ipsum Gentium doctorem, cum aliis gentibus, tum nominatim BRITANNIS, nunciasse post priorem suam Romæ incarcerationem, et Theodoretus et Sophronius Patriarcha Hierosolymitanus affirmant. Hoc quod Pontifici incredibile atque adeo impossibile statuunt, cum vero maxime cohæret: and of Camden; Certum est Britannos in ipsa Ecclesiæ infantia Christianam religionem imbibisse * ; who cites Theodoret and Sophronius and Venantius Fortunatus in testimony of St. Paul's journey to Britain. Cave also in his life of St. Paul, quotes the same writers, and says, that, by the Islands that lie in the Ocean, Theodoret undoubtedly meant Britain. Such strength of ancient and modern authorities, ought, if I may judge by my own convictions, to put the subject of St. Paul's preaching the Gospel in Britain, beyond all controversy or doubt.

III. I have now, REVEREND BRETHREN, shewn, I think, from good historical evidence of ancient authorities, supported by the con

Britannia, p. 40. edit. 1590.

currence of very judicious modern writers, Parker, Camden, Usher, Stillingfleet, Cave, Gibson, Nelson, and Collier*, that St. Paul preached the Gospel in Britain. We are further informed that St. Paul appointed the first Bishop or Bishops, and other Ministers of the Church. What Simeon Metaphrastes says erroneously of St. Peter, may be truly said of St. Paul: Επιμείνας τε εν Βρετανια [ήμερας τινας] και πολλοις τῷ λόγῳ φωτισας της χάριτος, εκκλησίας τε συστησαμενος, επισκοπους τε και

πρεσβυτέρους και διακόνους χειροτονησας δωδεκατῳ ετει του Καίσαρος Νέρωνος αυθις εις Ρώμην παραγινεται†. The Bishop, whom St. Paul is recorded to have appointed, was Aristobulus, who is mentioned in the epistle to the Romans. By the appointment of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, the form of Churchgovernment was complete, and the British Church, therefore, in a spiritual sense, was fully established. And what results from this establishment of the British Church by

*To these may be added Godwin de Præsulibus, Alford in his Annals, Rapin the Historian, Bingham in his Antiquities, Stanhope on the Conversion of St. Paul, Warner's Eccles. Hist., and Trapp in his Popery truly stated.

+ Apud Iunium in Cotelerii Patres Apostol. Vol. I. p. 150.

Usher de Britan. Eccles. Antiq. p. 9, et 744, 745.

St. Paul? This very interesting consequence, that the Church of Britain was fully established before the Church of Rome. For Linus, the first Bishop of Rome, was appointed by the joint authority of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the year of their Martyrdom*, and therefore after St. Paul's return from Britain.

I have shewn too that the Church of Jerusalem was the mother church of Christendom, that St. James was the first Bishop of the first Christian Church, that St. Paul was the founder of the Church of Rome, and that the words of our Saviour, from which the Romanists derive their opinion of St. Peter's and the Pope's supremacy, do not mean, that He would found his Church on St. Peter; and that it was not so founded; but on the Messiahship of Jesus, the doctrine which St. Peter had confessed; and therefore that the Pope's supremacy has no countenance from Scripture, or from the primitive history of the Church,

And yet is this imaginary supremacy of the Pope, the cause of a political anomaly, not

* Dodwell de Pontificum Romanorum successione, p. 113. 153.

t

own.

suffered in any other government, but our The subjects of no Popish government acknowledge a foreign Protestant authority; it is impossible they should; but it is not more inconsistent with right principles of government, than that the subjects of a Protestant government should acknowledge a foreign Popish authority, independent of their own national government.

The advocates of the Popish claims main、 tain that they must be conceded; for that the Irish discontents cannot be quieted without them; and that the concessions are necessary to the safety and prosperity of the British empire. But in their zeal for the Papists they overlook the Protestant rights, (all the rights of conscience, and law, and inheritance,) and the discontents which must inevitably follow from the suppression of such rights by the grant of the Popish claims. They forget that the consciences of Protestants are as deeply concerned in maintaining the Church established by the piety and blood of their ancestors; and in upholding the barriers, which the laws have fixed for its protection; as the consciences of Papists can be in their non-conformity. They forget, or they wish us to forget, that the Roman Catholicks of Ireland are only a part, about

a fifth part, of the whole British community; that the great majority of the empire are Protestants, whose interests are to be consulted in preference to any subordinate part; and that for the sake of this great majority we have a Protestant government, and Protestant laws, and a Protestant king, who is sworn to maintain inviolate the established Protestant constitution. If there is any danger of a Popish rebellion, which I do not believe from not granting these claims, there is, surely, much more reason to fear a Protestant rebellion from granting them,-in defence of a religion endeared to Britain by its high Apostolical antiquity, and an inheritance of almost eighteen centuries, in comparison with which the Popery of Britain, established for a few centuries after the Norman conquest, was a modern usurpation. Yet Popish writers say, that "the Protestants have dispossessed the Roman Catholicks of their inheritance, and fatten in their seats." This can be said, and admitted, only in utter ignorance of the history of the British Church. The British Church was never theirs but by usurpation. For though our Saxon ancestors were converted to Christianity by Popish missionaries, yet, at that very period, the British Church maintaining herself in the unconquered parts of the Island,