St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, is undoubtedly the world's most famous patron saint. Do you know the patron saint of Spain or Poland? Very few people would outside of those nations. But Patrick has attained to international fame. And most people have a clear vision of Patrick in their mind. He's a mitered bishop. He illustrates the Trinity using a shamrock. He drove all the snakes out of Ireland into the sea. He victoriously confronted Leary, the High King of Ireland, and the Druids at Tara. He is seen as a man typically Irish and dearly loved of the Irish populace of his day. St. Patrick's Day has been fixed in the calendar as the 17th of March, Monday. Around this time of the year, especially here in Ireland, newspaper articles and letters in both local and national newspapers appear. There are parades. In fact, there's even a parade leaving the Protestant Hall tomorrow at 1.15 in the afternoon. There's an advertisement for that. That's one in Ballymena. There's one in Dundonderry, Belfast, Downpatrick and perhaps even elsewhere. Downpatrick is allegedly the place where St. Patrick is buried, and so they have a special day. So if you're free on Monday and want something to do, head off to Downpatrick. Arts, crafts, music, dance, games. One advertisement said that there will be a spectacular cavalcade of floats in Downpatrick, with bands, cheerleaders, fancy dress, giant jungle animals, and other big surprises. And then this is my favourite bit. It says, your favourite cartoon character will be present to give out sweets. And that's going on in Downpatrick. Of course, at this time, leading Irish politicians go to the White House and you probably saw President Bush and Bertie Ahern on TV. The day is celebrated in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora and all over the world. The parade in New York sees over 100,000 march up Fifth Avenue. It's a day of green beer and shamrocks, tricklers and public speeches. The whole world turns green and everybody discovers that they have some Irish blood in them. And this is the popular conception of St. Patrick and the day ostensibly held in his honour. Apparently St. Patrick was a colourful character A fun-loving guy. One scholar put it this way in his famous book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. He said, Patrick didn't take himself too seriously. That's what he said. The Down Patrick Parade, which I mentioned earlier, is entitled, Painting the Town Comic Red. Now you would have thought green was the colour of Patrick, but they're saying painting the town comic red because they are tying together St. Patrick's Day and Red Nose Day, and that lends itself to the idea that Patrick was a colourful, fun-loving guy. This is the popular Patrick. The Patrick promoted by Board Vulture, the Irish Tourist Board, the Irish Government, various societies in Northern Ireland, and Patrick is also promoted by the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Roman Church, Patrick was sent to Ireland by the Pope. He wears clerical garb. He carries a pastoral staff. He's accompanied by a guardian angel and he works miracles. In short, Patrick is a holy man. That's the idea. On the last Sunday of July, Roman Catholics, some of them barefoot, are seen climbing Croke Patrick in County Mayo. Why? Because St. Patrick allegedly spent 40 days, the 40 days of Lent, on that mount and then you can tap into the merits of St. Patrick by ascending the mount. Another site associated with St. Patrick on this island is Loch Derg. The island on Loch Derg. Patrick allegedly had visions of purgatory on that island and so there is special merit associated with that and there are pilgrimages to it. The Roman Catholic Church has in its entry on March 17, St. Patrick's Day, this to say in the Roman Breviary about St. Patrick, and I quote, Every day Patrick worshipped God 300 times with genuflections, and during each canonical hour he made the sign of the cross 100 times. Patrick divided the night into three periods, devoting the first into the recitation of 100 psalms, accompanied by 200 genuflections. the second to the recitation of the last 50 Psalms, but immersed in cold water, holding the heart and eyes and hands toward heaven, the third part of the night he devoted to a short rest, lying on a bare stone." The question is, is this a faithful presentation of Patrick who laboured in the Emerald Isle? Is this really the man? And if this really is St. Patrick, do we really want to know such a man like this, never mind make him an object of special study? Thankfully, the mythical and popular presentation of Patrick isn't true. If it was true, I for one would have no interest in Patrick whatsoever. Thankfully, we have two of Patrick's own writings, his confession and his letter to Coroticus, and these are trustworthy, received by all as genuine works." Interestingly too, they are also the first works of Irish literature. So Patrick wrote the first books which we still have today. With these two works, all our problems are not immediately solved. The two books were not designed to provide us with a life and times of St. Patrick. Sometimes there's debate about the textual transmission. What exactly did Patrick write? Sometimes they're a bit ambiguous. Sometimes you can interpret them in different senses. We don't know all the details of the day which Patrick's readers would have known. Our knowledge of that's a bit sketchy. So there's room for