Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/22

6 believed in one Supreme God, but they held that He should be appeased with offerings of human sacrifices and by magical incantations. The early Britons were superstitious to an extreme. The light of the Gospel gradually dawned upon them and destroyed their barbarous forms of worship.

When Christianity was first introduced into this country no one knows. We do not even know by whom it was introduced. A tradition says that the Apostle Paul visited Britain to evangelize it; but, although we know that he was the first Christian Missionary, there is no good reason for believing that he came to our land. There is no more truth in another legend, that Joseph of Arimathea landed on the South West Coast of Britain for a similar purpose, and went as far as Glastonbury, where he preached the Gospel.

We do know that Christianity had gone from Palestine to Rome before the year 55 A.D., and that the Romans came to Britain and conquered it. At Rome the Gospel had made rapid strides in spite of the many persecutions which attended it. The Romans began to come to Britain in the time of Julius Cæsar, 55 B.C., and for about 400 years the Romans were masters of this island. They introduced their customs to our land, they persecuted the Druids, they imposed upon our ancestors their military organization. Hundreds of Romans came over to Britain to live, and built their villas here. We cannot doubt that some of these were Christians who had been converted to the Faith at Rome, or whose ancestors had been converted before them. Those who were Christians would not tolerate the heathen forms of worship, nor could they rest without teaching the Britons the Christian Faith.