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CHAPTER 7
PATRICK, ORGANIZER OF THE CHURCH IN
THE WILDERNESS IN IRELAND
From all that can be learned of him (Patrick), there never was a nobler
Christian missionary.... He went to Ireland from love to Christ, and love to the
souls of men.... Strange that a people who owed Rome nothing in connection with
their conversion to Christ, and who long struggled against her pretensions,
should be now ranked among her most devoted adherents.1
THE heroic figure of Patrick, taken captive as a boy into slavery, stands
out as a creator of civilization. He was not only an architect of European
society and the father of Irish Christianity, but he raised up a standard
against spiritual wolves entering the fold in sheep's clothing. So much legend
and fiction has been written about him that one is almost led to believe that
there were two individuals - the real Patrick and the fictitious Patrick. The
statement may come as a surprise to many, yet it is a fact that the actual
Patrick belonged to the Church in the Wilderness. He should not be placed where
certain historians seem determined to assign him. The facts presented in the
following pages will no doubt be a revelation to many who, misled by wrong
representations, have not realized of what church Patrick was a child and an
apostle. As will be shown later, he was of that early church which was brought
to Ireland from Syria.2 He was in no way connected with the type of Christianity
which developed in Italy and which was ever at war with the church organized by
Patrick.
Patrick belongs to the Celtic race, of which the Britons of England, as
well as the Scotch and Irish, are a part. The vivacity of the Celtic temperament
is equaled by noble courage under danger and by a deep love for learning. The
Celts, like the Germans, possess a profound religious fervor which makes them
devoted to the faith of their choice. This race once extended all the way from
Scythia to Ireland.3 The Celts are descended from Gomer, the grandson of Noah,
from whom they obtained through the centuries the name of the Cimmerians. In
fact, the Welsh today call themselves Cymry.
Three countries, Britain, Ireland, and France, are claimed by different
writers to be the fatherland of Patrick. The weight of evidence plainly
indicates that his birthplace was in that kingdom of Strathclyde, inhabited and
controlled by the ancient Britons, which lay immediately northwest of England.4
Rome had divided the island into five provinces, and, in addition, recognized
the Strathclyde kingdom. It was then customary to speak of these divisions as
"the Britains." To ten of the superior cities of these Britains, the
Roman senate had extended the fight of citizenship.5 As his parents resided in
one of these ten cities, Patrick in all probability, like Paul, was born a Roman
citizen. He was born about A.D. 360. 6
Fortunately, two of Patrick's writings, his Confession and the Letter
against Coroticus, a near-by British king, survive and may be found readily. In
the Letter Patrick tells how he surrendered his high privileges to become
a slave for Christ. Of his faith and his dedication to God, he says: I
was a free man according to the flesh. I was born of a father who was a decurion.
For I sold my nobility for the good of others, and I do not blush or grieve
about it. Finally, I am a servant in Christ delivered to a foreign nation on
account of the unspeakable glory of an everlasting life which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord.
Of the two writings, namely, the Confession, and the Letter,
Sir William Betham writes: In
them will be found no arrogant presumption, no spiritual pride, no pretension to
superior sanctity, no maledictions of magi, or rivers, because his followers
were drowned in them, no veneration for, or adoration of, relics, no consecrated
staffs, or donations of his teeth for relics, which occur so frequently in the
lives and also in the collections of Tirechan, referring to Palladius, not to
Patrick.7
At the age of sixteen, Patrick was carried captive to Ireland by
freebooters who evidently had sailed up the Clyde River or landed on the near-by
coast. Of this he writes in this Confession: I,
Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful, and most
contemptible to great numbers, had Calpurnius for my father, a deacon, son of
the late Potitus, the presbyter, who dwelt in the village of Banavan, Tiberniae,
for he had a small farm at hand with the place where I was captured. I was then
almost sixteen years of age. I did not know the true God; and was taken to
Ireland in captivity with many thousand men in accordance with our deserts,
because we walked at a distance from God and did not observe His commandments.
It can be noticed in this statement that the grandfather of Patrick was a
presbyter, which indicated that he held an office in the church equal to that of
bishop in the papal meaning of the term. This is one of the many proofs that
celibacy was not an obligation among the early British clergy. Patrick's father
was a deacon in the church, a town counselor, a farmer, and a husband. To the
glory of God, it came to pass that, during his seven years of slavery in
Ireland, Patrick acquired the Irish form of the Celtic language. This was of
great value, because the fierce fighting disposition of the pagan Irish, at that
time was a barrier to the Romans' or Britons' attempting missionary work across
the channel on a large scale. However, many of those previously carried off into
captivity must have been Christians who engaged themselves so earnestly in
converting their captors that considerable Christianity was found in Ireland
when, after his escape, Patrick dared to return to evangelize the island.
It will be further noted in the quotation above that he was taken into
"captivity with many thousand men." The seagoing craft used in those
days along the coasts of Ireland, called "coracles," were small
vessels made by covering a wicker frame with hide or leather. The problem
involved in transporting many thousands of captives by means of such small boats
indicates that the raid must have been made on a near-by coast, which is further
testimony that his fatherland was "the Britains."