legitimate difference of opinion. Now I mentioned Patrick's two writings, his letter to Coroticus and his confession. Patrick had two first biographers, one man called Tyra Hawn and another called Moorahoo. Tyra Hawn and Moorahoo, and that's the proper pronunciation according to the books. They both wrote in the second half of the seventh century. They both wrote then at least 200 years after his death. Later on, there was another work entitled The Tripartite Life probably compiled near the end of the 9th century, that's the late 800s, and it became the most popular account of Patrick's life. From these later works, the myths about Patrick started and developed. Until around about the year 1900, most people thought that this was the real man, and then there's been an increased interest in the real St. Patrick. Now let's debunk some of the myths right at the start. Patrick was not Irish. Not that it would be wrong to be Irish, but he wasn't Irish, it's a matter of fact. He was born in Britain. Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland. The Shamrock story was mentioned first about a thousand years after Patrick. The confrontation at Tara with the High King probably didn't happen either because there was no High King, historians tell us, in his day. The same scholar who says that, R.P.C. Hanson, one of my main sources, notes also that mitres were not invented until at least 500 years after Patrick. And as for the use of green beer, it is not of an old vintage. Now what about the question, was Patrick a Unionist or a Nationalist? What do you think? Was Patrick a Unionist or a Nationalist? That question is a bit like asking if Henry VIII supported Spurs. It's an anachronism. It doesn't make sense in his day. Was Patrick a Unionist or a Nationalist? The question, though, was Patrick a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, although it labours under some chronological difficulties, is a worthwhile question and it can be more or less answered. One Roman Catholic scholar, Aidan Nichols, in a recent Vatican publication says this about Patrick's papal connections. He writes, Patrick's own writings make no pretension to papal support. It seems that the conversion of those Celtic areas that lay outside the civil zone of Roman Britain were initiated by British Christians themselves. See what he's saying? Patrick was not sent by the Pope of Rome. The British Church sent Patrick to evangelize Ireland and so we read that in Patrick's confession when he was challenged some people said Patrick what are you doing in Ireland where do you get your credentials and Patrick does not appeal to Rome if he had been sent by Rome he would have said sure the Pope sent me but he didn't do that. Now what was the real Patrick like? Here's a quote from one man about Patrick. He says, Patrick is one of the few personalities of fifth century Europe who has revealed himself with living warmth in terms that men of any age who care for their fellows can understand. I rather like that. And a question for you. What century did Patrick live in? It wasn't the 16th century. It wasn't the 10th century. And if you've been listening well enough, you would have worked out it was the 5th century. He lived about 1500 years ago. Most people reckon that Patrick lived till about 70 or 80. So he died an old man. So if we assume that Patrick was born about the year 400 and he lived till 480, that is he would have seen the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. We're not too far wrong. So Patrick then was in the old world before the fall of the Roman Empire and he probably lived a few years after that. Now what do we know about Patrick's family? we know quite a bit actually. He was born into what we would call today a church family. His father, Calpurnius, was a deacon. His paternal grandfather, Potitus, was a presbyter. So Granda was a presbyter, his father was a deacon, and in due time he would become a bishop. His father was responsible for the collection of taxes while Britain was still influenced by the Romans. That meant that Patrick was brought up in a family which was in one of the higher stratas of Roman British society. They had an estate, they had servants, men's servants and women's servants. Patrick in one place refers to his worldly position and his public status. Now where did he live? He tells us he lived in Banna Bheam Tabernaei. The problem is that we don't know where that is. It seems best to conclude that Banna Bheam Tabernaei was on the west coast of Britain because he was taken captive by some Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. So it would be most logical to presume that they captured him from the west coast of Britain. Now we don't know if it was in England or perhaps even southern Scotland or perhaps some parts of Wales be that as it may. Patrick was captured at the age of 16. He was kidnapped and soon he found himself a slave on Irish soil. As a slave he was a shepherd boy. He writes that he experienced many long nights in the woods or in the mountain in snow and frost and rain. He was a stranger in a strange land from a relatively wealthy family now he is a slave. We also read in Patrick's confession around this time that he tells us he did not yet believe in the God of his father. He was a covenant child brought up in a Christian home but he says I did not then know the true God. Later on he sees that the six years which he spent as a slave from 16 to 22 or thereabouts was a chastisement of heaven for his unbelief and his wayward living. So round about the age of 22 or 23 Patrick escapes from captivity. We are told by him that he journeyed about 200 miles to the coast and there he boarded a ship. Think about Ireland. Nowhere in Ireland is 200 miles from the coast. But he didn't take the most direct route, and how do you measure the way? This would seem to point against his laboring in Mount Slemish. 