It has also been asserted, that the Kelts or Culdees were opposed to auricular confession,
the worship of saints, and images, purgatory, transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, and that for
this reason they were the forerunners of Protestantism.
But this inference is not warranted. Ignorance is one thing, and rejection of an error from
superior knowledge is quite another thing. The difference is one of form rather than of spirit. Owing
to its distance and isolation from the Continent, the Keltic church, while superior to the churches
in Gaul and Italy—at least during the sixth and seventh centuries—in missionary zeal and success,
was left behind them in other things, and adhered to a previous stage of development in truth and
error. But the general character and tendency of both during that period were essentially different
from the genius of Protestant Christianity. We find among the Kelts the same or even greater love
for monasticism and asceticism the same superstitious belief in incredible miracles, the same
veneration for relics (as the bones of Columba and Aidan, which for centuries were carried from
place to place), the same scrupulous and narrow zeal for outward forms and ceremonies (as the
observance of the mere time of Easter, and the mode of monastic tonsure), with the only difference
that the Keltic church adhered to an older and more defective calendar, and to the semi-circular
instead of the circular tonsure. There is not the least evidence that the Keltic church had a higher
conception of Christian freedom, or of any positive distinctive principle of Protestantism, such as
the absolute supremacy of the Bible in opposition to tradition, or justification by faith without
works, or the universal priesthood of all believers.^94
Considering, then, that the peculiarities of the Keltic church arose simply from its isolation
of the main current of Christian history, the ultimate triumph of Rome, with all its incidental evils,
was upon the whole a progress in the onward direction. Moreover, the Culdees degenerated into a
state of indolence and stagnation during the darkness of the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Danish
invasion, with its devastating and disorganizing influences. We still find them in the eleventh
century, and frequently at war with the Roman clergy about landed property, tithes and other matters
of self-interest, but not on matters of doctrine, or Christian life. The old Culdee convents of St.
Andrews Dunkeld, Dunblane and Brechin were turned into the bishop’s chapter with the right of
electing the bishop. Married Culdees were gradually supplanted by Canons-Regular. They lingered
longest in Brechin, but disappeared in the thirteenth century. The decline of the Culdees was the
opportunity of Rome. The Saxon priests and monks, connected with the more civilized countries,
were very active and aggressive, building cathedrals, monasteries, hospitals, and getting possession
of the land.
§ 20. Extinction of the Keltic Church, and Triumph of Rome under King David I.(^94) The Duke of Argyll who is a Scotch Presbyterian, remarks (l.c. p. 41): "It is vain to look, in the peculiarities of the
Scoto-Irish Church, for the model either of primitive practice, or of any particular system. As regards the theology of Columba’s
time, although it was not what we now understand as Roman, neither assuredly was it what we understand as Protestant.
Montalembert boasts, and I think with truth, that in Columba’s life we have proof of the practice of the auricular confession,
of the invocation of saints, of confidence in their protection, of belief in transubstantiation [?], of the practices of fasting and
of penance, of prayers for the dead, of the sign of the crow in familiar—and it must be added—in most superstitious use. On
the other hand there is no symptom of the worship or ’cultus’ of the Virgin, and not even an allusion to such an idea as the
universal bishopric of Rome, or to any special authority as seated there."