Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/152

 134 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, turn our eyes towards Gaul, we must content ourselves ^^' with discovering, in the time of Marcus Antoninus, the feeble and united congregations of I^yons and Vienna; and even as late as the reign of Decius, we are assured, that in a few cities only, Aries, Narbonne, Thoulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Tours, and Paris, some scattered churches were supported by the devotion of a small number of christians "". Silence is indeed very consis- tent with devotion; but as it is seldom compatible with zeal, we may perceive and lament the languid state of Christianity in those provinces which had exchanged the Celtic for the Latin tongue ; since they did not, dur- ing the three first centuries, give birth to a single eccle- siastical writer. From Gaul, which claimed a just pre- eminence. of learning and authority overall the countries on this side of the Alps, the light of the gospel was more faintly reflected on the remote provinces of Spain and Britain ; and if we may credit the vehement asser- tions of Tertullian, they had already received the first rays of the faith, when he addressed his apology to the magistrates of the emperor Severus". But the obscure and imperfect origin of the western churches of Eu- rope has been so negligently recorded, that if we would relate the time and manner of their foundation, we must supply the silence of antiquity by those legends which avarice or superstition long afterwards dictated to the monks in the lazy gloom of their convents". Of these holy romances, that of the apostle St. James can alone, by its singular extravagance, deserve to be men- tioned. From a peaceful fisherman of the lake of Gen- ™ RarcB in aliquibus civitatibus ecclesiEe, paucorum christianorum devo- tione, resurgerent. Acta Sincera, p. 130; Gregory of Tours, 1. i. c. 28 ; Moslieim, p. 207. 449. There is some reason to believe, that, in the be- ginning of tlie fourth century, the extensive dioceses of Liege, of Treves, and of Colonge, composed a single bishopric, which had been very recently founded. See Memoires de Tillemont, torn. vi. part i. p. 43. 411. " The date of Tertullian's apology is fixed, in a dissertation of Mosheim, to the year 198. " In the fifteenth century, there were few who had either inclination or courage to question whether Joseph of Arimathea founded the monastery of Cilastonbury, and wliether Dionysius the Areopagite preferred the residence of Paris to that of Athens.