A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

First then I suppose the whole story is built on the Authority of the Epistle of Elutherius unto Lucius, which is yet extant: other foundations of it, that I know of, is neither pleaded nor pretended. Now there want not Reasons to prove that Epistle as the most of those fathered on the old Bishops of Rome, to be supposititious. For 1. The Author of that Epistle condemneth the Imperial Laws, and rejecteth them as unmeet to be used in the Civil Government of this Nation, which Eleutherius neither ought to have done, nor could safely do. 2. It supposeth Lucius to have sent unto Eleutherius to have the Roman Law sent unto him, which had been long before exercised in this Nation, and was well known in the whole Province, as he witnesseth of days before these; ⟨p. 428⟩Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Brittannos.

First then I suppose the whole story is built on the Authority of the Epistle of Elutherius unto Lucius, which is yet extant: other foundations of it, that I know of, is neither pleaded nor pretended. Now there want not Reasons to prove that Epistle as the most of those fathered on the old Bishops of Rome, to be supposititious. For 1. The Author of that Epistle condemneth the Imperial Laws, and rejecteth them as unmeet to be used in the Civil Government of this Nation, which Eleutherius neither ought to have done, nor could safely do. 2. It supposeth Lucius to have sent unto Eleutherius to have the Roman Law sent unto him, which had been long before exercised in this Nation, and was well known in the whole Province, as he witnesseth of dayes before these; ⟨p. 428⟩Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Brittannos.

2. The first Reporters of this Story agree not in the time wherein the matter mentioned in it, should fall out. Bede lib. 1. cap. 4. assigns it unto the year 156. which was twenty two years before Eleutherius was Bishop, as Baronius manifests. Henricus de Erfordia ascribes it unto the nineteenth year of the reign of Verus the Emperor who reigned not so many years at all. Ado refers it unto the time of Commodus with some part of whose reign the Episcopacy of Eleutherius did indeed contemporate. 2. Geoffrey of Monmouth the chief promoter of this report, joineth it with so many lies and open fictions, as may well draw the Truth of the whole story into Question. So that divers would have us believe that some such thing was done at one time or other, but when they cannot tell. 3. Both the Epistle of Eleutherius, and the reporters of it, do suppose that Lucius to whom he wrote, was an Absolute Monarch in England, King over the whole Kingdom with Supreme Authority and Power, ruling his Subjects by the Advice of his Nobles, without being obnoxious unto or dependent in his Government on any others. But this Supposition is so openly repugnant to the whole story of the State of things in the Province of England in those days, so that it is beyond the wit of man to make any reconciliation between them: For besides that Caesar and Tacitus do both plainly affirm, that in the days of the Romans ance upon this Island, there was no such King or Monarch among the Britons, but that they were all divided into several Toparchies, and […] ortal feuds and variance among themselves, […] de for the conquest of them all, it was now