There were many causes that contributed to the weakening of this Gaelic Church of the Clyde valleys. The Roman arms had been withdrawn and all over the Romanised provinces political disintegration set in. Dependence on a foreign rule, and the enervating luxuries of more southern lands had not only paralysed the native manliness of the British races, but had also greatly emasculated the primitive Christianity of these islands. Indeed, in southern Britain the early Christianity became so completely extinguished that it had to be re-kindled from the north in the sixth and seventh centuries. The vigorous forces of the unconverted and unconquered tribes of the north were too powerful for a Church which had been accustomed perhaps to lean too much on the civil protection afforded by an alien power. It must not also be forgotten that those early Christians had literally no help to feed the flame of their devotion. The fragments even of the Scriptures that may have been in circulation could only have been in the hands of a very limited number; while the languages in which they were written were utterly unknown to the people, and there were no translations. When all this is remembered it becomes rather a matter of marvel that the sacred glow of Christian truth survived so long in some places after the personal life that kindled it ceased to be. Those were truly ages when Christian witnesses were, and had to be living epistles known and read of all men; for the personal life became practically the literature in which the gospel was heralded. So the strength of a Church depended mainly on the character and personality of the teachers.