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THE BRITISH CHURCH

THE ORIGIN OF BRITISH CHRISTIANITY
BY REV. R.W. MORGAN 1860

We have extracted the preface and conclusion from St Paul in Britain, written by the Reverend R.W. Morgan and first published in 1860. He dedicated this book to Connop, Lord Bishop of St David's, who he states as the Representative and Successor, in the primitive metropolitan See of Britain, of the national Saint of the Cymry.

Preface

A FAITHFUL account of the origin of native British Christianity as opposed to the Papal system first introduced four hundred and fifty-six years subsequently by Augustine the monk, is here, in readable compass, presented to the public. The history of such origin is inseparably blended with the long-sustained resistance of our early fore fathers to the invasions of their liberties by the greatest empire of antiquity, wielding against them the military forces of nearly three-quarters of the globe. The events thus recorded have left their moulding power to this day on our constitution in Church and State. The most cursory glance at them is sufficient to demonstrate the untenableness of the supposition that Britain is indebted to Germanv a country which has never itself been free - for its free institutions, or to Italy for its Gospel faith. The leading principles of her laws and liberties are of pure indigenous growth; and her evangelical faith was received by her directly from Jerusalem and the East, from the lips of the first disciples themselves of Christ. The struggles in after ages down to our own period for the restoration and preservation of these indigenous birthright liberties, this primitive apostolical faith, constitute the most stirring and ennobling portions of our annals; and we may rest assured that as long as in their modern developments of British Protestantism, British Patriotism, and British Loyalty, they continue to inspire the natIonal heart, our island will continue to retain her position in the van-ward of the march of Order, Liberty, and Progress.

Dec. 24. 1860.

Conclusion

FROM the preceding investigation ensue the following conclusions: -

1. Before Christianity originated in Judaea, there had existed from the remotest period in Britain a religion known as the Druidic, of which the two leading doctrines were identical with those of Christianity, viz., the immortality of the soul and vicarious atonement.

2. That this identity pointed out Britain as of all Gentile countries the one best prepared for the reception of Christianity.

3. That the only religions persecuted by the Roman government were the Druidic and the Christian.

4. That this common persecution by the great military empire with which Britain was engaged in incessant hostilities from A.D. 43 to A.D. 118, materially aided in pre-disposing the British mind in favour of Christianity.

5. That Britain, being the only free state of Europe, was the only country which afforded a secure asylum to the Christians persecuted by the Roman government.

6. That a current of Christianity flowed into Britain from the East contemporaneously with the first dispersion of the Church at Jerusalem, A.D. 35-38.

7. That the first planters of the Gospel in Britain never were in Rome at all, but came hither from the mother Church at Jerusalem.

8. That these first planters were Joseph of Arimathea and his associates, who settled under the protection of the British king Arviragus, in the Isle of AvaIon, Glastonbury, - one of the Druidic cors of Somerset.

9. That among the earliest converts of Joseph and his fraternity were Gladys (Pomponia Grrecina) the sister, Gladys or Claudia, and Eurgain, the daughters, and Linus the son of Caractacus, prince of Siluria, and military dictator of the national forces against the Romans.

10. That the second planter of the word was Simon Zelotes the apostle, who was martyred and buried in the Roman province, probably near Caistor, in Lincolnshire.

11. That the third planter was Aristobulus, one of the seventy, brother of St. Barnabas and father.in-law of St. Peter; commissioned first bishop of Britain by St. Paul, and consecrated by St. Barnabas, the two apostles to the Gentiles. That Aristobulus was engaged in his mission in Britain when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans, some years before his first visit, or the visit of any other apostle, to Rome.

12. That Pudens, the husband of Claudia, Claudia herself, her sister Eurgain, her brother Linus, and aunt Pomponia, being converted prior to St. Paul's visit to Rome, the rest of the British royal family, Bran, Caractacus, Cyllinus and Cynon, were converted and baptized by St. Paul himself during his detention in that city preceding his first trial. That the palace of Pudens and Claudia was the home of St. Paul and the other apostles; that their four children, Timotheus, Novatus, Pudentiana and Praxedes, were instructed in the faith by St. Paul; and that Linus, the brother of Claudia and second son of Caractacus, was appointed by the same apostle first bishop of the Church of Rome, such Church meeting at that time, and till the reign of Constantine, in the afore said palace, called indifferently “ Domus Pudentis, Palatium, Britannicum, Domus Apostolorum, Titulus, Pastor, St. Pudentiana."

13. That after the return of Caractacus to Siluria, St. Paul himself, following the footsteps of
his bishop and forerunner, Aristobulus, visited Britain, and confirmed the British Churches in the faith.

14. That the last days of St. Paul, preceding his martyrdom at Rome, were attended by Pudens, Claudia, Linus, Eubulus, whose salutations he sends in his dying charge to Timothy, and that his remains were interred by them in their family sepulchre.

15. That the foundations of the British Church were Apostolical, being coeval, within a few years, with those of the Pentecostal Church at Jerusalem, preceding those of the primitive Church of Rome, so far as they were laid by either an apostle or apostolic bishop, by seven years, preceding the arrival of St. Peter at Rome, as fixed by the great majority of Roman Catholic historians (thirteenth year of Nero), by thirty years,-preceding the first arrival of the papal Church of Rome in Britain, under Augustine, by 456 years.

16. That the British Church has from its origin been a royal one; the royal family of ancient Britain, of whom our present sovereign is, through the Tudors, the lineal blood representative - being 1. the first British converts to Christianity; 2. the founders of the first Christian institutions in Britain; 3. the chief instruments, in the second century, in the establishment of Christianity as the state religion; and in the fourth century, in the persons of Helen and Constantine the Great, the chief instrument in the aboliton of Paganism, and the substitution, in its place, of Christianity over the whole Roman Empire.

17. That the spiritual or ecclesiastical head of the British Church was always a Briton, resident in Britain, amenable to British laws, and British laws only, and having no superior in the Church but Christ.

18. That whatever may be the religious advantages or disadvantages of the union of the ecclesiastical and civil governments in the person of the Sovereign, such union has been, from the first colonization of our Island, first in Druidic and then in Christian times, the native British, as opposed to the foreign papal - and, in later times, dissenting - principle of their separation.