b:ARLY CELTIC CHUIJCIIES OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 209 



Professor Orchard. — Our thanks are due to the author of the 

 review of the Celtic Church, and for the views with which she has 

 ilhistrated that review. We shall, I think, carry away two or three 

 tolerably steadfast conclusions : one, that St. Patrick was not a 

 Roman Catholic — he professed no allegiance to the Bishop of Rome : 

 and also that he was not the founder of the Celtic Church. He 

 appears to have been the Wesley of his times. I should have 

 thought his extraordinary influence, so far excelling that of the 

 other evangelists, may perhaps 1)e explained by the fact that he 

 was not only an evangelist but a missionary evangelist."^ He was 

 undoubtedly a Welshman and also a Roman citizen. The early 

 Celtic Church differed widely, we may say, from the Roman 

 Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. Its monastic system had 

 little if anything in common. Its clergy were very different indeed 

 to the priests who claimed to be in some senses their successors. 

 The agricultural life — the mingling with the people to some extent 

 — was very different indeed from the system which now prevails in 

 the Roman Church. 



If Ireland is to find a remedy for her ills and misfortunes it will 

 be by returning to that purer faith of that early Christianity of 

 which St. Patrick was at once the missionary and the apostle. 



A Member (Rev. Sidney Pike). — I am most thankful to have 

 listened to this lecture. I was called upon to give lectures on Early 

 Church History, and all this came under my notice then. I fully 

 endorse what Miss Hull has said, that we are not indebted to 

 Augustine for the introduction of Christianity into this island ; and 

 I would like to give to those who are present here the late Arch- 

 bishop Benson's statement : " If," he says, " Augustine had landed 

 in Cornwall instead of in Kent, he would have found a flourishing 

 British Church." And I would also like to quote the words of Bishop 

 Lightfoot, who said in referring to St. Aidan and St. Augustine 

 (speaking of the two, and of course of the mission from the North), 

 " Christianity came from the Xorth downward ; it sprang from the 

 Celtic Church, it went from Ireland to lona and from lona to 

 Lindisfarne, and then other missionaries came down to the Midlands." 



His extraordinary influence was largely due to his knowledge of the 

 Celtic tongue, gained while he was herding the flocks of his master on 

 the slopes of Slemish, in co. Antrim. — E. H. 



