ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NATION. A NEW TRANSLATION BY THE REV. L. GIDLEY, M. A., CHAPLAIN OF ST. NICHOLAS', SALISBURY. Oxford and London: JAMES PARKER AND CO. 110. j. 299. INTRODUCTION. THE ecclesiastical history of the Angles has been comparatively neglected by the mass of English Churchmen; probably from the suspicion and mistrust with which it has been viewed, as containing a large amount of the leaven of Romanism. While the Church of Rome faithfully maintained the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, she nevertheless taught her Anglo-Saxon converts that many things were to be believed which were warranted neither by apostolic tradition, nor yet by Holy Scripture. Bede's History is very instructive as showing what the nature of the grounds. were on which these new doctrines rested. They were chiefly visions; and, according to the importance which is attached to these as an evidence of the Divine will, so must these peculiar doctrines stand or fall. Granting, however, that our Angle forefathers professed a form of Christianity tinctured with superstition at the source from which they received it, we shall still find a large residuum of sincere faith and devotion, as exemplified by such men as Cuthbert and Bede himself; nor does it seem easy to assign a valid reason why the scepticism of the adult age of a nation should be preferred to the credulity of its infancy. English civil history of the Anglo-Saxon period has also been treated by many of our historians with comparative |