192 



MISS ELEANOK H. HULL, ON THE 



the representations of Coelestius, Augustine called in the aid 

 of the civil power and secured an imperial edict from the 

 Emperors Theodosius and Honorius banishing Pelagius from 

 Eome. The heresy of Pelagius, thus curiously tossed about, 

 approved by one Pope, condemned by another — commended by 

 two Synods and reproved by two others, comes down to us at 

 the present day in our Church Prayer-books as the only heresy 

 against which we are warned by name in the Thirty-nine 

 Articles. Against the personal character of the British teacher 

 his worst enemies found themselves unable to cast a stone ; 

 the simplicity and purity of his life is attested by his bitterest 

 foes ; and he passed the remainder of his days in a seclusion 

 which, we may well believe, was grateful to him after the 

 prominence of theological disputation into which he had been 

 unwillingly forced. 



The last of our group of four names is that of St. Patrick. The 

 life of St. Patrick has been torn by controversies, but we possess 

 in his own undoubted writings a record of his life and work which 

 might have settled many of them or at least have provided a 

 firm ground for building upon. In his confession w^e have, not a 

 life-history, but an outpouring of his spirit as an aged man whose 

 time was nearly over, in defence of the work that he had felt 

 himself called upon to do. 



After the sketch we have now given of the condition of affairs 

 in Britain it will not surprise you to learn that St. Patrick was 

 brought up from childhood in the tenets of the Christian religion. 

 His father was a deacon carrying on his ministry, as was generally 

 supposed, somewhere near Dumbarton, but as is now beginning 

 to be thought, in the quite different region of the neighl)ourhood 

 of the Bristol Channel. His father was a wealthy man, and 

 owned, Ijesides his town house, a farm in the country, to wdiich 

 the young l^atrick was no doubt frequently sent for change of 

 air.* 



Besides his clerical duties Calpornus lield the position of 

 " decurio," or, as we should say, borough councillor under the 

 Ptoman governor of liis province. It was his duty to collect the 



"My father was (Jalpornus, a deacon, son of Pohtus, a presbyter, who 

 belon<(ed to the vilhige of Bannarem Taberniye. Now he liad a small 

 farm hard by, wliere 1 was taken captive." — Confessw, eh. i. 



" I was free born, according to the flesh. I am born of a father who 

 was a decnrion, but I sold my nol)le rank, I blush not to state it, nor am 

 I sorry, for the profit of others." — £Jpis. to Coroticus^ ch. x. See 

 J)r. Newj)ort White's "(.'ritical Kdition of the Writings of St. Patrick." — 

 J'roc. R. 1. Acad.y vol. xxv, No. 7, 1005. 



