Early Christianity in the British Isles [pp. 190-201]

Early Christianity
his lifetime, to the whole of that people, inhabiting the kingdoms of Essex, Northumberland, (Deiri,) Wessex, Mercia, ana
Sussex, making the same profession. He also prevailed on the
British Christians to adopt many of the forms and dogmas of
the Romish Church; and from this time the Roman pontiffs
claimed to have the spiritual domination of the British
churches. But Christianity never was extinct in Britain.
During the period that elapsed between the arrival of the
Saxons, and their conversion to Romanism, Christianity certainly did exist among the Britons and the Scots. So that to
call Augustin the apostle of Britain is absurd, and to claim for
the church of Rome the honour of having first introduced
Christianity into the Island, is insupportable.
We shall not attempt to trace the history of the church in
Britain through the long dark night of papal error, ignorance,
superstition and immorality. From the sixth century until the
Reformation, the history of the church in Britain as well as in
the rest of Europe, is a sad detail of papal usurpations, the
laws of Jesus Christ trampled under foot, the simple ordinance
of Christian worship thrown aside, and pompous rites and gorgeous ceremonies substituted in their place; in a word, religion
was accommodated to the ambitious views of princes and
bishops on the one hand, and to the vicious, depraved inclinations of the people on the other. But we turn from this
melancholy picture to notice the preservation of Christianity in
much of its primitive purity among the mountains and glens of
Caledonia.
We have already alluded to the people called Culdees, and
we now propose briefly to sketch their interesting history.
The Culdees derive their name from the Gaelic expression
Gille De, or servants of God. We have already seen that
Christianity prevailed among the Scots from a very early
period, and there is no evidence of their religion having become
corrupted. There are ample reasons for believing that down
to the sixth century a pure and primitive form of Christianity
still existed in Scotland, as well as among the mountain fastnesses of Wales. The first definite mention of the Culdees as
a peculiar people, is in the year 563, when Columba entered
upon his mission. He was a native of Ireland, and of royal
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