Patrick, like his Master of Galilee, was to learn obedience through
suffering. A great task awaited him. The apostolic church had won a
comparatively easy victory in her struggle with a pagan world for three
centuries. But an almost impossible task awaited her when a compromising
Christianity, enforcing its doctrines at the point of the sword, had become the
state religion of the Roman Empire. It was an hour when a new line of leaders
was needed. As the struggle of free churches to live their lives without the
domination of a state clergy began, God was training Patrick.
While considering the early life of this Christian leader, it is most
interesting to note what was happening in contemporary history. Vigilantius 8
was doing his work in southern France and in northern Italy, or among the Latin
peoples. Shortly before Patrick's time the empire at Constantinople had been
under the rule of Constantine II, who recoiled from accepting the extreme views
on the Godhead, which had won the vote under his father, Constantine the Great,
in the first Council of Nicaea. As will be related later, similar opposition to
those extreme views prevailed all over Europe. Patrick's belief was that of the
opposition. Dr. Stokes writes: "The British churches of the fourth century
took the keenest interest in church controversies. They opposed Arianism, but
hesitated, like many others, about the use of the word 'homoousion.'"9
(This word means "identity of substance.") Thus Celtic Christianity in
the years of Patrick refused to accept this test term and the conclusions to
which the radical speculations were leading.
It is remarkable that in the time of Patrick, as later testimony from
Alphonse Mingana will point out, there were large groups of Christians
stretching all the way from the Euphrates to northwestern India. Furthermore, in
411, when Patrick was at the height of his work, the recognized head over the
Church of the East at Seleucia, Persia, consecrated a metropolitan administrator
for China who must have had many provincial directors under him. This indicates
many Christian churches in China in that age. Ambrose reported in 396 that
Musaeus, an Abyssinian church leader, had "traveled almost everywhere in
the country of the Seres." Seres was the name for the Chinese.10 Truly, the
age in which Patrick labored saw stirring scenes throughout the world.
Both Isaac, supreme director, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, author and
theologian, were powerful leaders in the great Church of the East during the
period of Patrick's ministry. The influence of the writings of Theodore in
molding Oriental Christianity for centuries and his signal work in refuting the
doctrines of Mithraism in the East, while Patrick was winning his victories in
the West, is of importance.11 Christianity in Ireland Before Patrick
Celtic Christianity embraced more than Irish and British
Christianity. There was a Gallic (French) Celtic Christianity and a Galatian
Celtic Christianity, as well as a British Celtic Christianity. So great were the
migrations of peoples in ancient times that not only the Greeks, but also the
Assyrians settled in large numbers in the land now called France. Thus for
almost a thousand years after Christ there was in southern France a strong Greek
and Oriental population. As late as 600, there were people in France who spoke
the language of Assyria.12
Surely no one could claim that that branch of Celtic Christianity in Asia
Minor, whose churches arose as the result of the labors of the apostle Paul,
received their gospel from the bishop of Rome. On the other hand, it is evident
that Gaul received her knowledge of the gospel from missionaries who traveled
from Asia Minor. It was the Celtic, or Galatian type of the New Testament church
which evangelized Great Britain.13 Thus Thomas Yeates writes: A
large number of this Keltic community (Lyons, A.D. 177) - colonists from Asia
Minor - who escaped, migrated to Ireland (Erin) and laid the foundations of the
pre-Patrick church.14
The Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries was able to secure a
large following in France; but until after the French Revolution she never
succeeded in eliminating the spirit of independence in the French hierarchy.
This is due largely to the background of the Celtic race. As H. J. Warner
writes: Such
an independence France had constantly shown, and it may be traced not only to
the racial antipathy between Gaul and Pelagian, but to the fact that western
Gaul had never lost touch with its eastern kin.15 Patrick's Work in Ireland
Two centuries elapsed after Patrick's death before any writer
attempted to connect Patrick's work with a papal commission. No pope ever
mentioned him, neither is there anything in the ecclesiastical records of Rome
concerning him. Nevertheless, by examining the two writings which he left,
historical statements are found which locate quite definitely the period in
which he labored.
When Patrick speaks of the island from which he was carried captive, he
calls it "the Britains." This was the title given the island by the
Romans many years before they left it. After the Goths sacked the city of Rome
in 410, the imperial legions were recalled from England in order to protect
territory nearer home. Upon their departure, savage invaders from the north and
from the Continent, sweeping in upon the island, devastated it and erased its
diversified features, so that it could no longer be called "the Britains."
Following the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 410, the title "the
Britains" ceased to be used. Therefore from this evidence it would seem
logical to reach the conclusion that Patrick wrote his letters and documents
before that date.
This date agrees with the time when Columba, the renowned graduate of
Patrick's school who brought Christianity to Scotland, began his ministry.
Columba graduated when the schools founded by Patrick had grown to sizable
proportions. The time which elapsed between the founding of the schools by
Patrick and their growth in the days of Columba would indicate that Patrick
began his ministry in Ireland about 390.
