ST. PATRICK WAS A BAPTIST PREACHER
Dr. W. A. Criswell
03/16/58
1 Thessalonians 5
You are sharing with us this morning the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the eleven o'clock hour's message.
It concerns a great hero of the faith. And in our study of the life of this great evangelist and missionary, we have abundant and rich opportunity to be introduced to primitive Christianity, to the Christianity of our forefathers. Not the Christianity, so‑called, of the development of the Middle Ages and of these latter centuries, but the original faith of our fathers.
And we are considering this morning that original faith, doubly interesting to us because it is the Christianity of our own race, of our own blood, of our own forefathers. We are this morning to be introduced to the primitive churches of Great Britain and Ireland. And if there is in your veins any English blood or Scottish blood or Irish blood, you will be listening this morning to a description of the churches and the Christian faith of your forefathers.
I am to speak this morning on a subject entitled Saint Patrick was a Baptist Preacher. Just the announcement of a thing like that is very startling.
But, the only reason it is startling is because you can say a thing and say a thing and keep on saying a thing, until finally everybody will believe it. Everybody will take it for granted. Nobody will question it, much less deny it.
Now, as I have opportunity this morning—and, I have slaved to encompass this address in this brief awhile—almost every sentence that I say will represent a book. And you could pause at any place in the message and stop there and discuss and probe and look for days and hours. So, let's begin.
Let's start like this. Within the last few months, there was published another, and a new, life of St. Patrick. I got it. I read it. It is published under the imprimatur of Cardinal Spellman. And I read every word in it. And when I closed the book, I thought it surely is an astounding thing even to suggest, much less seek to defend, the proposition that this man, St. Patrick, could even have remotely been an evangelical or a Baptist.
Well, there is a reason for that. And we shall first look at that reason. One, you will be astonished to learn—if you read, and read with discernment, you will be astonished to read that the bishop of Rome—they call them, in later years, popes—Pope Celestine, in 430 A.D., sent from the papal court at Rome an emissary to Ireland by the name of Palladius. This Palladius was sent to Ireland after Patrick had been there, and worked there, more than 40 years. This emissary from the papal court was sent to Ireland to see the converts of Patrick and to encompass the Irish Christian churches within the orbit of the bishop of Rome.
He failed ingloriously and miserably and ignominiously. Palladius failed so dismally that he stayed but a brief while, and left the Emerald Island in disgust. There was no other papal emissary to the Irish people until Malachi was sent there in the twelfth century. Then, where under high heaven do you get the idea that Patrick was sent out by the bishop of Rome, that he arrived when he was 60 years of age, that he turned the entire population of Ireland to the Roman Catholic Church?
I'll tell you how it has been done. They added the name of Patrick to the name of Palladius. And they tell the story of Palladius until he gets to Ireland. Then, they drop off Palladius and tell the story of the true Patrick.
A thing like that is an astounding thing. Palladius had nothing to do with Patrick, and Patrick had nothing to do with Palladius. They are altogether two different and separate men. And as I say, Patrick had been in Ireland for more than 40 years when the emissary of the bishop of Rome arrived in the Emerald Isles.
All right. Another thing about the story: No life of Patrick was ever written until hundreds of years of his death. The first life of Patrick of which we have any knowledge was written in the seventh century. And by that time, his life was encrusted with years and centuries of fable and legend and miracle.
For example, there's not a child but that knows of the supposed miracle of Patrick in ridding Ireland of all snakes. Yet, Salinus, a Latin writer, writing hundreds of years before Patrick, makes note of this fact: The exemption of Ireland from reptiles.
In the Caribbean Sea you will find many islands where there are no snakes. That is typical of the accretions of time to the fable and the legend and the miracle-working power of Patrick.
When you go back to the original documents, he had no power to work any miracle, nor did he claim to have any power. He is presented as a simple, faithful, zealous, but mighty, gospel preacher.
