It is repeatedly said that St. Augustine introduced Christianity to
England. He did not. A Bishop of London attended the Council of
Arles in 340. St. Augustine came to England in 597.
He, himself, wrote to Pope Gregory:
"In the Western confines of Britain, there is
a certain royal island of large extent, surrounded by water, abounding
in all the beauties of nature and necessities of life. In it the first
neophytes of catholic* law, God
before hand acquainting them, found a church constructed by no human
art, but by the hands of Christ Himself, for the salvation of His
people."
Gildas the Wise wrote in AD. 550 in his De Exidio
Brittany:
"We certainly know that Christ, the true Son,
afforded His light, the knowledge of His precepts to our Island in the
last year of Tiberius Caesar."
Tiberius Caesar reigned for 22 years, and his last year was
AD 37. Tertullian (AD 155-222) wrote:
"The extremeties of Spain, the various parts
of Gaul, the regions of Britain which have never been penetrated by
Roman arms, have received the religion of Christ."
Origen of Alexandria, the Greek Father, said in 230 AD:
"The divine goodness of our Lord and Saviour
is equally diffused among the Britons, the Africans, and other nations
of the World."
St. Jerome, writing from Bethlehem in 378 AD declared:
"From India to Britain, all nations resound
with the death and resurrection of Christ."
Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote in 402 AD
about the British Isles in the following manner:
"The British Isles, which are beyond the sea,
and which lie in the ocean, have received the virtue of the Word.
Churches are there founded and altars erected. Though you should go to
the ocean, to the British Isles, there you will hear all men
everywhere discoursing matters out of the Scriptures, with a different
voice indeed, but not another faith, with a different tongue but the
same judgement."
Arnobius, the Christian apologist, writing about 300 AD declared:
"So swiftly runs the word of God that though
in several thousand years God was not known except among the Jews, now
within the space of a few years, His word is concealed neither from
the Indians in the East nor from the Britons in the West."
Eusebius, the Church's first historian (AD 260-340) wrote:
"The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to the
isles called the Britannic Isles."
Eusebius does not tell us which of the Apostles visited
Britain, but other witnesses mention names. For example St. Dorotheus,
Bishop of Tyre, (AD 303) said:
"Aristobulus, whom Paul saluted when writing
to the Romans, was Bishop of Britain. Simon Zelotes preached Christ
through all Mauritania and Afric the less. At length he was crucified
in Brittania, slain and buried.
(Research by Arthur and Rosalind Eedle).
* The word catholic means
"universal".
