Before the sixteenth century this Church had passed through two great phases.
The first was that of its formation--the second that of its corruption.
In its formation it was oriento-apostolical.
In its corruption it was successively national-papistical and royal-papistical.
After these two degrees of decline came the last and great phasis of the Reformation.
In the second century of the Christian era vessels were frequently sailing to the savage shores of Britain from the ports of Asia Minor, Greece, Alexandria, or the Greek colonies in Gaul. Among the merchants busied in calculating the profits they could make upon the produce of the East with which their ships were laden, would occasionally be found a few pious men from the banks of the Meander or the Hermus, conversing peacefully with one another about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and rejoicing at the prospect of saving by these glad tidings the pagans towards whom they were steering. It would appear that some British prisoners of war, having learnt to know Christ during their captivity, bore also to their fellow-countrymen the knowledge of this Saviour. It may be, too, that some Christian soldiers, the Corneliuses of those imperial armies whose advanced posts reached the southern parts of Scotland, desirous of more lasting conquests, may have read to the people whom they had subdued, the writings of Matthew, John, and Paul. It is of little consequence to know whether one of these first converts was, according to tradition, a prince named Lucius. It is certain that the tidings of the Son of man, crucified and raised again, under Tiberius, spread through these islands more rapidly than the dominion of the emperors, and that before the end of the second century many churches worshipped Christ beyond the walls of Adrian; in those mountains, forests, and western isles, which for centuries past the Druids had filled with their mysteries and their sacrifices, and on which even the Roman eagles had never stooped.[6] These churches were formed after the eastern type: the Britons would have refused to receive the type of that Rome whose yoke they detested.
[6] Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca Christo vero subdita. (Tertullian contra Judæos, lib. vii) Parts of Britain inaccessible to the Romans were, however, subjected to Christ. This work, from its bearing no traces of Montanism, seems to belong to the first part of Tertullian's life. See also Origen in Lucam, cap. i. homil. 6.