subservient to ecclesiastical influence. Their language, therefore, and several of their acts, indicate sufficiently, that when they swayed the sceptre, an ecclesiastical supremacy was recognised as an integral portion of their inheritance 18.

In unison with this acknowledgment of the crown as the head of their country's religious establishment, were the views of Christ's earthly kingdom entertained among AngloSaxon divines. They restricted not God's inheritance to a particular body, owning spiritual obedience to some one visible head. Yet they were very far from overlooking or undervaluing religious unity. But they taught, that it was to be found in a holy congregation, united by identity of faith, hope, and charity".

Nor by the faith which they required from all who claimed the right hand of Christian fellowship did they understand any body of religious principles incapable of scriptural proof. The Catholic of Anglo-Saxon times was he who held such expositions of holy Scripture as were defined in the first four general councils. Of that inconsistency, by which the modern Church of Rome solemnly assents to one definition of the Catholic faith, in the Athanasian creed, and to another, of a

much greater extent, and of a very different nature, in the Confession of Pope Pius, no trace appears among the venerable remains of our ancient Church.

In truth, the primacy (if such a term may be allowed) conceded in Anglo-Saxon times to the Roman see, extended not beyond an admission of its established precedence, and a respectful deference for its authority. The former distinction had necessarily devolved upon a prelacy established in a city, where the Cæsars long had given law to nations. The latter had gradually sprung from a habit of inveterate prevalence, which restrained religious novelties, or extravagances, nurtured under cover of provincial obscurity, by a reference to the superior information of the capital. It was this habit, so deeply rooted in the west, so assiduously cherished by the Roman prelates, which led to a veneration for their see among our early forefathers. Visits to their court were esteemed equally honourable and advantageous. Of appeals to them, however, for judicial sentences, instances would be vainly sought in the records of Ante-Norman England.

Did, then, results of a beneficial nature only, flow from the intercourse of our progenitors with Rome? Very far from it. A few

among them, no doubt, occasionally derived something of refinement, and secular information, from visits to the former seat of imperial greatness. But ruinous and extensive evils alloyed these very limited advantages. Rome, unhappily, became the nurse and patroness of superstition. May it not therefore fairly be presumed, that Italian influence led the Saxon Church to adopt eventually various usages and principles, for which no authority appears in any records coeval with her conversion? Roman legends also fostered a spirit of credulity in her unlettered population. For it is remarkable that the biographies of Saxon saints, although not altogether free from miraculous embellishments, are incomparably more so, than similar pieces imported from abroad.

It was another and a more injurious consequence of ancient England's connection with Rome, that Latin offices usurped the place of a service which all the country could understand. To the evils hence arising, let testimony be borne by the memorable complaint of Alfred. Among the clergy subjected to his rule, there were scarcely any, that admirable prince mournfully remarks, capable of interpreting the liturgy". Nor was the

rate of learning universally much higher even among individuals of episcopal condition". Against such crying evils, vernacular translations of the three creeds, the Te Deum, with other hymns, and of the devotions for private use, afforded, undoubtedly, some provision. Royal ordinances too, and episcopal admonitions, enjoined the clergy to deliver such popular explanations of these pieces, as might enable their congregations to pray, not only with the lips, but with the understanding also. While, however, the Communion service, or mass, with other offices for public worship, retained their foreign dress, any such regulations must have been seriously impeded in effecting their destined purpose. Erroneous views of religious institutions will ever find a soil fitted for their growth, in the minds of men who hear from God's appointed ministers what sounds more like some mysterious charm, than like a reasonable service. The general tone also of knowledge and intelligence appears to have been grievously lowered in ancient England, by her adoption of a foreign ritual. Domestic intellectual culture naturally fell into disrepute. Hence, although neither books were conspicuously deficient, nor the mere power of reading

them, yet unhappily their contents were effectually hidden under the disguise of an unknown tongue.

This establishment of a foreign service appears the more inexcusable, because Gregory the Great, liturgist as he was, desired not to impose upon England his own labours, or indeed any formularies of the Roman Church. He left Augustine a full discretionary power to model the public worship of his converts in any manner that might seem most expedient. That meritorious missionary succeeded, however, in obtaining within our island, a footing so very limited and insecure, that he probably found but little leisure, and saw but little necessity, to change the offices which he had used in Italy, for others adapted especially for the edification of his insular children in the faith of Christ. His earliest successors were circumstanced but little differently from himself. They too were foreigners, incessantly struggling for ascendency over that national Church, by whose exertions the great majority of Englishmen had been turned from "worshipping dumb idols, to serve the living God." Men thus engaged in “striving for the mastery" are naturally tempted to claim a superiority over their adversaries in every distinctive peculiarity. Hence they