All right. Another thing: In the seventeenth century, under King James I and under Charles I and under Oliver Cromwell, there lived a prelate of the Church of England by the name of James Ussher. James Ussher was one of the most learned and scholarly ecclesiastics of all time. When the King James Version of the Bible was made—which I hold in my hand, out of which we always read and out of which I read—when the King James version of the Bible was made, this learned prelate, James Ussher, because of his vast erudition, made a scheme of chronology, and it was placed in the King James Version of the Bible.
So great and learned was this evangelical preacher, James Ussher, that King James made him primate of all Ireland, head of all the churches in Ireland. After James I, Charles I greatly honored him.
And to the amazement of any reader of history, when Oliver Cromwell came, beheaded Charles I, overthrew the kingdom, established a commonwealth, this man, James Ussher, was no less exalted by the commonwealth. And when he died, he was buried by Oliver Cromwell with great magnificence in Westminster Abbey.
Now, this man, James Ussher, was born in Ireland. And in the early years of his great research, he gave himself, encouraged by King James, to the research of discovering the nature of those early British and early Irish churches. And of course, that brought up an exhaustive and extensive study of Patrick, the founder of the churches in Ireland.
And James Ussher, in the seventeenth century, brought to the world and revealed to the world this great Christian preacher for what he was: a simple, humble, but dynamic and zealous, preacher of Jesus, teacher and missionary, and, under God, the instrument for the conversion of the Irish people. This has been known since the seventeenth century. You say a thing and you say a thing and you say a thing, until finally the truth is absolutely buried alive.
Now, ultimately, we must go to the extant documents written by Patrick himself to find the man himself. As you'll see after a while, practically all the literature of those ancient churches were destroyed. But, two extant pieces by Patrick are still with us.
One of them is called The Confessions of Patrick. It was written in his old age, just before his death. There was somebody, either in Britain or in Gaul, who made the accusation that Patrick was presumptuous in the task he assigned himself and that he was unqualified for that great mission. In defense of his life and his ministry, Patrick wrote his Confessions. I would say they are about 15 pages long.
The other piece that we have is a letter that he wrote to a British brigand by the name of Coroticus. Coroticus was the conqueror of Wales. And being a man of blood, he ravaged the eastern seacoast of Ireland. And in those forays, he had slain some of the converts of Patrick who were dressed in white robes to be baptized, like you baptize your converts, like we do every night. We have white robes, and I like that—white robes for the candidates.
This man Coroticus had seized upon some of those converts of Patrick, while they were preparing to be baptized in their white robes, and had slain them. And others of the members of the churches he had taken captive and sold into slavery. When Patrick sent a deputation to Coroticus to ask for the return of his Christians, Coroticus scoffed at the deputation. It was then that Patrick wrote the letter, and we have it today.
All right. With that introduction to the man, let us look at him and find out what kind of a preacher he was, what kind of a faith he preached, and what kind of churches he established. Now, to do that, I must look—we must look at the early British churches, and at the early Irish churches, and at the country and civilization in which they flourished.
So, first, we shall consider the Great Britain of Patrick. Patrick was born in 360 A.D., a very important date: 360 A.D. He was born at the mouth of the Clyde River, about 14 miles from Glasgow, the present Glasgow. It is now Scotland. It was then a part of England, of Britain. He was born in a little town named Dumbarton. And, that was a little town in the kingdom of Strathclyde—Strathclyde Britons.
His father was named Potitus, and he was the pastor of the church. His grandfather was Potitus, and he was pastor of the church. His father was Calpurnias, and he was a deacon in the church and a magistrate in the town.
Every one of these little things is significant. Do you notice the pastor of the church is a married man and has children? Do you notice the deacon in the church is a married man and has children? They were just like all of those early Christian preachers. Peter was married. All of the disciples were married, Paul says. This thing of the celibacy of the clergy is a man's invention of later times.
His grandfather was the pastor of the church. His father was a deacon in the church.