What Patrick did between the time of his escape from slavery in Ireland
and his return as a missionary to that land is not known. Every effort has been
made by propapal writers to place him in this interval, at Rome. On one such
fictitious visit it is said that Patrick with the help of an angel performed the
questionable feat of stealing many relics from the pope among which was supposed
to have been the bloodstained towel of our Savior and some hair from the Virgin
Mary. One writer exclaims: "O wondrous deed! O rare theft of a vast
treasure of holy things, committed without sacrilege, the plunder of the most
holy place in the world!"16
The words of Patrick himself reveal his unrest of soul after his escape
from slavery until he submitted to the call of God to proclaim the news of
salvation to the Irish. He had continually heard voices from the woods of
Hibernia, begging him, as did the man in the night vision of Paul, "Come
over...and help us." Neither the tears of his parents nor the reasonings of
his friends could restrain him. He determined, whatever the cost, to turn his
back upon the allurements of home and friends and to give his life for the
Emerald Isle. His Authority - The Bible
Patrick preached the Bible. He appealed to it as the sole authority
for founding the Irish Church. He gave credit to no other worldly authority; he
recited no creed. Several official creeds of the church at Rome had by that time
been ratified and commanded, but Patrick mentions none. In his Confession he
makes a brief statement of his beliefs, but he does not refer to any church
council or creed as authority. The training centers he founded, which later grew
into colleges and large universities, were all Bible schools. Famous students of
these schools - Columba, who brought Scotland to Christ, Aidan, who won pagan
England to the gospel, and Columbanus with his successors, who brought
Christianity to Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy - took the Bible as
their only authority, and founded renowned Bible training centers for the
Christian believers. One authority, describing the handwritten Bibles produced
at these schools, says, "In delicacy of handling and minute but faultless
execution, the whole range of paleography offers nothing comparable to these
early Irish manuscripts."17
In the closing words of his Letter, Patrick writes: "I
testify before God and His angels that it shall be so as He has intimated to my
ignorance. These are not my words, but (the words) of God, and of the apostles
and prophets, which I have written in Latin, who have never lied."
Patrick, like his example, Jesus, put the words of Scripture above the
teachings of men. He differed from the Papacy, which puts church tradition above
the Bible. In his writings he nowhere appeals to the church at Rome for the
authorization of his mission. Whenever he speaks in defense of his mission, he
refers to God alone, and declares that he received his call direct from heaven.
Sir William Betham states that the more recent Latin version of Jerome was not
publicly read in Patrick's day. Evidently the earlier Latin version of the
Bible, known as the Itala, was publicly used. It is interesting to note that it
was approximately nine hundred years before Jerome's Vulgate could make headway
in the West against the Itala.18
Wherever this Christian leader sowed, he also reaped. Ireland was set on
fire for God by the fervor of Patrick's missionary spirit. Leaving England again
with a few companions, according to the record in the Book of Armagh, he
landed at Wicklow Head on the southeastern coast of Ireland. Legendary and
fabulous is The Tripartite Life of Patrick. It cannot be credited, yet
doubtless it was built around certain facts of his life. At least from these
records can be traced his steps for a quarter of a century through the isle.
Patrick believed that Christianity should be founded with the home and
the family as its strength. Too often the Christian organizations of that age
were centered in celibacy. This was not true of the Irish Church and its Celtic
daughters in Great Britain, Scotland, and on the Continent. The Celtic Church,
as organized and developed under Patrick, permitted its clergy to marry.19
The absence of celibacy in the Celtic Church gives added proof to the
fact that the believers had no connection with the church at Rome. Thus Dr. J.
H. Todd writes: "He [Patrick] says nothing of Rome, or of having been
commissioned by Pope Celestine. He attributed his Irish apostleship altogether
to an inward call, which he regarded as a divine command."20
One of the strongest proofs that Patrick did not belong to papal
Christianity is found in the historical fact that for centuries Rome made every
effort to destroy the church Patrick had founded. Jules Michelet writes of
Boniface, who was the pope's apostle to the Germans about two hundred years
after Patrick: "His chief hatred is to the Scots [the name equally given to
the Scotch and Irish], and he especially condemns their allowing priests to
marry."21
Patrick sought two goals in his effort to make truth triumphant. First,
he sought the conversion of those among whom he had been a slave, and, secondly,
he longed to capture Tara, the central capital of Ireland, for Christ. Therefore
he proceeded immediately to County Antrim in the northwest, where he had endured
slavery. While he failed to win his former slave master, he was successful in
converting the master's household. This threw open a door to further missionary
labors not only to this region but also across the adjacent waters into near-by
Scotland.
History loves to linger upon the legend of Patrick's attack on Tara, the
central capital. The Irish, like other branches of the Celtic race, had local
chieftains who were practically independent. They also had, by their own
election, an overlord, who might be referred to as a king and who could summon
all the people when needed for the defense of the nation. For many years Tara
had been the renowned capital of Ireland to which were called the Irish
chieftains to conduct the general affairs of the realm. These conventions were
given over not only to business, but also to festivals emblazoned with bright
scenes and stirring events. As Thomas Moore wrote: The harp that once through Tara's
halls
It was at the time of one of these assemblies, so the story goes, that
Patrick personally appeared to proclaim the message of Christ. The event is so
surrounded by legends, many of them too fabulous to be considered, that many
details cannot be presented as facts. His success did not come up to his
expectations, however; but by faithful efforts he placed the banner of
Christianity in the political center of the national life.
