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    in hfe share 6 f the fltmcfa a cfeest of books which he gave to the monastery of Ion * a ; a sad anachronism , sis the sacking was long before Iowa was founded . JEneas Syfvius ( afterwarcls Ptfpe Pius II . f intended , it is said , when he w&s in Scotland , to have visited the library in search of the lost books of Livy , but was prevented by the death of the King , James I . ; and some other stories are told which the reader may find in Pennant , and which

    are investigated at great length by Jamiesonr , in Ins •* Historical Account of the Coldees of Iona . " The result , perhaps , is , that no trustworthy evidence on the subject exists ; and that the Culdee library rests in the same uncertainty as to its contents as do the libraries of other establishments of the same sort during the middle ages , about which nearly all that we know is , that from some or other of them we have almost all that we possess of the treasures of antiquity .

    The Ctildee establishments ( which were in fact as much literary colleges as ecclesiastical institutions ^ derived their origin , as we have seen , from the ancient Irish and British Church , which by the Saxon conquest had been nearly cut off from European communications . Their institutions were singular : they could not , perhaps , well be otherwise in adapting themselves to their peculiar circumstances : but the nature of their variances from the Romart Catholic Church of the day , and , in particular , their precise jurisdiction over the Scotch Bishops , ( whom it would appear they chose , ordained , and sent forth from the college of elders as their missionaries for the

    promotion of Christianity , ) have been the subject of long and angry discussion . The Catholics have been always eager to disprove even the existence of any practical denial in early ages of the supremacy and unity of their church ; and the English Protestant Episcopalians have been equally eager to oppose the Presbyterian zeal in which the Scotch have been sanguine enough to trace among the brethren of Iona , meeting and choosing one whom they should name and ordain as a bishop or overseer for a distant work , the true and primitive pattern of their own church government by Presbyters or Elders .

    At the time when Augustine , by the command of Gregory , brought Christianity from the West among the heathen tribes of Saxons who had overrun Christian Britain , the remains of the primitive churches of the British isles were still flourishing in Wales and Ireland , and striving for the conversion 6 f their Saxon invaders through such missions as that headed by Columba to thfe northern tribes of Picts . A short account which Bede gives of the mission sent from Iona into Northumbria to fix Christianity in that kingdom

    trader Aidan , the bishop ordained fot the purpose , will shew the progress making from that quarter ; and will at the same time explain the peculiarities as to E p iscopalian ordination which have given rise to so much discussion . Bede , in the first place , had said that Iona " is always wont to have for its governor a Presbyter Abbot , to whose authority both the whole province and even the bishops themselves , by an universal constitution , ought to be subject , after the example of their first teacher , who was not a bishop , but

    a presbyter or mottk . From this island , " lie adds , " from this college of monks ( collegio monaehorum ) was Aidan sent , having received the degree of bishop . At which time Sergenius presided over the monastery as Abbot dftd Presbyter . " King Oswald , he further tells , " sent to the elders of the Scots , among whom during his banishment he had been baptized , that they might send him a bishop , by wtoose doctrine and ministry tne nation of the Ahgles which he governed mi g ht be instructed in the Christian faith . " He then refettes that the eltfer ^ KelS a council , and that " the faces of all who 3 l 2

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    The Culii&s dflbha . 859

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1827, page 859, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1803/page/3/