All his methods may
not be defensible when estimated in the light of modern knowledge, and
even his ideal may be rejected when judged by modern standards of
Christian character, but he must be considered with the moral and
intellectual life of his times in full view. He was a champion of the
oppressed, a friend of the poor, an unflinching foe of sinful men in the
pulpit or on the throne. His will was inflexible, his independence noble
and his energy untiring. In trying to bring the Anglo-Saxon church into
conformity to Rome he was actuated by a higher motive than the merely
selfish desire for ecclesiastical authority. He regarded this harmony as
the only remedy for the prevailing disorders. He believed, like many
other churchmen of unquestioned purity and honesty, that it was
necessary to compel temporal authorities to recognize the power of the
church in order to overcome that defiance of moral law which was the
chief characteristic of the kings and princes in that turbulent period.
What the Anglo-Saxon church might have been if the rule of celibacy had
not been forced upon her, and if she had not submitted to Roman
authority in other matters, is a theme for speculation only. The fact
is that Dunstan found a church corrupt to the core and left it, as a
result of his purifying efforts, with some semblance, to say the least,
of moral influence and spiritual purity. Some other kind of
ecclesiastical polity than that advocated by Dunstan might have achieved
the same results as his, but the simple fact is that none did.
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