He did not enter the capital because he felt that God's work needed the
help of the state. Patrick rejected the union of church and state. More than one
hundred years had passed since the first world council at Nicaea had united the
church with the empire. Patrick rejected this model. He followed the lesson
taught in John's Gospel when Christ refused to be made a king. Jesus said,
"My kingdom is not of this world."(John 18:36.) Not only the Irish
apostle but his famous successors, Columba in Scotland, and Columbanus on the
Continent, ignored the supremacy of the papal pontiff. They never would have
agreed to making the pope a king. Although the Roman Empire after the fourth
century had favored that supremacy, there was still great discontent throughout
Europe against this encroachment of civil power into the church.
While Patrick was laboring in Ireland, the bishop of north Africa in 418
had excommunicated Apiarius, a clergyman, for grave offenses. The offender
appealed to the pope, who acquitted him over the heads of his superiors. The
bishops retaliated by assembling in council and passing a protest forbidding an
appeal of lower clergy against their bishops to an authority beyond the sea. The
pope replied with resolutions which he claimed had been passed by the Council of
Nicaea. Their illegality was exposed by the African prelates.23
Yet it must not be thought, as some writers antagonistic to the Celtic
Church claim, that Patrick and his successors lacked church organization. Dr.
Benedict Fitzpatrick, a Catholic scholar, resents any such position. He adduces
satisfactory proof to show that the Irish founders of Celtic Christianity
created a splendid organization.24 The Fictitious Patrick
Many miracles have been ascribed to Patrick by the traditional
stories which grew up. Two or three will suffice to show the difference between
the miraculous hero of the fanatical fiction and the real Patrick. The Celtic
Patrick reached Ireland in an ordinary way. The fictitious Patrick, in order to
provide passage for a leper when there was no place on the boat, threw his
portable stone altar into the sea. The stone did not go to the bottom, nor was
it outdistanced by the boat, but it floated around the boat with the leper on it
until it reached Ireland.25
In order to connect this great man with the papal see, it was related:
"Sleep came over the inhabitants of Rome, so that Patrick brought away as
much as he wanted of the relics. Afterward those relics were taken to Armagh by
the counsel of God and the counsel of the men of Ireland. What was brought then
was three hundred and threescore and five relics, together with the relics of
Paul and Peter and Lawrence and Stephen, and many others. And a sheet was there
with Christ's blood [thereon] and with the hair of Mary the Virgin.26 But Dr.
Killen refutes this story by declaring: He
(Patrick) never mentions either Rome or the pope or hints that he was in any way
connected with the ecclesiastical capital of Italy. He recognizes no other
authority but that of the word of God. .. When Palladius arrived in the country,
it was not to be expected that he would receive a very hearty welcome from the
Irish apostle. If he was sent by [Pope] Celestine to the native Christians to be
their primate or archbishop, no wonder that stout-hearted Patrick refused to bow
his neck to any such yoke of bondage.27
About two hundred years after Patrick, papal authors began to tell of a
certain Palladius, who was sent in 430 by this same Pope Celestine as a bishop
to the Irish. They all admit, however, that he stayed only a short time in
Ireland and was compelled to withdraw because of the disrespect which was shown
him.
One more of the many legendary miracles which sprang from the credulity
and tradition of Rome is here repeated. "He went to Rome to have
[ecclesiastical] orders given him; and Caelestinus, abbot of Rome, he it is that
read orders over him, Gemanus and Amatho, king of the Romans, being present with
them. .. And when the orders were a reading out, the three choirs mutually
responded, namely the choir of the household of heaven, and the choir of the
Romans, and the choir of the children from the wood of Fochlad. This is what all
sang: 'All we Irish beseech thee, holy Patrick, to come and walk among us and to
free us.'"28 It is doubtful whether the choirs in heaven would accept this
representation that they were Irish. War on the Celtic Church
The growing coldness between the Celtic and the Roman Churches as
noted in the foregoing paragraphs did not originate in a hostile attitude of
mind in the Celtic clergy. It arose because they considered that the Papacy was
moving farther and farther away from the apostolic system of the New Testament.
No pope ever passed on to the leading bishops of the church the news of the
great transformation from heathenism to Christianity wrought by Patrick. This
they certainly would have done, as was done in other cases, had he been an agent
of the Roman pontiff.
One is struck by the absence of any reference to Patrick in the Ecclesiastical
History of England written by that fervent follower of the Vatican, the
Englishman Bede, who lived about two hundred years after the death of the
apostle to Ireland. That history remains today the well from which many draw who
would write on Anglo-Saxon England. Bede had access to the archives of Rome. He
was well acquainted with the renowned Celtic missionaries who were the products
of the schools of Patrick. He also emphasizes the profound differences between
the Celtic and Roman Churches which brought about bitter controversies between
kings and bishops. Though a great collector of facts, Bede makes no reference
whatever to Patrick. The reason apparently is that, when this historian wrote,
the Papacy had not yet made up its mind to claim Patrick.