200 miles, Northern Ireland, Mount Slemish. It would be one of the harder places to take a 200 mile route to get to the coast, be that as it may. Patrick gets back to Britain and it's while he's in Britain that he receives his Macedonian call so to speak. He has a dream and in this dream he sees a man Victoricus carrying a sheaf of letters and the heading of one of the letters says the cry of the Irish and Victoricus then speaks holy boy We are asking you to come and walk among us again. The Irish knew him as a holy boy because while he was a slave looking after sheep in Ireland the Lord converted him. He hears that call now that he's escaped back in Britain. He becomes a deacon in due course and then he becomes a missionary bishop laboring in Ireland. Now Roman Catholic scholars are particularly interested in arguing that Patrick spent some time in France and if you can get him to France, he's a little bit near Rome and then you can tap him in. He did visit France but the evidence is very clear that he was a British Bishop sent by the British Church to Ireland. One scholar put it like this The internal evidence from Patrick's own writing compels us to realise that he was educated for the ministry in Britain, spent his ministry between ordination and the mission to Ireland in Britain, that he was in fact wholly the product of the British Church, and that later tradition which sends him with such imaginative abandon to Lorraine or Auxerre or Rome or to an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea must be discounted. Patrick then laboured for thirty-odd years in Ireland, Paganism received a mighty blow. Human sacrifice was all but finished." Of course you know that he didn't totally succeed in destroying Paganism in Ireland because one only has to think of the abiding place of fairies and leprechauns, the little people, to see that something of Paganism has always remained. Patrick tells us that his converts were many He talks about many thousands of people came to the faith. He tells us that some of the nobility were converted. At his death the church in Ireland was well established in many parts of the island and Patrick had ordained office bearers in many churches. Some form of monastic life had also taken root. He was successful in his life's mission. The question that now faces us is this. What was Patrick's message? What did he preach in Ireland? Near the very start of his confession, Patrick states a rule of faith. It's quite lengthy, but it's worth reading. This is his rule of faith. There is no other God, nor was there ever in the past, Nor will there be in the future except God the Father ingenerate, without beginning, from whom all beginning flows, who controls all things, as our formula runs, and his Son Jesus Christ, whom we profess to have always existed with the Father, begotten spiritually before the origin of the world in an inexpressible way by the Father before all beginning, and through him were made things both visible and invisible. He was made man. When death had been overcome, He was received into heaven by the Father, and He gave to Him all power above every name of things heavenly and earthly and subterranean. And that every tongue should confess to Him that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, and we believe in Him, and await His advent, which will happen soon, as judge of the living and the dead. And He will deal with everybody according to their deeds, and he poured out upon us richly the Holy Spirit, the gift and pledge of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey to be sons of God and co-heirs with Christ, and we confess and adore him, one God in the Trinity of the sacred name." So what do we learn from that rather lengthy quotation? Patrick, first of all, was a full-blooded Trinitarian, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He calls this the rule of faith of the Trinity. Patrick also therefore believed in the deity of Jesus Christ. He calls Jesus Christ his Lord and his God. He writes that his whole life is nothing other than a sacrifice to Christ my Lord for Christ is the one who gave his life for me. One expert on Patrick notices that Patrick nowhere mentions the Virgin Mary Another man adds, the message that Patrick preached in Ireland was the message of Christ alone, not Christ and Mary. He was a Trinitarian. He believed in the deity of Christ. Thirdly, Patrick was a confessional Christian. This rule of faith which I read to you is in a different style from the rest of his writings. It wasn't his own production. He marks it out. He says this is the rule of faith and he quotes it. Now given that Patrick was a British Christian and that his confession was written for a British audience and that he begins his quotation with this phrase as our formula runs as our formula runs it's highly likely that we have here the rule of faith of the British Church in the fifth century. So Patrick was not a theological lone ranger. He was a part of the Universal Church of Jesus Christ in Britain and he confessed