at of empire, was 'new Rome;' taking
ecclesiastical rank from its secular position, as Rome itself had done. In
the early times of which we are now speaking, we do not find even the
germ of the mediaeval theory of Roman supremacy; and the men who filled
the office of Bishop of Rome were not men of mark enough to work any
approach to such a theory, or to fix upon them the eyes of a far-off
barbarian chief. It was either this Eleutherus, or his successor Victor,
who was all but taken in to recognise Montanism, as indeed Zosimus was
taken in, 250 years later, by the superior subtlety of our countryman, the
Briton Pelagius. Eleutherus, or Victor, was only saved from this grave
mistake by the advice of an Oriental heretic.

But apart from all such considerations, which I mention historically and
not polemically, I see no reason why Britons should go so far afield if
they wished to learn of Christ. With Gaul so close at hand, its people so
near of kin, its government so identical with theirs, the Britons would
hear of Christianity, would learn Christianity, from and through Gaul, and
would look to Gaul, not Italy. But if we look to the state of Gaul in the
time to which this British king is assigned, we shall see that it was in
the very highest degree improbable that he should aim at making his people
Christians. It was a time of terrible trial, with everything to be lost by
becoming Christian. What sort of Christian hero was this, in the year 175
or 180, who desired to lead his nation to a change in their religion, that
they might court the barbarous tortures inflicted by their kinsfolk on all
of the Christian name at this exact conjuncture?

The new faith was planted in the south of Gaul comparatively early, but it
spread northwards very slowly. The first congregations, those of Lyons and
Vienne, were formed by Christians from Asia Minor, where some of them had
known Polycarp, who was a pupil of St. John. Soon after the foundation of
this infant Church, the great persecution of its members took place, about
the year 175, when Eleutherus was bishop of Rome. The details of the
persecution are so well known, through the letter which the survivors
wrote--not to Rome, but to their parent Church and personal friends in
Asia and Phrygia,--a letter preserved to us by the Greek historian
Eusebius, that I think they have given a wrong impression as to the extent
of the Christian Church in Gaul towards the end of the second century[26]