That Christianity did exist in Britain from early times, in a more or less settled form, is no longer a matter of dispute. In the words of Gildas, "Christ, the true Son, offered His rays (_i.e._ His precepts) to this island, benumbed with icy coldness, and lying far distant from the visible sun. I do not mean from the sun of the temporal firmament, but from the Sun of the highest arch of heaven, existing before all time." Relative to this fact there are a few statements of ancient writers given at dates which are precisely known, during the third century and subsequently: and these statements are familiar to all students, so that they need not be recapitulated at any length. Tertullian (in 208), Origen (in 239), Eusebius (about 320), allude in unmistakable terms to the existence of British Christianity, however rhetorical the passages may appear. There is, too, the account of the martyrdom of _St. Alban_, recorded at length in the pages of Bede, which cannot be treated as an idle legend. It took place at Verulam during the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian, somewhere about 303. Although the record does not rest on contemporary evidence, the story was fully believed at Verulam itself as far back as 429 A.D. (_i.e._ within a hundred and twenty-six years of the traditional date) and is accepted by Constantius in the fifth, as well as by Gildas and Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth, century--while the difficulty of believing in the possibility of a persecution in Britain, which was then under the kindly and tolerant rule of Constantius, seems to us purely imaginary. It is hardly probable that Constantius would have been able to restrain the persecuting zeal of subordinates, in face of the superior authority of Maximian, who is said by Gibbon to have "entertained the most implacable aversion to the name and religion of the Christians." Dean Milman sees no reason for calling in question the historic reality of the event, and suggests that the probable fact of St. Alban being a Roman soldier may have been an additional reason for his not having received the "doubtful protection" of Constantius.