When the pope had sent Augustine with his forty monks to convert the
heathen Anglo-Saxons, Augustine, with the help of Bertha, the Catholic wife of
King Ethelbert of Kent, immediately began war on the Celtic Church of Wales. He
demanded submission of the Christian society of nearly three thousand members at
Bangor in north Wales.29 Augustine addressed the president of this society in
these words: "Acknowledge the authority of Rome." He promptly received
the answer that the pope was not entitled to be called the "Father of
fathers" and the only submission that they would render to him, would be
that which they owed to every Christian. Augustine threatened them with the
sword, and, as will be noted later, twelve hundred of these British Christians
were slaughtered by a pagan army.30
As further evidence of the gulf between the Roman and the Celtic Church,
another episode occurred in England in 664 when the Papacy by state force
inflicted a severe wound at the well-known Synod of Whitby in northern England.
The king of that region had married a Roman Catholic princess, who, with the
help of her priestly confessor, laid the trap for the pastors who were graduates
from Patrick's schools. The king, wearied with the strife between the two
communions, became a tool to the plan. That conference with its unjust decisions
drove the leaders of the Celtic Church out of northern England.31 About fifty
years after this, or in 715, the growing influence of the Roman Catholic Church
backed by the papal monarchs of Europe, brought about an attack upon Scotland's
center of Celtic Christianity at Iona. Founded by Columba and celebrated in song
and story, this was attacked, and the clergy of the Irish Church were expelled
from the place. The Character of Patrick
Patrick, while manifesting all the graces of an apostolic character,
also possessed the sterner virtues. Like Moses, he was one of the humblest of
men. He revealed that steadfastness of purpose required to accomplish a great
task. His splendid ability to organize and execute his Christian enterprises
revealed his successful ability to lead. He was frank and honest. He drew men to
him, and he was surrounded by a band of men whose hearts God had touched. Such a
leader was needed to revive the flickering flames of New Testament faith in the
West, to raise up old foundations, and to lay the groundwork for a mighty
Christian future.
To guide new converts, Patrick ordained overseers or bishops in charge of
the local churches. Wherever he went, new churches sprang up, and to strengthen
them he also founded schools. These two organizations were so closely united
that some writers have mistakenly called them monasteries. The scholarly and
missionary groups created by Patrick were very different from those ascetic and
celibate centers which the Papacy strove to multiply.32 According to Sir William
Betham, monastic life was considered disgraceful by the Scots and the Goths
during the first four centuries of the Christian Era.33
Among the most famous training colleges which Patrick established were
Bangor, Clonmacnoise, Clonard, and Armagh. In Armagh, the most renowned center
of Ireland, are located today the palaces of both the Church of England primate
and the Roman Catholic primate. Two magnificent cathedrals are there which
command attention between them.34 One is the cathedral for relics of the Church
of Rome, the other for the Church of England. Armagh grew from a small school to
a college, then to a university. It is said to have had as many as seven
thousand students in attendance at one time. As Ireland became famous for its
training centers it acquired the name "Land of saints and scholars."35
In these schools the Scriptures were diligently read, and ancient books were
eagerly collected and studied.
There are historians who see clearly that the Benedictine order of monks
was built upon the foundations so wonderfully laid by the Irish system of
education. C. W. Bispham raises the question as to why the Benedictine Rule, a
gift of one of the sons of the Papacy, was favored by her, and furthermore, she
was jealous of the Celtic Church and crowded out the Bangor Rule.36 Benedict,
the founder of the order, despised learning and took no care for it in his
order, and his schools never took it up until they were forced to do so about
900, after Charles the Great had set the pace.37
The marvelous educational system of the Celtic Church, revised and better
organized by Patrick, spread successfully over Europe until the Benedictine
system, favored by the Papacy and reinforced by the state, robbed the Celtic
Church of its renown and sought to destroy all the records of its educational
system.38 The Beliefs and Teachings of Patrick
In the years preceding the birth of Patrick, new and strange
doctrines flooded Europe like the billows of the ocean. Gospel truths,
stimulating the minds of men, had opened up so many areas of influence that
counterfeiting doctrines had been brought in by designing clergy who strove for
the crown while shunning the cross. Patrick was obliged to take his stand
against these teachings.
The Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 by Emperor Constantine, started
the religious controversy which has never ceased. Assembling under the sanction
of a united church and state, that famous gathering commanded the submission of
believers to new doctrines. During the youth of Patrick and for half a century
preceding, forty-five church councils and synods had assembled in various parts
of Europe. Of these Samuel Edgar says: The
boasted unity of Romanism was gloriously displayed, by the diversified councils
and confessions of the fourth century. Popery, on that as on every other
occasion, eclipsed Protestantism in the manufacture of creeds. Forty-five
councils, says Jortin, were held in the fourth century. Of these, thirteen were
against Arianism, fifteen for that heresy, and seventeen for Semi-Arianism. The
roads were crowded with bishops thronging to synods, and the traveling expenses,
which were defrayed by the emperor, exhausted the public funds. These
exhibitions became the sneer of the heathen, who were amused to behold men, who,
from infancy, had been educated in Christianity, and appointed to instruct
others in that religion, hastening, in this manner, to distant places and
conventions for the purpose of ascertaining their belief.39
The burning question of the decades succeeding the Council of Nicaea was
how to state the relations of the Three Persons of the Godhead: Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. The council had decided, and the Papacy had appropriated the
decision as its own. The personalities of the Trinity were not confounded, and
the substance was not divided. The Roman clergy claimed that Christianity had
found in the Greek word homoousios (in English,
"consubstantiality") an appropriate term to express this
relationship.40
Then the papal party proceeded to call those who would not subscribe to
this teaching, Arians, while they took to themselves the title of Trinitarians.
