A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

This Consequence of mine, it behoved a man of those great parts you would be thought to have, to heed attentively, and yet you never minded it.

Some few Observations upon this Discourse of yours, will further manifest the Absurdity of that Consequence, which you feign not to have been taken notice of in the Animadversions, for which you had no cause, but that you might easily discern that it did not deserve it. 1. Then you grant that the Gospel came out of the East into this Land. So then we did not first receive the Gospel from Rome, much less by the means of Papists. But the Land was then called Albion, or Brittany, and the people Britons or Kimbrians, not Englishmen. What then, though the names of places or people are changed, the Gospel wherever it is, is still the same. But the Britons lost the Gospel until they had a new Conversion ⟨p. 323⟩from Rome by the means of Eleutherius. But you fail Sir, and are either ignorant in the story of those times, or else wilfully pervert the truth. All the Fathers and favourers of that Story, agree, that Christianity was well rooted and known in Britain, when Lucius as is pretended, sent to Eleutherius for Assistance in its propagation. Your own Baronius will assure you no less, ad An. 183. n. 3, 4. Gildas de Excid, will do it more fully. Virunnius tells us, that the Britons were then strengthened in the faith, not that they then received it: Strengthened in what they had, not newly converted, though some as it is said, were so. And the days of Lucius are assigned by Sabellicus, as the time wherein the whole Province received the name of Christ, publicitus cum ordinatione, by public decree: That it was received there before, and abode there, as in other places of the world under persecution, all men agree. In this interval of time did the British Church bring forth Claudia, Ruffina, Elvanus and Meduinus, whose names amongst others are yet preserved. And to this space of time do the Testimonies of Tertullian ad Judae and of Origen. Hom. 4. in Ezek. concerning Christianity in Britain belong. Besides, if the only prevalent Religion in Brittany were as you fancy that which came from Rome, how came the Observation of Easter both amongst the Britons, as Bede manifests, and the Scots, as Petrus Cluniacensis declares to be answerable to the Customs of the Eastern Church, and contrary to those of the Roman? Did those that came from Rome teach them to do that which they judged their duty not to do? But what need we stay in the confutation of this figment?