fortunes of
England. It was not merely that, as Wilfrid said, to fight against Rome
was to fight against the world. Had England, indeed, clung to the Irish
Church, it must have remained spiritually isolated from the bulk of
Western Christendom. Fallen as Rome might be from its older greatness,
it preserved the traditions of civilization, of letters, and art and
law. Its faith still served as a bond which held together the nations
that sprang from the wreck of the Empire. To repulse Rome was to condemn
England to isolation. But grave as such considerations were, they were
of little weight beside the influence which Oswin's decision had on the
very unity of the English race. The issue of the Synod not only gave
England a share in the religious unity of Western Christendom; it gave
her a religious unity at home. However dimly such thoughts may have
presented themselves to Oswin's mind, it was the instinct of a statesman
that led him to set aside the love and gratitude of his youth, and to
secure the religious oneness of England in the Synod of Whitby."

The other is from Milman's "History of Latin Christianity" (ii., 198,
199, Amer. Edition): "The effect of Christianity on Anglo-Saxon England
was at once to re-establish a connection both between the remoter parts
of the island with each other, and of England with the rest of the
Christian world. They ceased to dwell apart, a race of warlike,
unapproachable barbarians, in constant warfare with the bordering
tribes, or occupied in their own petty feuds or inroads, rarely, as in
the case of Ethelbert, connected by intermarriage with some neighboring
Teutonic state. Though the Britons were still secluded in the mountains,
or at extremities of the land, by animosities which even Christianity
could not allay, yet the Picts and Scots, and the parts of Ireland which
were occupied by Christian monasteries, were now brought into peaceful
communication, first with the kingdom of Northumbria, and through
Northumbria with the rest of England. The intercourse with Europe was of
far higher importance, and tended much more rapidly to introduce the
arts and habits of civilization into the land. There was a constant flow
of missionaries across the British Channel, who possessed all the
knowledge which still remained in Europe. All the earlier metropolitans
of Canterbury and the bishops of most of the southern sees, were
foreigners; they were commissioned at Rome, if not consecrated there;
t