An erroneous charge was circulated that all who were called Arians believed that
Christ was a created being.41 This stirred up the indignation of those who were
not guilty of the charge.
Patrick was a spectator to many of these conflicting assemblies. It will
be interesting, in order to grasp properly his situation, to examine for a
moment this word, this term, which has split many a church and has caused many a
sincere Christian to be burned at the stake. In English the word is
"consubstantial," connoting that more than one person inhabit the same
substance without division or separation. The original term in Greek is homoousios,
from homos, meaning "identical," and ousia, the word for
"being."
However, a great trouble arose, since there are two terms in Greek of
historical fame. The first, homos, meaning "identical," and the
second, homoios, meaning "similar" or "like unto,"
had both of them a stormy history. The spelling of these words is much alike.
The difference in meaning, when applied to the Godhead, is bewildering to
simplehearted believers. Nevertheless, those who would think in terms of homoiousian,
or "similar," instead of homoousian, or "identical,"
were promptly labeled as heretics and Arians by the clergy. Yet when the
emperor, Constantine, in full assembly of the Council of Nicaea, asked Hosius,
the presiding bishop, what the difference was between the two terms, Hosius
replied that they were both alike. At this all but a few bishops broke out into
laughter and teased the chairman with heresy.42
As volumes have been written in centuries past upon this problem, it
would be out of place to discuss it here. It had, however, such profound effect
upon other doctrines relating to the plan of salvation and upon outward acts of
worship that a gulf was created between the Papacy and the institutions of the
church which Patrick had founded in Ireland.
While Patrick was anything but an Arian, nevertheless he declined to
concur in the idea of "sameness" found in that compelling word "consub-stantial"
or homoousian. Usually when violent controversy rages, there are three
parties. In this instance there were the two extremes, one of which was led by
the Papacy, the second by the Arians, and the third party was the
middle-of-the-road believers whose viewpoint was the same as Patrick's.43 As Dr.
J. H. Todd says of homoousian, the test word of the papal hierarchy, when
commenting on Patrick's beliefs, "This confession of faith is certainly not
homoousian."44 Another fact verifying this opposition of the British
churches to the extreme speculations of the Council of Nicaea respecting the
Trinity is the story of the Council of Rimini in 359, held approximately at the
time of Patrick's birth. This, it seems, was the last church council to be
attended by Celtic delegates from the British Church before the withdrawal of
Rome's legions in 410, and it was followed by the overrunning of England by the
pagan Anglo-Saxons. This Council of Rimini passed decrees denouncing and
rejecting the conclusions of Nicaea respecting the Trinity. The pope of Rome had
recently signed similar decrees in the Council of Sirmium. No one will blame the
evangelicals for recoiling from the papal view of the Trinity, when history
shows that their views were strong enough to cause two popes to sign decrees
contrary to the policy of the Papacy respecting Nicaea.
One of the reasons, no doubt, why the Papacy for many years did not
mention Patrick's name or his success was the position of the Irish Church
respecting the decrees of Nicaea. Centuries were to pass before the Papacy
discovered that his merits were too firmly established to be overlooked. It
labored to gather Patrick into its fold by inventing all kinds of history and
fables to make him a papal hero. It surrounded with a halo of glory a certain
Palladius, apparently sent by Rome to Ireland in the midst of Patrick's success.
He also has been called Patrick.45
Patrick beheld Jesus as his substitute on the cross. He took his stand
for the Ten Commandments. He says in his Confession: "I was taken to
Ireland in captivity with many thousand men, in accordance with our deserts
because we walked at a distance from God, and did not observe His
commandments." Those who recoiled from the extreme speculations and
conclusions of the so-called Trinitarians believed Deuteronomy 29:29: "The
secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed
belong unto us and to our children forever."
The binding obligation of the Decalogue was a burning issue in Patrick's
age. In theory, all the parties in disagreement upon the Trinity recognized the
Ten Commandments as the moral law of God, perfect eternal, and unchangeable. It
could easily be seen that in the judgment, the Lord could not have one standard
for angels and another for men. There was not one law for the Jews and a
different one for the Gentiles. The rebellion of Satan in heaven had initiated
the great revolt against the eternal moral law. All the disputants over the
Trinity recognized that when God made man in His image it was the equivalent of
writing the Ten Commandments in his heart by creating man with a flawless moral
nature. All parties went a step further. They confessed and denied not that in
all the universe there was found no one, neither angel, cherubim, seraphim, man,
nor any other creature, except Christ, whose death could atone for the broken
law.
Then the schism came. Those who rejected the intense, exacting definition
of three Divine Persons in one body, as laid down by the Council of Nicaea,
believed that Calvary had made Christ a divine sacrifice, the sinner's
substitute. The Papacy repudiated the teaching that Jesus died as man's
substitute upon the cross. Consequently it ignored the exalted place given the
Decalogue by the crucifixion of Christ. Those who saw the eternal necessity of
magnifying the law, and making it honorable, main-tamed that death claimed the
Son of God, but had left untouched the Father and Holy Spirit. This was the
teaching of Patrick and his successor.
