eir later history. At Nicaea, they dealt
with the greatest question that ever stirred the Church of Christ, the
question of the coequal deity, the oneness of nature, of the Son with the
Father; and they laid down a rule for observing Easter, from which their
descendants 350 years later accused the Roman Church of having departed.
At Sardica they asserted the innocence of St. Athanasius; and gave
authority to Julius, Bishop of Rome, to receive appeals from a province,
if a bishop was dissatisfied with a decision of his synod. Their
descendants were too busy with the inroads of barbarians and the
subtleties of heretics, to pay much heed to the amusing exposure by the
African Church of the Popes Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine, 417-432, for
quoting this Sardican Canon as a Canon of Nicaea, with "Julius" altered
to "Sylvester" to make the name fit the forged date. The difference
between calling it a Nicene Canon and calling it Sardican may seem little
more than a question of a right name and a wrong. But its effect was
tremendous. It added the greater part of the known world to the sphere of
influence of the Bishop of Rome. For the Sardican Canons were passed by
the Western bishops, after the Easterns had left Sardica, and could bind
at most only the West. The Canons of Nicaea were binding on the whole of
the Christian world. The sarcastic comments of the African Church, in
their letter to Celestine, at the close of the controversy, should have
had more effect in checking such proceedings than it had. At Rimini the
British upheld the coequal deity of the Son; and when the Arian Emperor
compelled the signature of a heterodox creed, the bishops of the provinces
of Gaul gathered themselves together on their way home, and re-asserted
their Catholic belief. Time after time, from Constantine onwards, the
unswerving orthodoxy of the British was the subject of special and
favourable comment. They were, as I began by saying, in the full swim of
ecclesiastical affairs; and they held a position of recognised importance
with dignity and effect.

Nor was the journeying of British Christians limited to attending
Councils. A historian writing in 420, of the time before 410, says that
from East and West people were flocking on pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
from Persia and from Britain. And Theodoret, writing of the years about
423, says that many went to the Holy Land from the extreme West,
Spaniards, and Britons, and the Galatae who dwelle