ts influence. The circumstances which led to
the conversion of these barbarians are somewhat remarkable. On the
occasion of one of their predatory incursions into the Empire, they
carried away captive some Christian presbyters; but the parties thus
unexpectedly reduced to bondage did not neglect the duties of their
spiritual calling, and commended their cause so successfully to those by
whom they had been enslaved, that the whole nation eventually embraced
the gospel. [281:2] Even the barriers of the ocean did not arrest the
progress of the victorious faith. Before the end of the second century
the religion of the cross seems to have reached Scotland; for though
Tertullian certainly speaks rhetorically when he says that "the places
of Britain inaccessible to the Romans were subject to Christ," [281:3]
his language at least implies that the message of salvation had already
been proclaimed with some measure of encouragement in Caledonia.

Though no contemporary writer has furnished us with anything like an
ecclesiastical history of this period, it is very clear, from occasional
hints thrown out by the early apologists and controversialists, that the
progress of the Church must have been both extensive and rapid. A
Christian author, who flourished about the middle of the second century,
asserts that there was then "no race of men, whether of barbarians or of
Greeks, or bearing any other name, either because they lived in waggons
without fixed habitations, or in tents leading a pastoral life, among
whom prayers and thanksgivings were not offered up to the Father and
Maker of all things through the name of the crucified Jesus." [282:1]
Another father, who wrote shortly afterwards, observes that, "as in the
sea there are certain habitable and fertile islands, with wholesome
springs, provided with roadsteads and harbours, in which those who are
overtaken by tempests may find refuge--in like manner has God placed in
a world tossed by the billows and storms of sin, congregations or holy
churches, in which, as in insular harbours, the doctrines of truth are
sheltered, and to which those who desire to be saved, who love the
truth, and who wish to escape the judgment of God, may repair." [282:2]
These statements indicate that the gospel must soon have been very
widely disseminated. Within less than a hundred years after the
apostolic age places of Christian worship were to be seen in the chief
cities of the Empire; and early in the