A.D. 596. AUGUSTINE PREACHES THE GOSPEL IN BRITAIN. 275 A.B. 594. The robe of our Lord and Saviour was, through the confession of a Jew named Simon, found in the city of Zaphat, not far from Jerusalem, and was placed at Jerusalem, in the place where the cross of Christ is worshipped, by Gregory, bishop of Antioch, Thomas, bishop of Jerusalem, and John, bishop of Constantinople. The same year, Wilba, king of Mercia, died, and was succeeded by Charles, who was not his son, but only a kinsman, and who reigned ten years. A.B. 595. Richard, king of the Visigoths, confirmed the whole of his nation in the catholic faith, after a synod of sixtytwo bishops had been collected at Toledo, and had abjured and anathematized the Arrian heresy. A.D. 596. Which is the hundred and forty-seventh year after the arrivai of the brothers Hengist and Horsa in Britain, Augustine, the servant of God, was sent by the blessed pope Gregory into Britain to preach the word of God to the barbarous nation of the Angles. For they, being blinded by pagan superstition, had destroyed all Christianity in that part of the island which they occupied. But among some portion of the Britons the faith of Christ still flourished, which, having been introduced in the hundred and fifty-eighth year after the divine incarnation, was never wholly lost from among them. On the eastern side of Kent is the Isle of Thanet, on which the man of God, Augustine, and his companions, to the number, as it is reported, of about forty men, landed. And Augustine sending interpreters to king Ethelbert, gave him notice that he had come from Rome, and that he was the bearer of excellent tidings, because he promised eternal joy in heaven to those who should obey him. The king, hearing this, came a few days afterwards to the island, and sitting down in the open air, invited Augustine and his companions to come there to a conference with him. And they, being endowed with divine courage, came, bearing a cross for a standard, and a likeness of our Lord and Saviour depicted on a picture, and chanting litanies for their own salvation and that of those for whom they had eome. And when, at the command of the king, they had sat down, they preached the Word of Life to him and to all who had come with him, and he replied, saying, " The things which you promise are beautiful, but because they are new to me and doubtful, I cannot at the moment give my assent to them, τ2