Now, let us look at those early British churches, so we can find out what kind of a Christian faith Patrick was reared in. Britain was invaded by the Romans under Julius Caesar in 50 B.C. And when the Roman legions crossed over the channel into England, they found there the country inhabited by Belgic Celts. The Celts were a people, possibly the first Orientals, who entered into Western Europe. And, these Belgic Celts crossed over from the mainland into what we know as England.
Up above them was another Celtic tribe, or clan, named the Caledonians. The Romans called them Picts because they painted their bodies. Now, the Romans subjugated these Celts that they called Britons. But, the Caledonians, the Picts, they were never able to subjugate, because they were so fierce warriors.
So, the Romans built a wall across the narrowest part of England, and up above were the barbarian Picts, or Caledonians, whom the Romans never subdued. But, south of that wall, across the neck of England, were what the Romans called Britons. And they ruled those Britons for more than three centuries, until finally Britain came to be a part of the Roman Empire, spoke the Latin language and the authors wrote in Latin. When Patrick writes, he writes in Latin.
Now, how did Christianity ever get up there into Britain? Who converted those Celts up there in what we now call England? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. You remember that. When you read in your history, like I did, that a certain emissary was sent up there and converted England, there's not a truth in that, in any syllable of it, or in any letter of it, or in any part of it, or in any sentence of it. Nobody knows. These great evangelists and missionaries who converted the Celts, the Britons, and England are absolutely unknown.
So, we can surmise how it came to pass. First, it came through traders, through commercial people. For centuries, back into the dim ages, the Tyrian Phoenicians had traded with Britain. They had tin and lead, precious metals there, and hides and skins. And, when Alexander the Great destroyed Tyre, the Carthaginians, a colony of the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians inherited the British commerce. And, when Carthage was destroyed, the Greeks, who had been rivals with the Carthaginians, inherited that commerce from the Carthaginians.
And the Christianity that came to Britain was not west, out of Rome, ever, but it was east. It came from the eastern part of the Roman Empire. It was Greek.
All right. Another thing. Christianity came to Britain not only through commercial traders, but it came through the presence of the Roman legionnaires.
Rome had a rule: No legion was ever recruited in the country in which the legion was stationed. The legionnaires were always recruited from afar and brought into the country where they served duty.
Consequently, there were Britishers—there were Britons—maybe in legions stationed in the heart of Asia Minor. And, in the legion stationed in Britain, there were men who were recruited out of Asia Minor. Consequently, in the legion stationed in Britain, there could easily have been converts of the Apostle Paul from Ephesus, from Pisidian Antioch, from Philippi, from Corinth, from all of the cities and towns of the eastern Mediterranean world.
Wherever the Roman army went, of course, colonists went and civilians went. And, it has been estimated that, as early as the latter part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who died in 63 A. D., that the gospel light reached first the great isle of Britain. Nobody knows. But, it came there, and it came there in the purity of the message as you read it here in the New Testament.
All right. Let's look at those British churches in which Patrick grew up. First, let's look at their loyalty to the Word of God. They accepted no authority but the Book. Their great appeal was always, “What does the Book say?”
Now, here, let me digress to describe something to you that greatly troubled me. In my reading of those ancient British and Irish churches, I came across everlastingly this nomenclature: a bishop, a bishop, a bishop; and a monastery and a monastery and a monastery; and a monk, a monk, a monk.
Well, that nearly ruined me. I couldn't put the thing together and a primitive Christianity like you have here in the Book and bishops and bishops and monks and monks and monasteries. I was lost in it.
And finally, as I continued to read and to study, the thing dawned on my soul. And I saw it just clearly, like a flash. Dummy, why didn't I see it to begin with? This is what those words refer to: They were using the word “bishop” in the New Testament sense.
