[[4]] Service for "The Ordering of Priests".
[[5]] There was, of course, an ancient British Church long before the sixth century, and there is evidence that it existed in the middle of the second century. It sent bishops to the Council of Arles in 314, and there is a church at Canterbury in which Queen Bertha's chaplain celebrated some twenty-five years before the coming of Augustine. But its origin is shrouded in mystery, and it had been practically extinguished by Jutes, Saxons, and Angles before Augustine arrived. "Of the ancient British Church," writes Bishop Stubbs, in an unpublished letter, "we must be content to admit that history tells us next to nothing, and that what glimmerings of truth we think we can discover in legend grow fainter and fainter the more closely they are examined. Authentic records there are none." Some ascribe the first preaching of the Gospel in Britain to St. Peter, others to St. Paul, or St. James, or St. Simon Zelotes, and the monks of Glastonbury ascribe it to their founder, Joseph of Arimathea, who was, they say, sent to Britain by St. Philip with eleven others in A.D. 63. Cf. letter of Dr. Bright to "The Guardian," 14 March, 1888, and see "Letters and Memoirs of William Bright," pp. 267 seq.
[[6]] i.e. the English, as distinct from the British Church.
[[7]] "The word Establishment," writes Bishop Stubbs, "means, of course, the national recognition of our Church as a Christian Church, as the representment of the religious life of the nation as historically worked out and by means of property and discipline enabled to discharge, so far as outward discharge can insure it, the effectual performance of the duties that membership of a Christian Church involves. It means the national recognition of a system by which every inch of land in England, and every living soul in the population is assigned to a ministration of help, teaching, advice, and comfort of religion, a system in which every English man woman and child has a right to the service of a clergyman and to a home of spiritual life in the service of the Church" ("Visitation Charges," p. 303).