The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.: From the Britons of Early Times to King John — David Hume — John Shaqi
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A.: From the Britons of Early Times to King John
David Hume · en
These controversies had, from the beginning, excited such animosity
between the British and Romish priests that, instead of concurring
in their endeavors to convert the idolatrous Saxons, they refused all
communion together, and each regarded his opponent as no better than
a pagan.[*] The dispute lasted more than a century; and was at last
finished, not by men’s discovering the folly of it, which would have
been too great an effort for human reason to accomplish, but by the
entire prevalence of the Romish ritual over the Scotch and British.[**]
Wilfrid, bishop of Lindisferne, acquired great merit, both with the
court of Rome and with all the southern Saxons, by expelling the
quartodeciman schism, as it was called, from the Northumbrian kingdom,
into which the neighborhood of the Scots had formerly introduced
it.[***]
Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, called, in the year 680, a synod
at Hatfield, consisting of all the bishops in Britain,[****] where was
accepted and ratified the decree of the Lateran council, summoned by
Martin, against the heresy of the Monothelites. The council and synod
maintained, in opposition to these heretics, that, though the divine
and human nature in Christ made but one person, yet had they different
inclinations, wills, acts, and sentiments, and that the unity of the
person implied not any unity in the consciousness.[*****] This opinion
it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with
the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of
zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated. The decree of
the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked,
abominable, and even diabolical; and curses and anathematizes them to
all eternity.[******]
[* Bede, lib. ii. cap. 2, 4, 20. Eddius, sect.
12.]
[** Bede, lib. v. cap. 16, 22.]
[*** Bede, lib. iii. cap. 25. Eddius, sect. 12.]
[**** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 168.]
[***** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 171.]
[****** Spell. Concil. vol. i. p. 172, 173, 174.]
CHAPTER II.
The Saxons, from the first introduction of Christianity among them, had
admitted the use of images; and perhaps that religion, without some of
those exterior ornaments, had not made so quick a progress with these
idolaters; but they had not paid any species of worship or address
to images; and this abuse never prevailed among Christians, till it
received the sanction of the second council of Nice.
EGBERT.