his faith in the creed of his church. Now what did Patrick say about the grace of God? First of all Nowhere does Patrick either praise, ever praise man's native powers. Nowhere does he ever talk about any goodness in man. Nowhere does he praise free will. Nowhere does he say that people are saved if they don't resist God's grace. He does speak about monasticism, and monasticism later on became the hive of free will in the medieval church in many cases. But even the great Augustine in the fifth century also believed in monasticism. It was like a belief of the day. Everybody believed it. So that doesn't mean that he believed in free will either. Patrick believed in the grace of God. Patrick therefore was humble. This is the first line of his confession. I am Patrick a sinner most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of many. In his confession, which does two things, it confesses his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and it confesses the goodness of God. In his confession he speaks about the sins of his youth, and he says, I did these things against God. I deserted the God of my fathers. I disobeyed his commandments. I neglected the message of salvation, but God in heaven spared me. And this is what he said, It was in Ireland that the Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins, even though it was late, and I should turn with all my heart to the Lord my God. And he took notice of my humble state, and pitied my youth and my ignorance, and protected me before I knew him, and before I had sense or could distinguish between good and bad. And he strengthened me, and he comforted me, as a father comforts his son. Patrick is telling us how he was saved. The Lord is active. The Lord opened his heart. The Lord noticed him. The Lord pitied him. The Lord strengthened him. The Lord comforted him. And because of that, Patrick recalled his sins and he turned with all his heart to God. And this was the result of God's work in him. This is what he says. The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart so that I should recall my sins and turn to God. God gave him a new heart so that he turned and believed and was converted. And so since it was all of grace, Patrick's confession is all about thanksgiving. And so he writes, this is why I cannot keep silent. The Lord has been kind and gracious to me. and I wish to praise and confess his wonderful works among every nation under the sky. In one place in his writings Patrick uses a picture or a figure to describe his salvation. It's the simile of the stone in deep mud. This is what he says. Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came, and in his compassion he raised me up, and exalted me very high, and placed me on top of the wall." Now the first thing we notice about that is that it's a very Irish picture. Stones in the muck. Very Irish. The climate hasn't changed in the last 1500 years. The second point, the theological point is He's speaking here about his own passivity. He didn't do anything. He was down in the muck, just a stone. God came, picked him out of the muck, put him on top of the wall. Patrick says, that's what happened when God saved me. One scholar put it like this, the doctrines of grace are one of the few theological elements which are mentioned several times in Patrick's writings and there is a clear anti-Pelagian trend in his work. Salvation, he says many times, is a gift. He calls those who believed in Christ through his ministry, those, quote, whom the Lord chose from the ends of the earth. The Lord chose these people. That's election. He came and he preached and God saved the ones whom God chose. Later on, Patrick says, I was, quote, called I am predestined to preach the gospel. God knows everything. God knows everything because he has determined everything. And in God's plan, and this was of comfort to Patrick as he labored amongst the heathen, I know that he picked me before the foundation of the world to preach the gospel in Ireland. And so Patrick says, I am bound in the Spirit to my Irish calling. I cannot do anything else but preach in Ireland because God called me. And there he was, a rebellious child of the church. God saved him. So why can't God save the pagans? And he went to Ireland. Now I said earlier that Patrick is viewed as a fun-loving guy. Listen to the real St. Patrick. Some of Patrick's converts were kidnapped by Coroticus and his soldiers. Patrick calls these men fellow citizens of the devils. He says that they live in death in an atmosphere of hatred. He says they shall inherit hell equally with the devil in eternal punishment because he who commits sin is a slave and is called a son of the devils. Patrick urged that the recalcitrant robbers be excommunicated and forbidden fellowship with all Christians. Those aren't the words of a fun-loving guy. Patrick also believed in the forgiveness of sins. He had a good practical grasp of justification by faith alone, and Patrick's hope was entirely in the promises of the Scriptures. He says, I daily expect either assassination or trickery or reduction to slavery or some accident or other but I fear none of these things on account of the promises of heaven. Again Patrick says, I believe most confidently that should my body be torn limb from limb or devoured by birds I have gained my soul along with my body because without a shadow of a doubt, on that day we shall rise in the radiance of the sun, that is, in the glory