gregory the Great. When Pope—notwithstanding the devastations of the fierce Lombards to which Italy was subject, notwithstanding the pestilence and distresses by which the city of Rome was afflicted, notwithstanding the struggle between, the sees of Constantinople and Rome for the upper place in the rule of the Church—Gregory did not forget the fair-haired pagan slaves! He did not set his face against slavery, which was a common trade in his days, but he set face towards Britain and the conversion of the English; nor, let us forget, and towards the subjugation of the British Church to his supremacy. To effect this double purpose Augustine, the monk, was sent with his company of singing monks to the land of the Angles.
What sort of Christianity was it that he brought to England? It is impossible in our small space to do more than state a few ascertained facts on the question. “The creeds of the Church formed but a small portion of Christian belief ... God the Father had receded, as it were, from the sight of man into a vague and unapproachable sanctity . . . .The Savior Himself might seem to withdraw from the actual—at least, the exclusive—devotion of the human heart, which was busied with intermediate objects of worship ... The worship of these lower objects (shrines, and relics of martyrs), begins to intercept the higher.... legends of saints are supplanting, or rivaling, at least, in their general respect and attention, the narratives of the Bible." Relics, according to Gregory the Great, had in them intrinsic power, causing such as touched them to fall down dead. Cloths which had covered these relics would actually shed blood. This zealous Pope wrote that the chain of St. Paul would at times refuse to submit to the action of the file, and that, therefore, he could only transmit a few particles of their dust to the Empress—yet he consoled her by declaring that these particles of iron possessed inherent miraculous power. Such gifts Gregory doled out with pious parsimony. Amongst the idle tales of the time was that of the golden nail belonging to the chains of St. Peter, which a profane man desiring to cut off with a knife, the knife in its religious awe sprang up and cut the throat of the sinner. This wonderful nail Gregory himself sent as a priceless gift to a distinguished person.
The worship of the Virgin had not assumed in Gregory's days the rank to which it is now exalted by Rome, but "the unbounded admiration of virginity, which had full possession of his (Gregory's) monastic mind," to a great extent led to her worship.
The exaltation over men of demons and angels—really the pagan idea—which was then current belief, evidences the degradation into which Christianity had fallen. "In Gregory's Dialogs,' a woman eats a lettuce without making the sign of the cross; she is possessed by a devil, who had been swallowed in the un-exorcised lettuce" Yet "Gregory, not from his station alone, but by the acknowledgment of the admiring world, was intellectually and as also spiritually the great model of the age." The intelligent reader of the Bible will fail to find spirituality in such a believer of God. And if passages from this celebrated Pope's exposition of the Book of Job could be added, the devout reader of the Scriptures of today, would only the more thank God, that the Christianity in England in this nineteenth century is in no manner whatever of the Augustine type.
Accompanied by some forty other monks, mostly Italians, the rest of Gaul, Augustine reached the shores of Kent. He brought the best kind of Christianity he had, no doubt; and he sought to appear before the King. He was armed with a commission from the Pope, for it had grown to be a custom for missioners to pagans, to present themselves before kings and chieftains rather than to pursue the apostolic mode. However, Ethelbert, though willing to confer with Augustine, feared some magical spell, and would only meet the visitors in the open air. It seems probable that the extraordinary beliefs of "Christians" in demons and angels, to which reference has been made, had in some way penetrated into the mind of Ethelbert. But, repudiating magic, Bede says of them: "They came carrying for their banner a silver cross and the image of the Lord our Savior painted upon a board, and, singing litanies; they made humble prayer for their own, and for the eternal salvation of those to whom they were come.”
Ethelbert was a most tolerant king; he gave the monks liberty to exercise their religion, and to proclaim it in his dominions, placed no hindrance in their way of converting his subjects, and appointed his metropolis, Canterbury, as their residence. In due time he was himself baptized, and then his people were baptized also by the thousand. "Sacred vessels, ornaments for altars and churches" (we quote from a Roman Catholic writer), "vestments.... relics of the apostles and martyrs, with a large collection of books," were sent to Augustine to further his work. The temples of the Saxons were, by Pope Gregory's orders, "converted into Christian churches by sprinkling them with holy water, by erecting there altars and placing relics," and "the riotous festivals" of the heathen "were supplanted by the celebration of wakes on the anniversary feasts of the dedication of their churches; and on the solemnities of the martyrs." Gregory also allowed the custom of sacrificing oxen, which had hitherto taken place in the temples, to be continued in the churches. These sacrifices were to be celebrated on the saints' days.
It has already been mentioned that in the Emperor Constantine's era Christianity had incorporated much paganism. The conversion of pagan gods, customs, and temples into Christian saints, customs, and churches proceeded apace, and Rome has continued her work on these lines ever since the days of Constantine. "What communion hath light with darkness? What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? What concord hath Christ with Belial?" —are words with which this practice of the Church can never be made to agree.
We cannot give that which we have not, and most interesting it is to compare the Gospel of God as announced in the Holy Scriptures with the Christianity which Augustine brought to England; and most important it is for every lover of the Bible to note how both Anglicans and Romanists have been celebrating Augustine's work, and for what cause they have made their high praises of his mission. So far as the former are concerned, we have not observed in their laudations what Augustine really did bring in the way of Divine Truth to the pagan part of England. The latter, the Romanists, very justly celebrate the entrance, through Gregory's missioner to the English, of the Papal claim of supremacy in the island. Both celebrations, like Augustine's Christianity, judged by the samples of it we have presented for inspection, have very little of Christ and His glory in them.
The conversion of the Saxons by Augustine was of the sort that rejoiced the heart of Gregory the Great, and by it, according to his ideas, the pagan Angles were made angels. A few years after these wholesale conversions, the converts in thousands adopted paganism once more, in order to follow their then pagan king.
The work of converting the English was of a painfully unspiritual and human character. But if we are perplexed to know what part of the work was of God, We can be more definite as to that part of Augustine's mission which related to the subjection of the British Church to Gregory the Great. We are not to forget that part of the scheme of the conversion of the English was to make them obedient to the Pope, and that practically the whole of Augustine's mission to the British was to bring them into similar holy obedience. This part of his work will occupy our next and last chapter.