Moralia in Job 24 part 3/3

'so that each day should be kept as a feast by those in ecclesiastical and monastic orders, and the name of the same blessed Father and Doctor of ours, Augustine, should always be recited in the chanting of the Litany after the invocation of St. Gregory.' 7. When Augustine had been called to the world above, those who had been ordained bishops by him—Mellitus of London, Justus of Rochester, and Laurentius his successor in the see of Canterbury—strove very much for the recalling from schism both of the Britons and of the Scots, inhabitants of the island of Ireland, by writing to them letters breathing Christian charity and humility. The address of the letter sent to the Scots or Irish, which Bede reports, was this:

'To the most dear lords and brothers, the bishops or abbots throughout all Scotia.' Where the bishops and abbots seem to have been the same persons. 8. No less did the most vigilant bishops labour for the advancement and increase of the new Church; but when kings Ethelbert and Saberht his sister's son—who had zealously cultivated and championed the Christian faith—had departed this life, so grave a war blazed up against the English Church, their successors stirring up persecution against the faithful, that Mellitus and Justus were compelled to cross over into Gaul; whom Laurentius was preparing shortly to follow, had he not been deterred by a most grievous rebuke and sharper scourgings from the apostle Peter.

Going therefore to King Eadbald, and showing him the stripes inflicted upon himself, he led him to forswear idolatry and to embrace the Christian faith, which he afterwards favoured with his whole heart in all things. But the sons of Saberht, who had rejected Mellitus and the Gospel which he preached, paid the penalty of their treason, slain with all their army in a battle against the nation of the Gewissae. So Mellitus and Justus, recalled from Gaul by Laurentius, returned to the work of preaching they had interrupted. These things are more fully told in Bede (cf. Bede, book 2, chapter 6). 9. When St. Laurentius had ended his apostolic labours and his life, Mellitus was given as his successor; to Mellitus afterwards succeeded Justus; to Justus, Honorius.

Him Deusdedit succeeded, after whom sat Theodore, sent by Pope Vitalian, who at length happily brought the Britons over to all the rites of the Roman Church. Here we think we should halt, so that our discourse may return to the deeds of St. Gregory. Let their descendants recall the things we have gathered concerning the conversion of the English: let them question St. Gregory, the father of their faith, and he will proclaim it to them; let them question their elders, Augustine and his fellow-labourers the monks, and these will tell them what faith they embraced from the beginning, what reverence and obedience they showed to the Apostolic See, what sacraments they of old used, what rites they employed for the worship of God. Alas!

the heterodox have destroyed the altars which those men had erected, and have thrust away their ancestral and Catholic religion, having admitted all errors and impieties. May God grant them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and may they recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will (2 Timothy 2:25).