Thus, the Celtic Church upheld the sacredness of the Ten Commandments.
They accepted the prophecy of Isaiah that Christ came to magnify the law and
make it honorable. They preached, as Jeremiah and Paul did, that the purpose of
the new covenant was to write God's law in the heart. God could be just and
justify the sinner who had fled to Christ. No wonder that the Celtic, the
Gothic, the Waldensian, the Armenian Churches, and the great Church of the East,
as well as other bodies, differed profoundly from the Papacy in its metaphysical
conceptions of the Trinity and consequently in the importance of the Ten
Commandments.
Not overlooking the adoption of images by the Roman Catholic Church -
contrary to the second commandment - and other violations of the moral law which
the other bodies refused to condone, one of the principal causes of separation
was the observance of the Sabbath. As will be presented in other chapters, the
Gothic, Waldensian, Armenian, and Syrian Churches, and the Church of the East,
as well as the church organization which Patrick founded, largely sanctified
Saturday, the seventh day of the week, as the sacred twenty-four-hour period on
which God rested after creation. Many also had sacred assemblies on Sunday, even
as many churches today have prayer meeting on Wednesday.
Treating of the Celtic Church, the historian A. C. Flick writes,
"The Celts used a Latin Bible unlike the Vulgate, and kept Saturday as a
day of rest, with special religious services on Sunday."46
T. Ratcliffe Barnett, in his book on the fervent Catholic queen of
Scotland, who in 1060 was first to attempt the ruin of Columba's brethren,
writes, "In this matter the Scots had perhaps kept up the traditional usage
of the ancient Irish Church which observed Saturday instead of Sunday as the day
of rest."47 Also it may be stated that Columba, who converted Scotland to
Christianity, taught his followers that they should practice such works of piety
and chastity as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical, and
apostolic writings.48 This reveals how Patrick and his colleges made the Bible
the origin and center of all education. Enemies of the Celtic Church in Ireland
An obscurity fails upon the history of the Celtic Church in Ireland,
beginning before the coming of the Danes in the ninth century and continuing for
two centuries and a half during their supremacy in the Emerald Isle. It
continued to deepen until King Henry II waged war against that church in 1171 in
response to a papal bull. The reason for this confusion of history is that when
Henry II mined both the political and the ecclesiastical independence of Ireland
he also destroyed the valuable records which would clarify what the inner
spiritual life and evangelical setup of the Celtic Church was in the days of
Patrick. Even this, however, did not have force enough to blur or obscure the
glorious outburst of evangelical revival and learning which followed the work of
Patrick.
Why did the Danes invade England and Ireland? The answer is found in the
terrible wars prompted by the Papacy and waged by Charlemagne, whose campaigns
did vast damage to the Danes on the Continent. Every student knows of that
Christmas Day, 800, when the pope, in the great cathedral at Rome, placed upon
the head of Charlemagne the crown to indicate that he was emperor of the newly
created Holy Roman Empire. With battle-ax in hand, Charlemagne continuously
waged war to bring the Scandinavians into the church. This embittered the Danes.
As they fled before him, they swore that they would take vengeance by mining
Christian churches wherever possible, and by slaying the clergy. This is the
reason for the fanatical invasion by these Scandinavian warriors of both England
and Ireland.49
Ravaging expeditions grew into organized dominations under famous Danish
leaders. Turgesius landed with his fleet of war vessels on the coast of Ireland
about the year 832. He sailed inland so that he dominated the east, west, and
north of the country. His fleets sacked its centers of learning and mined the
churches.
How did the Danes succeed in overthrowing the Celtic Church? It was by
first enduring, and then embracing the Papacy. It must not be thought that these
invaders, because they were pagans, were also ignorant and illiterate. This is
far from the truth. They excelled in many lines of learning and culture.
As the years passed and bitterness toward Christianity decreased on the
part of the Danes, many became nominal Christians. Being in constant conflict
with centers of the Celtic Church, hostility to it was inbred in the invaders.
On the other hand, the semipagan Christianity of the Danes was more powerfully
impressed by the magnificent cathedrals, the colorful hierarchy, and the
alluring rites and ceremonies of the Papacy. It is only natural, therefore, that
they should seek ordination for their clergy at the hands of Latin bishops. As
the theme proceeds, the force of the following quotation from Dr. George T.
Stokes will be seen: "The Danes formed one principal channel through which
the papal see renewed and accomplished its designs upon the independence of the
Irish Church in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries."50 When
the Danish bishops of Waterford were consecrated by the see of Canterbury, they
ignored the Irish Church and the successors of Patrick, so that from that time
on there were two churches in Ireland.51
Turgesius was the first to recognize the military advantages and the
desirable contour of the land on which the city of Dublin now stands. With him
began the founding of the city which expanded into the kingdom of Dublin. Later
on, a bishopric was established in this new capital, modeled after the papal
ideal. When the day came that the Irish wished to expel their foreign
conquerors, they were unable to extricate themselves from the net of papal
religion which the invaders had begun to weave. This leads to the story of Brian
Boru. Brian Boru Overthrows the Danish Supremacy
The guerilla fights, waged for decades between the native Irish and
their foreign overlords, took on the form of a national warfare when Brian Boru
emerged as one of Hibernia's greatest heroes. First, he fought valiantly along
with his brother Mahon, king of Munster, and after his brother's death, alone as
successor to the kingdom. Step by step he subdued one after another of the
Danish kingdoms. The two great battles which climaxed his career were those of
Glen Mama and Clontarf, both near Dublin. In the first he made himself master of
all Ireland, up to the gates of Dublin. In the second, Dublin was brought under
the rule of a native Irish king, though he, his son, and his grandson lost their
lives in the conflict.
