Marozia was revived again under the infamous Borgia (Alexander VI.), and Rome continued to be the hot-bed of ecclesiastical crime and debauchery, when a young Augustinian monk came, and saw, and went away to conquer. Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel with a parable which the Papal Court was too stupid to comprehend.1 He wrote Tekel on their walls, and reminded them that prophets and sibyls alike foretold the Last Judgment. He portrayed its awful menace before their eyes, and scrupled not to put popes and cardinals among the damned. Some whined when they saw their own portraits in the terrible caricature, but they were too torpid to comprehend the length and breadth of such a prophecy. A day of retribution was close at hand. God was arising to shake terribly the earth.

1 See Note S".

LECTURE VI.

THE CHURCH OF OUR FOREFATHERS.

L

1. IDENTITY AND CONTINUITY.

ET me now invite you to a survey of the history of the Anglican Church, its origin, its subjection to the Paparchy in the Middle Ages, and, finally, of its restoration in the sixteenth century. We shall see that from its origin until now it is the same identical Church, no more another now than the man who has been a prodigal, and who has regained his home and his patrimony, is other than the embryo that was once in the womb, the babe that once drew nurture from its mother's breast, the youth who declined from his parental example and teachings, and the sufferer who, amid the filth and the starvation of the swineyard, came to himself, and said, "I will arise and go to my father.” The Anglican Church was primitive and pure; she became enslaved and defiled; she regained. her liberties, she washed and is clean. But she is none other to-day, as to individuality and identity, than she was when Italians were sent to put chains upon her; when she shook her chains, in defiance, as she chafed under them; when she lay down and slept awhile, baffled and degraded; or when,

at last, she woke and broke from her fetters, and began to be herself again; until now God has given her to many nations and set her footsteps in the seas, and enabled us to say, "Her sound is gone out into all lands, and her words into the ends of the world." Such is the outline of her history, which I propose to make clear and readily recognized by the illumination of truths which have been too little understood.

2. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH IN BRITAIN.

1

There are many evidences that the Gospel was preached in Britain by disciples of St. Paul. Three names in his latest catalogue of Roman saints 1 may not have secured your close attention: "Pudens, Linus, Claudia," that is, Lin and Gladys. These twain were Britons, probably, and their names are thus Latinized, as Saul is also called Paul. Pudens, who had served in Britain as a soldier, married this British lady, as we know from Martial's epigram. Caradoc, whose sister or daughter she may have been, had doubtless become a Christian when he moralized on the Coliseum, as it rose before his eyes, in language which only Christians understood, and which he borrowed from common sayings of early Christians.2 The return of Caradoc to his distant home, accompanied by Christian missionaries, who were afterwards the evangelists of Wales, is a theory supported by striking probabilities, while it accounts, as nothing else can, for inscriptions and ancient monuments

1 2 Tim. iv. 21. 2 See Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. iii. p. 108.

at Chichester. The names of ancient sees in Wales, such as St. Asaph's and St. David's, suggest that Jewish converts of St. Paul were their founders, and learned antiquarians have detected Welsh forms of several other saintly names in the Pauline calendar, among the ancient titles of their villages and towns. The history of "Lesser Britain," or Armorica, confirms all this; for the two Britains were inhabited by the same race. The Greek Menology retains the old tradition that Aristobulus, mentioned by St. Paul, was one of the Seventy, and became a British evangelist.

3. PERIODS.

Three periods should here be primarily noted: that of (1) the Primitive British Church, that of (2) the Early English Church, and (3) that of the Later English Church. The Norman epoch (A. D. 1066) is the turning point in Anglican history in its relations with Rome. Thereafter, we note three periods again: that of (1) the Transition to Papal Subjection, that of (2) the Paparchy Established, and (3) that of the Restoration. As to the Primitive British, a few additional words must suffice.

4. THE PRIMITIVE PERIOD.

Lucius, one of the British chiefs, is said to have been the first Christian king; but the legends of Edessa,1 if they are to be credited, would deprive us of this glory. He lived in the time of Aurelius,

1 See Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. viii. p. 647.

when, had he been known to the Romans, he could hardly have escaped the crown of martyrdom. St. Alban, who suffered in Diocletian's world-wide massacre, is reputed the first British martyr. In A. D. 314, before the Nicene era, we noted the presence of three British bishops at the Council of Arles, a fact which seems to me to account for the Easter usages to which the British Church so tenaciously adhered. These bishops found them. corresponding with their own traditions in the churches of Pothinus and Irenæus. But of this by and by. It is not pleasant to add, as we must, that Morgan, better known as Pelagius, was also a Briton. His heresy caused great evils, not only in the unlearned and isolated church of his birth and baptism, but ever since among Christians. the other hand, as St. Paul has said, "there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest"; and we owe to this principle of the divine economy that masterly exposition of the doctrines of grace in which the faith of primitive Christians is witnessed against Pelagius by St. Augustine.

5. GROANS OF THE BRITONS.

On

In A. D. 446, "the groans of the Britons" attest their inveterate sufferings from barbarous Picts and Scots; and in A. D. 449, the arrival of the Saxons. enables us to date the Early English period from the middle of the fifth century. Invited to come in and drive out the Picts, our forefathers, the

1 I Cor. xi. 19.