th century other Celtic Churches
came into the agreement; only Cornwall held out for two centuries more.

[Sidenote: The mission of St. Augustine, 597.]

The English Church, which thus came to represent the Christianity of
the whole island, was founded from Rome by S. Augustine in Kent in 597.
It was from the first an active missionary body. It gradually won its
way over the whole island, conquering and assimilating the alien
influences which were at first opposed to it. So when a storm of
heathen persecution swept over England and Scotland at the end of the
eighth century, when "the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed
God's church at Lindisfarne," when the monks of Iona were given to
martyrdom, when English prelates and kings gave their lives to hold the
land for Christ, the Church still endured, with material loss but with,
for the time at least, enhanced glory and virtue. Three names stand
out conspicuously from the seventh and ninth centuries. [Sidenote:
Theodore of Tarsus, 668.] Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury
from 668 to 693, was the great organiser of the English Church. A
scholar, a teacher, a statesman, he knit the different tribes of
English, Saxon, Jute, together in the unity of faith and discipline.
Church councils sprang up under him to rule, and Church laws to guide
men in the way. He kept up a close connection with the Western Church,
but he did not surrender independence to a papal supremacy. Wilfrith
of Ripon, his contemporary, was great also as a teacher and as a
missionary beyond the seas, {118} and among the Saxons of South
Britain. The seventh century was the age in which the foundations of
the English Church were laid on firm bases.

[Sidenote: Bede.]

Hardly less important, though in a different way, was the work of the
monk Baeda, the father of English history. He was a man who knew the
history and the theology of the Western Church, and who taught by his
writings and his life. His influence on the development of the Church
in the north, both by his great history, his religious treatises, and
his influence on Egbert, Archbishop of York, is incalculable.

[Sidenote: Alfred.]

The age of Alfred, who died in 899, was equally important. It
witnessed a more distinct union with the Church of Wales, whose glories
go back to the time of S. David in the fifth century. It confirmed a
strong union between Church and State in England, and it witnessed a
revival of Chr