It must not be thought that with the victories of Brian, the Danes were
entirely expelled from Irish soil. They continued for some years with varying
fortunes, now weak, now strong, but never again in the ascendancy. The power of
the Danes grew weaker and weaker, but the Papacy, whose entrance among the Irish
the Danes had facilitated, grew stronger and stronger. The great victory of
Brian, 1014, in the battle of Clontarf, was only some fifty years before the
time when William the Conqueror, under the guidance of the pope, led his Normans
to the conquest of England. The Latin clergy in Ireland, seeking the ruin of the
Celtic Church, gained a formidable ally in the papal Norman kings of England. It
was an easy task, upon the death of a Celtic Church leader in Ireland, to
substitute a Roman bishop from time to time as his successor. Finally, a traitor
to the Celtic Church was found in Celsus, the Celtic archbishop of Armagh, who
contrived to make Malachy, a youth instructed in the continental school of
Bernard of Clairvaux deeply permeated by papal teaching, his successor. This
Malachy "Finally reduced Ireland beneath the supremacy of Rome and
introduced Roman discipline." Therefore when, a little later, Henry II,
under authorization of the Papacy, brought Ireland under English rule, the
subjection of the Celtic Church was complete. The Ruin of Patrick's Church
Showing that the introduction of the Papacy into England under the
monk Augustine was religious and that full power was not secured by Rome until
William the Conqueror (A.D. 1066), Blackstone says: This
naturally introduced some few of the papal corruptions in point of faith and
doctrines; but we read of no civil authority claimed by the pope in these
kingdoms until the era of the Norman conquests, when the then reigning pontiff
having favored Duke William in his projected invasion by blessing his host and
consecrating his banners, he took that opportunity also of establishing his
spiritual encroachments, and was even permitted so to do by the policy of the
conqueror, in order more effectually to humble the Saxon clergy and aggrandize
his Norman prelates; prelates who, being bred abroad in the doctrine and
practice of slavery, had contracted a reverence and regard for it, and took a
pleasure in riveting the chains of a freeborn people."52
The bull of Pope Adrian IV issued to King Henry II of England, 1156,
authorized him to invade Ireland. A part of the bull reads thus: "Your
highness's desire of esteeming the glory of your name on earth, and obtaining
the record of eternal happiness in heaven, is laudable and beneficial; inasmuch
as your intent is, as a Catholic prince, to enlarge the limits of the church, to
decree the truth of the Christian faith to untaught and rode nations, and to
eradicate vice from the field of the Lord."
Several things are clear from this bull. First, in specifying Ireland as
an untaught and rode nation, it is evident that papal doctrines, rites, and
clergy had not been dominant there. Second, in urging the king "to enlarge
the limits of the church," the pope confesses that Ireland and its
Christian inhabitants had not been under the dominant supremacy of the Papacy.
Third, in praising Henry's intent to decree the Christian faith of the Irish
nation, Pope Adrian admits that papal missionaries had not carried the Romish
faith to Ireland before this. In laying upon Henry II the command that he should
annex the crown of Ireland upon condition that he secure a penny from every home
in Ireland as the pope's revenue,53 it is clear that the Papacy was not the
ancient religion of Ireland and that no Roman ties had bound that land to it
before the middle of the twelfth century.
W. C. Taylor, in his History of Ireland, speaking of the synod of
Irish princes and prelates which Henry II summoned to Cashel, says, "The
bull of Pope Adrian, and its confirmation by [Pope] Alexander, were read in the
assembly; the sovereignty of Ireland granted to Henry by acclamation; and
several regulations made for increasing the power and privileges of the clergy,
and assimilating the discipline of the Irish Church to that which the Romish see
had established in Western Europe."54
From that time to the Reformation, the Celtic Church in Ireland was in
the wilderness experience along with all the other evangelical believers in
Europe. Throughout the dreadful years of the Dark Ages many individuals, in
churches or groups of churches, straggled to re-establish and to maintain the
original purity of the apostolic teachings. No doubt under the fury of the
dominion exercised by combined religious and political power, the greater number
surrendered wholly or in part. Even as, during the 1260 years, the Church in the
Wilderness in Mohanunedan and far-off heathen lands lapsed into barbarian rites
and ceremonies, so the Celtic Church in Ireland succumbed more or less to papal
practices. Nevertheless, the glorious substratum endured, and when God in His
mercy shed upon the world the spiritual splendor of the Reformation, many of
these oppressed Christians revived and substituted the supremacy of the Bible
for the domination of the hierarchy. |