ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY 89 gration, so the united congregations, with their presbyters and bishop, would have been powerless without some further organization, uniting the bishops, with well- defined regulations, under some recognized hierarchy of authority. Thus arose metropolitan sees, and the great patriarchates of the Catholic Church Jerusa- lem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople. This centralization was ren- dered necessary by the course of events ; but it had otherwise no divine authority and might be modified just as validly as it was created. When the Roman Em- pire was submerged under the deluge of barbarian races, a yet closer centraliza- tion became necessary, at least in the West ; and the ark in which floated over that terrible cfeluge not only the Christian religion, but the remains of ancient civ- ilization, both Greek and Roman, was the patriarchate of Rome. The man who not only clearly perceived, but was absolutely compelled to assume, his awful re- sponsibility in the West, the Saviour at once of the Church and the world, was the splendid pontiff, Gregory the Great ; the great pontiff who sent St. Augus- tine and his companions to preach the gospel to the English conquerors of Britain. If we would clearly understand the work of St. Augustine we must free our minds from the illusion produced by familiar names. One of these is the name Britain. In the time of Gregory the Great the island called by that name was, of course, the same as that on which Julius Caesar had landed. The barbarians whom Caesar encountered had been subdued by his successors, and a Roman province had been formed. Roman civilization had been introduced and, one might almost say, had flourished. The Christian religion had found its way thither ; there had been Christian congregations and bishops, and even a heresi- arch. But Rome, in the struggle for her own existence, had been compelled to withdraw her legions from the province of Britain ; and to leave the people not only to their internal dissensions, but to the attacks of the " Scots " and " Picts," from Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Then followed the conquest of Britain by the English, as the Teutonic invaders began soon to be called. The Celtic people were largely driven out, including the Celtic Christians. The Eng- lish were heathens, and the Celtic Christians seem to have made no effort what- ever for their conversion. The English, again, were by no means consolidated into an English nation. It was to one division of these English heathens that Gregory the Great sent Augustine. Even the term " the British Church " is somewhat misleading. There is not the slightest trustworthy evidence, either as to the time when, or the person by whom, Christianity was introduced into Britain. There, of course, as everywhere else, the Church was under the rule of bishops ; but, excepting for the purpose of ordaining, the authority of the British bishops seems to have been entirely overshadowed by the authority of the abbots of monasteries. There seems, as we have said, no evidence of anything resembling the patriarchal system among them ; nor of any close or frequent communication between the British churches and the rest of Christendom. This is proved, among other things, by their curi- ous reckoning of Easter ; which (as Gieseler shows, " Eccle. Hist," ii., 164, Eng- lish translation) was by no means identical with that of the Quarto-decimans.
