Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

CHAPTER 29. — ST. PATRICK A BAPTIST.
The following summarizes the facts as to St. Patrick, and proves he was a
Baptist: f1071
The year of St. Patrick’s birth is variously assigned to the years 377 and 387,
the latter being the more probable date. His original name is said to have been
Succat Patricus, being the Roman appelative by which he was known. The
exact place of his birth is uncertain. It was somewhere in Britain. In the
sixteenth year of his age, while on his father’s farm, with a number of others,
he was seized and carried by a band of pirates into Ireland, and there sold to a
petty chief. In his service he remained six years. At the expiration of this time
he succeeded in escaping. He was “brought up in a Christian family in Britain,
and the truth which saved him when a youthful slave in pagan Ireland was
taught him in the godly home of Deacon Calpurnius, his father, and in the
church of which he was a member and officer.” On his escape from Ireland he
was twenty-one years of age. Being a stronger Christian the Lord soon called
him back to Ireland as the missionary for that blinded country. About this time,
or before it, a missionary named Coleman, established a church in Ireland.
Some think that “in the south of Ireland, from some very remote period,”
“christian congregations had existed.” Usher puts Patrick’s death at A.D. 493
— making his life a long and useful life, and his age, at the time of his death,
over one hundred years. The Bellandists make his death earlier — A.D. 460.
Dr. Todd inclines to Usher’s date. According to accounts of his Irish
biographers, he, with his own hands, baptized 12,000 persons and founded 365
churches.
Within the last few years antiquarian scholars have succeeded in stripping his
history of much of the Romish fables. The more this has been done, the more
he stands out as a Baptist.
Among others I mention the following points of history:
1. At the time of St. Patrick the Romish church was only en embryo.
2. In St. Patrick’s time the authority of the bishop of Rome was not generally
recognized.
3. There is no history to sustain the Romish claim that Patrick was sent to
Ireland by “Pope Celistine.”
(1.) Bede never mentions it.
(2.) Patrick never mentions it,