of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs with Christ and destined to be conformed to his image, because we shall reign from him and through him and in him." That's the real St. Patrick. St. Patrick had absolutely no doubt about his eternal destiny. He was going to be there in the resurrection of the just. He says in several places that he will sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And this marks St. Patrick off from much of the medieval church. The medieval church gradually was corrupted into believing justification by faith and works. You've got to do something to merit heaven. And once that enters in, you can never be sure. You can never be sure. because how do you know if your good works are going to be enough but Patrick he believed completely in the grace of God and so Patrick believed most confidently and without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to see God in the face of Jesus Christ and Patrick also was clear that there's no purgatory there's heaven and there's hell and that's it those who believe are going to heaven and they can be sure of it and those who don't will be forever lost and in the meantime Jesus Christ is coming soon and will usher in eternal life. All of this brings us to Patrick's confession of scripture. What did Patrick make of the Bible? Patrick actually believed in the inerrancy of scripture. He says this, that which I have set out in Latin, that was his language, is not my words but the words of God and of his apostles and prophets who of course have never lied that's inerrancy they never lie he who believes shall be saved but he who does not believe shall be damned God has spoken that's the real Saint Patrick in this last clause God has spoken has a deathly ring of finality about it Here is Patrick's authority as he labours as a missionary in Ireland. It's the triune God speaking in sacred scripture. One scholar analysed Patrick's quotations from the Bible. He says Patrick quotes the Bible 54 times in his letter to Coroticus and 135 times in the Confession and they are both short works. He quotes often unconsciously, quoting from 23 out of the 27 books of the New Testament, 12 books of the Old Testament, and 3 books of the Apocrypha. He quoted most from the Psalms, then from Romans, then from Acts, then from Corinthians, and then from Matthew. When Patrick is arguing with his opponent, because his confession has a polemical edge, some people were accusing him of malpractice in his mission in Ireland. When he's arguing with his opponent, sometimes he quotes the Bible text after Bible text as if he means to bury his opponent in scripture. And then Patrick also quotes the scripture more subconsciously. In every sentence, in every thought which he formulates, there are traces of biblical language And not only Patrick's language, but also his way of thinking is determined from the Bible. And there is in his writings a constant flow of biblical words and phrases which seem to belong to his normal vocabulary. Here is a man saturated with the Bible. Forget now if it was John Bunyan or Spurgeon and someone said of him that if you cut his skin, it wouldn't be blood that would flow out, it would be the Bible. That's the sort of man that Patrick was. His interpretation of the Bible is generally sound. He was a man of one book, the old Latin translation and not the later Vulgate of Jerome. We don't find him quoting the Church Fathers anywhere in his writings and this is probably because his education was incomplete. He was only 16. He needed further training when he was kidnapped by marauding Irishmen and he was never able to make up for the education which he lost. And so he writes, in the first line of his confession, I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated, and least of all the faithful, and despised in the eyes of many. He's not feigning humility here. What he said was true. His learning was meager. He knew it. He knew his Latin grammar was poor. and other people knew it and so he speaks about his lack of education and all of this is good because it shows that Patrick was not a man writing for effect he wasn't using rhetoric to try and persuade people he just told people the thing the way he saw it and there was a certain moving power in that there are some things that we don't agree with Patrick on he quoted the Apocrypha He quoted it as if it were scripture. But then most people of his day did that. And that was an error of his times. He also had seven different dreams which functioned at key points in his life. I don't believe that God guides us through dreams. That's not the Protestant doctrine of guidance. Probably the best way to understand Patrick's dreams is something like this. He's in Britain. He's being converted. He would like to go back and preach the gospel to them. He's thinking about it before he goes to bed. And then he has a dream about it and he dreams that Victoricus is there with the letters and there's the cry of the Irish and come back holy youth. That's the way I take it. If you find that convincing, you can believe it. And if not, you can say, well, he still believed in dreams and he was wrong. I'll be more or less content with that either. Let me ask you a question now as we turn to Patrick's missionary labors. Were there Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick? The answer is yes. There were Christians there. Not many and Patrick caused the work to progress. Patrick's method of evangelization