cross borne before him as a banner, and the pictured image of Christ, his monks singing litanies and loudly supplicating their Lord for the king's and their own salvation. Knowledge, authority, supernatural power, were represented here. And how could the king fail to be struck by the nobility of Augustine's Gospel message, by its clear assurance, its love and terror,[1] so overwhelming and convincing, so far outsoaring Ethelbert's heathen religion? To be sure, in Christian love and forgiveness lay some reversal of Saxon morality, for instance of the duty of revenge. But this was not prominent in the Christianity of the day; and experience was to show that only in isolated instances did this teaching impede the acceptance of the Gospel.[2]
Ethelbert spoke these missionaries fair; accorded them a habitation in Canterbury with the privilege of celebrating their Christian rites and preaching to his people. There they abode, zealous in vigils and fastings, and preaching the word of life. Certain heathen men were converted, then the king, and then his folk in multitudes—the usual way. Under the direction of Gregory, Augustine proceeded with that combination of insistence, dignity, and tolerance, so well understood in the Roman Church. There was insistence upon the main doctrines and requirements of the Faith—upon the Roman Easter day and baptism, as against the practices of the British Church. Tolerance was shown respecting heathen fanes and sacrificial feastings; the fanes should be reconsecrated as Christian churches; the feasts should be continued in honour of the true God.[3]
Besides zeal and knowledge and authority, miracles advanced Augustine's enterprise. To eliminate by any sweeping negation the miraculous element from the causes
- ↑ There is no positive evidence that Augustine painted the terrors of the Day of Judgment in his first preaching. But it was a chief part of the mediaeval Gospel, and never absent from the soul of Augustine's master, Gregory. The latter set it forth vividly in his letter to Ethelbert after his baptism (Bede, Hist. Ecc. i. 32).
- ↑ Bede, Hist. Ecc. iii. 22, tells how a certain noble gesith slew his king from exasperation with the latter's practice of forgiving his enemies, instead of requiting them, according to the principles of heathen morality.
- ↑ Bede, Hist. Ecc. i. 30. Well known are the picturesque scenes surrounding the long controversy as to Easter between the Roman clergy and the British and Irish. The matter bulks hugely in Bede's book, as it did in his mind.
