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hardly be doubted that the Christian faith must have been brought 
into these parts long before the time of St. Patrick, i.e. before 
A.D. 400, through the legionaries recruited in all parts of the 
world. There was a flourishing Christian church in Britain before 
the year 300; there are authentic records of martyrs for the faith 
under the Emperor Diocletian ; and after that time the conversion 
of Constantine and the official recognition of Christianity must have 
given splendid opportunities for the spread of the faith. St. Patrick 
was born about A.D. 387. Fifty years before his birth, three 
British bishops had sat in the great Council of Arles (328). Fifty 
years after his birth, the Britons were reckoned to be Christians, 
just as much as the natives of Gaul or Spain. We can well believe 
therefore that by the last quarter of the fourth century many both 
of the legionaries and the provincials had, even in the north, 
embraced the Christian faith, and that here, as elsewhere, Christi- 
anity was the recognized religion of the state. 
In some such district then as this, where Roman magistrates 
still held sway, and where Christian influences had made much 
progress, St, Patrick’s father was dwelling towards the close of the 
fourth century, exercising there the honourable office of a decurion, 
whether civil or military. He would be a man of substance and 
consideration, living in some state, cultivating a farm near his 
station, and attended by numerous domestics. Then comes the 
sudden descent upon the coast of the Pictish pirates. Too 
probably the garrison had been already weakened by the with- 
drawal of many of the soldiers. It was now completely defeated. 
Calphurnius and his wife were slain; his children, with numbers 
of others, were carried off into slavery, and the once flourishing 
colony was laid waste. What a vivid picture the story gives us of 
the last troubled days of the Roman occupation of Britain; how 
hard to realize that the peaceful street-covered slopes of our familiar 
hills were once the scenes of such slaughter! Yet we know that 
such must have been the case. The traces of burnt houses and 
broken altars, if not the careful concealment of other altar-stones, 
suggest the final fate of the settlement. It is historically certain 
that about the very time when St. Patrick was made captive, the 
