189 



cise and service* in the mazes of his pages, he yet considers him as 

 but a phantom of no being, and all those successive notices of him 

 but shadowy interpolations ; while the reverend antiquarian himself, 

 a second-Marraton, traverses the field of inquiry in solitary substance, 

 and every where discovers the error, and unmasks the delusion of long- 

 departed worthies. 



His arguments, however, if they can be called such, need only 

 to be stated ; they carry their own refutation. 



1st. Because the place of Saint Patrick's birth is disputed, 



...^ ergo, ----- - - - 



The same test would erase Homer, Constantino the Great, 

 and thousands of others from the pages of history. 

 2nd. Because there was a holy Patrick of Auvergne, and 

 another of Nola ; ergo ---------- 



Because he could not have been a Lateran canon, or 

 decorated with a pall, and constituted a legate, as 

 some late \v riters have said ; ergo ------- 



Because some of his biographers have attributed im- 

 probable miracles to his agency ; ergo - - - - - 



Because Bede does not mention him ; ergo - - - - 



But Bede does mention him, as far as was requisite 

 to the purpose of an historian of the English Church, in a 

 martyrology which the venerable author himself speaks of, 

 and acknowledges as his own in his ecclesiastical history, &c. 



3rd. 



4th. 



5tl 



1. 



bo 



a 



a 

 zi 



S .2 

 o3 iH 



i 



J3 



< a 



^ o 



^ 13 



•J2 



The above are the chief arguments, which the Doctor urges to 

 Irishmen against the existence of their missionary ; these are the 



* See Ledwich's Antiquities, second edition, pp. 79, 140, &c. 