involved the local chiefs and their families and he sought to build up local churches with their support. One man put it like this Patrick spent himself in an endless apostolate, preaching, baptising, ordaining, consecrating other bishops, everywhere establishing monasteries and a curious kind of ecclesiastical settlement, part monastery, part seminary, part centre of administration, which in this country where cities were unknown, served as the bishops' sea. Patrick said that the church was built up in Ireland as a result of hard work. Patrick believed in prayer. Patrick believed in preaching. He spoke of hunting sinners and fishing for them with the gospel net. Patrick says that he came to Ireland to preach the gospel to Irish tribes. And according to the eloquence of his writings, he must have been a very capable and moving preacher. and so on. Patrick understood his preaching to the Irish in terms of the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. He talks about the last days. Jesus Christ is coming soon and he links the second coming of Christ on the one hand and the preaching of the gospel on the other with the classic text from Matthew 24 which I read earlier. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world for a testimony for all nations and then the end will come. So Patrick's understanding of his mission in Ireland wasn't just there are many missions and I'm doing a mission like everybody else. Patrick calls Ireland the end of the earth. He didn't know about Iceland. He didn't know about America. Patrick says I am coming to declare God's gospel as a testimony to all nations before the end of the world and we see as a consequence that it has been fulfilled just so. You can see that we are witnesses that the gospel has been preached as far as the point where there is no beyond. See what he is saying? The whole world has to be reached. I have gone as far west as you can go. Now if somebody will take care of north and south and east Christ will return. That's Patrick. Patrick worked amongst the people whom he at first calls barbarians but he didn't look down upon them. In fact after a time the British Patrick working in Ireland called himself Irish and he says to the British church you think it derogatory that we are Irish. Not much has changed. The British still think it's derogatory. that we are Irish. Patrick, was he martyred then? What do you think? Did he die as a martyr? No, he didn't. He would have liked to have been martyred, but he wasn't. He was persecuted. The myth is today that Patrick was an easy going guy, everybody liked him. Patrick was persecuted and hated. He talks about 12 perils, several imprisonments, He calls himself, he whom this world hates. He writes, I daily expect either assassination or trickery or reduction to slavery or some accident or other. But I fear none of these things on account of the promises of heaven. And Patrick went out. He went out into the most barren and remote parts of Ireland. He refused voluntary gifts because if people would give him money and he would keep it, then they could say he's only in it for the money. So he gave it back to them. Patrick did this because he wanted his mission to Ireland to be permanent. That's his word. I want it to be permanent. I want it to stand after I die. And it has. And he said to this end I am going to labor in Ireland for the rest of my life. His goal was an indigenous Irish church served by Irish office bearers. He says I must promulgate the name of God everywhere fearlessly and faithfully, so as to leave after my death a legacy to my brothers and my children, whom I have baptized in the Lord so many thousands of people." So how did he do that? He preached orthodox, creedal Christianity, as summed up in his Rule of Faith. Trinitarian Orthodoxy and the Grace of God. And so Patrick says at the end of his confession, remember he's converted a lot of people in his lifetime, he says, I beg those who believe in God and fear him, whoever shall condescend to peruse or to receive this writing, which I, Patrick, a very badly educated sinner, has written in Ireland, and then especially this, that nobody shall ever say that it was I, the ignoramus, if I have achieved or shown any small success according to God's pleasure, but you are to think, and it must be sincerely believed, that it was all the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die. Summing it all up now, I want to state the significance of Patrick. He wasn't the easy-going, happy-go-lucky guy of popular conception. He didn't evangelize Ireland in the service of the Roman Church. Another man says that Patrick is so important because he was the first man to speak out against slavery. As if he were Frederick S. Douglas or someone like that but he isn't. He opposed kidnapping. That's what he opposed. The real Patrick stands out as an evangelical Christian who held to creedal Trinitarian Christological theology. He had a strong faith in the word and promises of God. He had a compelling eschatology of hope. His devotion to the scriptures is seen in every page of his writings. He had the knowledge of salvation in the face of Jesus Christ. And so he went as a missionary. This meant that he was a humble man. He wasn't like Augustine of Canterbury. Maybe he saw the installation of Rowan Williams, a heretical archbishop of Canterbury, and there was the chair of Augustine of Canterbury. If you read the records, you'll see that Augustine of