94 



been who would baptize or ordain clergymen, or embody a congrega- 

 tion;"* while it is plainly said in his life by Jocelin, that, in one of his 

 journeys in the interior, he discovered " in a cave, an altar of admira- 

 ble workmanship, having at the four corners, four glass chalices. "-]" 



The Christian community, (such as it was,) that so existed in Ire- 

 land before the days of Saint Patrick, must have been governed by 

 an independent presbyter, as evidently no bishop was ordained for 

 that country until the fifth century : and although Coelius Sedulius, 

 who is generally considered the index of the theology of that da}-, 

 M'ill be found in the corresponding section of our second period, a 

 warm advocate of the Trinity, we have yet no doubt that the Arian- 

 ism which shewed itself in England in the fourth century, had a 

 still earlier date in Ireland. Benedict, the Abbot of Aniane, some of 

 whose productions are published by Baluzius, in the fifth volume of 

 his Miscellanea, expresses himself (at p. 54,) in his letter to Guarna- 

 rius, in an untranslatable mysticism, which at least shews that a cer- 

 tain sophistry was prevalent in Ireland, on the subject of the Trinity. 

 "Apud modernos scholasticos, maxime apud Scotos, est syllogismus 

 delusionis ut dicant Trinitatem sicut personarum ita esse substantia- 

 rum ; quatenus si assenserit illectus auditor Trinitatem trium esse 

 substantiarum Deum, trium derogetur cultor Deorum. Si autem 

 abnuerit, personarum denegator culpetur. Culpetur propter idioma 

 Graecum, derogetur propter sermonem Latinum. Sed haec de fide 

 ****** vitanda, &c." Hence it is, probably, that 

 Aurelius Prudentius, speaking in the fourth century of the knowledge 



* " Pergebam causa vestra etiam usque ad exteras partes, ubi nemo ultra erat, et ubi nun- 

 quam aliquis pervenerat qui baptizaret, aut clericos ordinaret ant populum consuimnaret." — 

 Opuscula, p. 20. 



f " Altare mirandi operis, habens in quatuor angulos quatuor calices vitreos, in specu sub- 

 terraneo." 



