These controversies had from the beginning excited such animosity between the British and Romish priests that, instead of concurring in their endeavors to convert the idolatrous Saxons, they refused all communion together, and each regarded his opponent as no better than a pagan.  The dispute lasted more than a century, and was at last finished, not by men’s discovering the folly of it, which would have been too great an effort for human reason to accomplish, but by the entire prevalence of the Romish ritual over the Scotch and British.  Wilfrid, bishop of Lindisferne, acquired great merit, both with the court of Rome and with all the southern Saxons, by expelling the “quartodeciman” schism, as it was called, from the Northumbrian kingdom, into which the neighborhood of the Scots had formerly introduced it.

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, called, in the year 680, a synod at Hatfield, consisting of all the bishops in Britain, where was accepted and ratified the decree of the Lateran council, summoned by Martin, against the heresy of the Monothelites.  The council and synod maintained, in opposition to these heretics, that, though the divine and human nature in Christ made but one person, yet had they different inclinations, wills, acts, and sentiments, and that the unity of the person implied not any unity in the consciousness.  This opinion it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated.  The decree of the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked, abominable, and even diabolical, and curses and anathematizes them to all eternity.

The Saxons, from the first introduction of Christianity among them, had admitted the use of images; and perhaps that religion, without some of those exterior ornaments, had not made so quick a progress with these idolaters; but they had not paid any species of worship or address to images; and this abuse never prevailed among Christians till it received the sanction of the second council of Nice.

The kingdoms of the heptarchy, though united by so recent a conquest, seemed to be firmly cemented into one state under Egbert; and the inhabitants of the several provinces had lost all desire of revolting from that monarch or of restoring their former independent governments.  Their language was everywhere nearly the same, their customs, laws, institutions, civil and religious; and as the race of the ancient kings was totally extinct in all the subjected states, the people readily transferred their allegiance to a prince who seemed to merit it by the splendor of his victories, the vigor of his administration, and the superior nobility of his birth.  A union also in government opened to them the agreeable prospect of future tranquillity; and it appeared more probable that they would thenceforth become formidable to their neighbors than be exposed to their inroads and devastations.  But these flattering views were soon overcast by the appearance of the Danes, who, during some centuries, kept the Anglo-Saxons in perpetual inquietude, committed the most barbarous ravages upon them, and at last reduced them to grievous servitude.