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Truth Triumphant - Benjamin G. Wilkinson

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Chapter 12<br />

Aidan and the Church in<br />

England<br />

Not Augustine at Canterbury, but devoted Irish<br />

Gaels in every valley of the Heptarch--Aidan,<br />

Finan, Colman, Maeldubh, Diuma and the others -<br />

first carried the evangel of Christian culture to the<br />

savage English tribes.[1]<br />

Patrick in Ireland, Columba in Scotland, and<br />

Dinooth in Wales were apostles to a people using<br />

the Celtic tongue. Aidan, on the other hand, a<br />

disciple of Columba’s Celtic school, was called to<br />

be an apostle to a different race--the pagan Anglo-<br />

Saxons of England. During its six hundred-year<br />

Anglo-Saxon period, the conversion of England<br />

stood as a monument to the missionary zeal of<br />

Aidan.<br />

The pagans in conquering Britain by the sword<br />

had all but destroyed the primitive British Church.<br />

376

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