furnish a common-place for ecclesiastical declamation on
the all-conquering influence of the Gospel. Both Tertullian and
Origen[406] thus use it. The former numbers in his catalogue of
believing countries even the districts of Britain beyond the Roman
pale, _Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita_[407].
And in this lies the interest of his reference, as pointing to the
native rather than the Roman element being the predominant factor
in the British Church. For just at this period comes in the legend
preserved by Bede,[408] that a mission was sent to Britain by Pope
Eleutherius[409] in response to an appeal from "Lucius Britanniae
Rex." The story, which Bede probably got from the 'Catalogus
Pontificum,'[410] may be apocryphal; but it would never have been
invented had British Christianity been found merely or mainly in the
Roman veneer of the population. Modern criticism finds in it this
kernel of truth, that the persecution which gave the Gallican Church
the martyrs of Lyons, also sent her scattered refugees as missionaries
into the less dangerous regions of Britain;--those remoter parts, in
especial, where even the long arm of the Imperial Government could not
reach them.

E. 14.--The Picts, however, as a nation, remained savage heathens even
to the 7th century, and the bulk of our Christian population must
have been within the Roman pale; but little vexed, it would seem,
by persecution, till it came into conflict with the thorough-going
Imperialism of Diocletian.[411] Its martyrs were then numbered,
according to Gildas, by thousands, according to Bede by hundreds; and
their chief, St. Alban, at least, is a fairly established historical
entity.[412] Nor is there any reason to doubt that after Constantine
South Britain was as fully Christian as any country in Europe. In
the earliest days of his reign (A.D. 314) we find three bishops,[413]
together with a priest and a deacon, representing[414] the British
Church at the Council of Arles (which, amongst other things, condemned
the marriage of the "innocent divorcee"[415]). And the same number
figure in the Council of Ariminum (360), as the only prelates (out of
the 400) who deigned to accept from the Emperor the expenses of their
journey and attendance.

E. 15.--This Council was called by Constantius II. in the semi-Arian
interest, and not allowed to break up till after repudiating the
Nicene formula. But the lapse was only for a moment. Before the
de