other both critical and censorious authors), proves to timonies of To these foreign testimonies of St. Patrick's ex- British tes istence let us add the authority of the most respectable St. Patrick's of our native writers, archbishop Usher, Cambden, Ware, Spelman, Stillingfleet, and an host of more mo Patrick, to verify the fact of his existence, and of his having been sent by pope Celestin from Rome, to complete the conversion of the Irish, which had been begun by St. Palladius, whom this pope had sent into Britain for the particular purpose of opposing the Pelagian heresy, before he proceeded upon his further evangelical labours, at the commencement of which he died."Ipso autem eá in legatione vitâ functo, cum in Hyberniam quoque evangelium intulisset, Patricius cæptum ab en opus absolvit." Bar. 1. v. p. 555. Ep. a Ludov. Aurelio. His Ecclesiastical Annals are comprized in twelve large folio volumes, each word of which was written in the cardinal's own hand writing, without the aid of an amanuensis. He had every opportunity of verifying these facts, having for many years had the care of the library of the Holy See. The well-earned eulogy of our erudite and critical Cave, places his authority beyond the touch of the sceptic Sciolists of these days of infidelity. "In hoc opere præclaré quidem de Antiquitate Ecclesiasticâ meruit. Me certe ex eo non parum profecisse haud invitus agnosco. Prolog. xxii. This honourable testimony of an English, divine is most credible and creditable to both parties, especially as the object of the eulogy is complained of, for manifesting too intense a bias to exalt the prerogative of the Roman pontiff. existence. Unanimous his exist ence. dern and not less respectable British authors. We may even add to them the long envenomed list of the traducers of the Irish nation, from Gerald Barry down to the last of his interested or prejudiced devotees, who have been so far from questioning the existence of St.Patrick, that they have generally rested their · strongest, arguments against the religion, cultivation, and credit of the Irish nation upon the doctrines, conduct, and incidents of their apostle's life. The very basis of Usher's learned Primordia, is bottomed on the mission of St. Patrick. He there affirms *, that we have no authentic life of this saint more ancient, than that of Probus, which is usually published amongst the works of Bede: a circumstance, which strongly imports the coevality of the writers; and the Bollandists are of opinion, that Probus lived in the seventh century. The unanimous assent of every writer upon the evidence of introduction of christianity into Ireland, that from the death of Palladius in 431, down to the year 460 at least, the supreme episcopal jurisdiction over the whole island was exercised by St. Patrick; and the silence of the whole Pyrrhonian school, from the sceptic Master Ryves down to the errant Pyrrhonite Sir John Carr, upon the progress of christianity from the decease of Bishop Palladius, unquestionably afford that moral evidence of St. Patrick's existence at that period, to which no fair and reasonable mind can refuse assent. The tradition and usages of the whole catholic church * Ush. Prim, c. 17, p. 817. for so many centuries, cannot but furnish strong corroborative evidence of the fact, even to those, who reject the doctrines, upon which the commemoration of the saint's festival is founded. currency by time. Fashionable as it is to inveigh against the ignorance Error gains and superstition of the middle ages, the light of rea- lapse of son must not be put out, either to support or oppose the common tradition and belief of the christian world for above thirteen centuries. After a long lapse of time, the false history or forged existence of a particular personage, may acquire a currency of belief from a variety of causes: from the plausibility of the original fiction, the flattering or interested motives for keeping up the delusion, the art of those, who are privy to the deception, in concealing the reality from the ignorant, the reluctance of most men to the trouble of investigation, the facility of many to believe whatever is told them, the continually increasing apathy to past events, as lapse of time removes them from personal affection and interest. The precise origin of fiction is seldom to be traced; it never becomes general at one time. attempts to We are assured by Dr. Ledwich*, that in the Ledwich's ninth century, the name of St. Patrick first appeared; disprove the and hence he deduces the whole system of the forgery. St. Patrick. The people must have been grossly ignorant and brutal, upon whom such forgeries could have been wantonly palmed, more especially, when no possible interest could arise out of the deceit to the active or * Ant. p. Led. 80. existence of passive objects of the imposition. This antipatrician antiquarian, who boasts with such fastidious confidence of his internal and invincible proofs, that our apostle and his history are equally fabulous, lets himself down most pitifully, by resorting to the legendary tales of St. Dionysius and St. James, which from the credulous blunders of Hilduin, may have received some currency in the ninth century, by not pursuing the argument to its natural close. If it at all apply, it must go also the whole length of negativing the existence both of St. James and St. Denis. But will any man possessed of a particle of common sense or honesty, maintain for an instant with this Archpyrrhonite, that the pens of the Irish Hagiographers of the ninth century, had the magical virtue to fascinate not only their own countrymen, but all the learned writers of England, Scotland, France, Flanders, Italy, Germany, and every country of Christendom for so many centuries, into the reverence and commemoration of a non-entity. No point in ecclesiastical history has been subjected to more severe criticism, than the mission of St. Patrick from Rome to Ireland. And it is notorious, that exclusively of his 64 old biographers, who have interlarded their legends with such miracles, as no age of reason could digest, there is not a single writer, that has come under our eye, foreign or native, catholic or acatholic, ancient or modern, who does not admit the existence of St. Patrick in the fifth century; and that he propagated the gospel of Christ amongst the * Led, Aut. P. 66. Irish. We except the learned, respectable, and enlightened triumvirate of the nineteenth century, Ledwich, Gordon, and Carr. wich's ar against the of existence of St. Patrick. The submission of a christian to revelation, rather Dr. Ledopens than shuts the mind to the fair operations of guments human reason. It is obvious, that this apostle pyrrhonism grounds the foundation of his mission upon the silence of Bede, and some other authors, who, he argues, might or ought to have made mention of St. Patrick, whilst they treated of ecclesiastical subjects of the fifth century. Negative arguments will never arrive at a positive conclusion. Bede in writing the ecclesiastical history Gentis Anglorum, had no more reason to travel into Ireland, than into Scotland or Gaul: and his silence might equally be made to negative the uncontested facts of St. Palladius having preached the gospel to the British Scots and St. Rhemigius to the Gauls. Bede's Martyrologe mentions the death of St. Patrick the confessor in Scotia, i. e. Ireland. And as we before observed, though some authors with probable reason allege, that some latter saints, who flourished after the time of Bede, were added to his Martyrologe, not one has been hinted at even by Ledwich, that affects to charge it with any interpolation relative to St. Patrick, or indeed to any Saint prior to Bede's own time. vilization of ter St. Pa It is a matter of justice to the Irish nation, to lay Superior cibefore the British public, that testimony, which this Ireland afvenerable writer has given of the high state of culti-trick's time. vation, science, and virtue, in which the Irish then were; and which is an irrefragable testimony from an |