over Christ's heritage" as "universal bishop," and 66 as God."

Surely, "to know that the Church of Britain was coeval with the age of the Apostles, is to build our faith on grounds most solid and interesting. But to extend that proof to the individual labours of one of the Apostles, and to find ourselves indebted for the first knowledge of the greatest blessing ever conferred on mankind, to the personal zeal of the great Apostle of the Gentiles; and in this search after truth to find further, that the father of a British prince was instrumental in the first introduction of the Gospel into Britain—that it was publicly professed and protected by a British king, before the end of the second century-that a British king was the first Christian prince-that Christianity was established throughout the Roman empire by a native of Britain ;"-" these considerations, while they greatly increase our interest in the belief and service of Christianity, and augment our responsibility, may justly lead us, as Protestants, to adopt the language of Moses, What nation is there so great, which hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for; and what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous,

-a religion so pure, a Church so apostolical, a polity so wise and equitable, and blessings so

ample, so various, as God hath bestowed upon this our favoured country 2?"

Let us see how far our forefathers valued and maintained these exalted privileges.

1 Bishop of St. David's Tracts, p. 144.

CHAPTER IV.

"Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! for now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea."-JOB vi. 2, 3.

WE are now approaching a most important epoch in the history of not only the British Church in particular, but of the Christian Church in general, when the Roman pontiffs began to unfurl the banner of universal dominion, and to set at nought even the power and rights of princes.

The mission of St. Augustine, by whatever motive undertaken, was the point of the Papal wedge, which, first insinuated into the body ecclesiastical of England, by Gregory the Great, was by his successors driven deeper and deeper, until at length, by the means of pope Innocent III., in the thirteenth century, it so effectually destroyed the independence of the British Church, as to lay her prostrate at the feet of her merciless task-master.

But before we proceed to the detail of this aggression, a brief account of the gradual growth

of the usurping power of Rome will be necessary for the due development of its slow but baneful effects on the British Church.

It has already been shown that, as early as the second century, the title of "episcopus episcoporum," "bishop of bishops," was assumed by the Roman pontiff, but as no superior power accompanied the title, it was looked at as a harmless piece of vanity. In the following century, as the imperial city increased in luxury and splendor, a certain degree of pre-eminence was claimed by, and yielded to, the bishop of the first city in the world; yet this pre-eminence was denied by many, even by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, as was unequivocally shown by his controversy with Stephen, respecting the baptism of heretics'.

But this pre-eminence, even by such as yielded it, was only allowed to be that of order and association, and not of power and authority; which was precisely the kind of superiority that Cyprian himself enjoyed over the African churches.

But this state of doubtful acquiescence did not long continue; for before the conclusion of this century, the Roman Church began to show signs of serious change. Bishops now lorded it over the presbyters, and presbyters in their turn over the

1 Cyprian. Ep. 73.

deacons; and the pontiffs assumed a degree of power and splendour that rather belonged to princes than priests. Constantine the Great, by birth a Briton, and the first Christian emperor, checked for a time this growing innovation, by giving a new form to Church government. He constituted himself the supreme head of the Church, in all matters connected with its external government'. This assumption was readily acquiesced in by all the bishops, as the price of the emperor's protection. In process of time, he remodelled in other respects the ecclesiastical form of government;-he made the bishop of Constantinople equal in power to the three bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. These four prelates were called Patriarchs, and to them the second in rank were the Exarchs, or inspectors of provinces. The Metropolitans followed the next in order, holding the government of one province; under whom were the Archbishops, who presided over certain districts. The Bishops were the lowest of this order, and included the Chorepiscopi, or bishops of country churches.

This equality in rank and power was intolerable to the proud prelate of Rome; dissatisfaction soon ripened into aversion, and, in spite of imperial edicts, and synodal remonstrances, he broke through

1 Euseb. Life of Const. p. 569.