Canterbury was an arrogant man. Patrick wasn't like that. Patrick's fame doesn't lie either in his developing the doctrines of the church. He wasn't a profound thinker, never mind a speculative theologian. He didn't have the training. He didn't have the intellectual skills. He didn't have the time. He didn't have the library for serious theological reflection. he didn't even translate the Bible into Irish as Wycliffe would translate the Bible into English almost a millennium later instead he came with a Latin Bible and he tried to teach the Irish Latin so that they could understand the old Latin Bible but he was a missionary that was his heart an itinerant bishop most of the bishops of that day had a church and they stayed there Patrick went out Patrick identified with those whom he served and modern missionary theoreticians would commend that highly. He wanted a truly indigenous church reflecting the bent of the native Irish and as Reformed Christians we particularly appreciate too his creedal emphasis and his concern for the future of the church. The famous historian Will Durant pointed out that when Patrick died, quote, it could be said of him, as of no other man, that one man had converted a nation. Another peculiarity of Ireland, aside from the fact that it was converted largely by the work of one man, is that there were no martyrs in Ireland. Patrick and his helpers evidently died a natural death. The famous words, maybe you've heard them, As ye are children of Christ, so be ye children of Rome, were not said by Patrick. They were said by some Roman Catholic later on, centuries later. In fact, the Church in Ireland is somewhat peculiar in that the Church of Ireland was only connected to the Papal See of Rome in the 12th century. For 700 years or more, Ireland was independent of the Church of Rome. And then in 1155 the only English Pope, just as the present Pope, I think he's the only Polish Pope, indeed the only Slavic Pope, sorry Slavic Pope, Adrian IV, the only English Pope, granted Ireland to the Norman King of England, Henry II. And then Henry II in 1171 sent over some of the Normans and they did some conquering. And then the church in Ireland was related to Rome. So by the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, Ireland had only been Roman Catholic for less than 350 years. But the previous 700 years, it had no formal links with Rome. And that was why the Pope gave Ireland to Henry II and said, those barbaric Irish, get them under my sea. The significance of Patrick's work in Ireland is also seen in this. When the Roman Empire fell in 476 and the barbarians came in, European civilization and European scholarship decayed rapidly. Education standards plummeted, libraries were destroyed, and the church requires a certain amount of scholarship and knowledge. And so the church was in great peril. The great Church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette writes, Thanks to Patrick and to his imperfectly remembered associates and contemporaries, in the declining days of the Roman Empire in the West, Christianity was securely planted in Ireland, well beyond the farthest limits reached by the legions. From Ireland too, within a very few generations, Christian monks were to pour into Britain and the continent there to revive a faith which had decayed through the turmoil of the years and to carry it to pagan peoples. In other words, Patrick's evangelization of Ireland played a crucial role in the preservation of Christianity in the West. The Church was zealous, the Church in Ireland. It took that after Patrick. The church in Ireland was a church which loved learning. In the days of the Frankish Empire, Charlemagne and so on, the best Greek scholars in Europe were in Ireland and people went there for the best education, just as you might want to go to Oxford or Cambridge today. Their scholarship was so profound that many precious manuscripts went to Ireland. The Irish scribes copied them out. Then you have the Book of Kales written in the early ninth century and currently in display at Trinity College, Dublin. And the church was, of course, godly. Ireland was the land of saints and scholars. Here's a little poem written by Alfred, King of the Northumbrian Saxons, who was educated in an Irish monastery. This is what he says about the piety of the Irish Church. I found in each great church more or whether on island or on shore, piety, learning, fond affection, holy welcome and kind protection. I found the good lay monks and brothers ever beseeching help for others and in their keeping the holy word pure as it came from Jesus the Lord. The Irish Church then, after Patrick, was faithful to his legacy. The Irish missionaries brought the gospel to Scotland, to England, to Iceland, back to France, to the Lowlands, Belgium and Holland, to Germany, to Switzerland, to Italy, to Austria, to the Ukraine and other areas. Great Irish monks, Columba, Columbanus, Gaul, Killian, Virgil of Salzburg, through these men the white horse of the gospel rode forth from the Emerald Isle. In old chronicles and in manuscripts written by Irish hands, ample witness of their work remains. But all that Christendom in Western Europe owes to the Irish is by no means fully known or realised today. This is the thesis of the well-known book by Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved civilization. And it all started with the real St. Patrick, not the popular mythological one. Thank you for your attention.