In the New Testament sense, there are three words to describe the office of your preacher: episkopos, presbuteros, and poimen. Episkopos is translated “bishop” in our language; presbuteros is translated “elder”; and poimen is translated “pastor.” And here in the New Testament, all three of those words refer to the same office, to the same man. He's a bishop; he's an elder; he's a pastor.
Now, I found that those early British churches were referring to the same thing. A bishop, in those early British churches, was the pastor, the settled pastor of a congregation, just as it is here in the Bible.
All right. Another thing: that word monastery that bothered me to no end. Every church, practically, had a monastery by the side of it. I found out that they used “monastery” to refer to a Bible school, and that was all. The students who went to that Bible school lived around in the countryside or close by. They had their own homes. They had their own families. They raised their own children. They owned their own property. And they attended what they called “monasteries,” but they were Bible schools.
When the preacher made converts and baptized them, why, they needed to be taught. So, they built by the side of the churches what they called monasteries. And the people, the new converts, were instructed in the Word in those monasteries. And they were used for evangelization of all the world round about.
And then, I found what the word “monk” refers to. The word monk refers—in those early British churches and our churches, the word monk refers to a student in the seminary. We call them seminaries or Bible schools. A monk is a student who has given his life to the study of the Word of God and is being instructed there in the monastery, in the Bible school. He was married. He had his family. He preached to the countryside, just like our young preachers do today.
All right. What kind of a doctrine do they hold to? Beside the government of the churches, each one had its own pastor. No episcopacy at all.
“How do you know that, Preacher?”
This is how I know that. In the fifth century, the papal court at Rome sent a deputation to Britain in order to get those British churches in the Catholic Church, and they had long discussions. And you can read those discussions for yourself.
And, here was the attitude of those British Christians. They said to the papal annuncios, and prelates and emissaries, they said, “We do not believe in diocesan episcopacy, the ruling of churches by other men, by prelates, by a hierarchy.” Second, they refused any other outside human authority. We do, according to the Word of God. And, third—and this was an amazing thing to me—the history books say, who describe those discussions—and you can read them—those British Christians believed in humility and simplicity in worship. And they were affronted and appalled by the bigotry and pride and worldliness and contumacious contumely of the emissaries of the papal court at Rome.
And with one accord and unanimously, every one of those British churches and every one of those bishops, pastors, turned aside from the invitation to amalgamate their faith and their churches in the papacy located in Rome.
What kind of doctrine did they have? Well, you can get it from discussion. When they discussed baptism from those early churches, they didn't discuss, “Shall we sprinkle? Shall we take a baby?” There was nothing—they never heard of anything like that. Immersion was the only baptism they knew.
And when they discussed immersion back there, they discussed it like this: “Shall we immerse one time, or shall we follow triad immersion, three times?” Baptize, immerse, in the name of the Father, one time; in the name of the Son, two times; in the name of the Holy Spirit, three times. That was the discussions that they had concerning baptism.
Well, now, to conclude it, that part of it, this British Christianity, what became of it? In 440—in 423 B. C., in 423 A. D., the Roman legions were withdrawn and never returned. Rome never taught the native population to fight. They knew nothing of the implements of war. They had been untrained in battle and defense.
So, when Rome withdrew her protecting hand of those Britons in 449, there began the ravages of the Anglo‑Saxons, a Teutonic tribe who crossed the Channel. And the Britons, being unable to defend themselves, the Anglo‑ Saxons destroyed those Christians by the thousands and the thousands.
They have an early historian named Gildas, the only man whose writings have come down to us except Patrick’s. And Gildas describes the martyrdom of the British Christians. The Anglo‑Saxons destroyed them and slew them and drove them back as refugees, hunted like animals in the confines of Cornwall and Wales. And the Anglo‑Saxons in Britain destroyed the early British churches and destroyed their schools and destroyed their seminaries, their monasteries.
All right. Now, we take up Patrick and Ireland, born in 360 A. D., in the little British town of Dumbarton, at the mouth of the Clyde River, close to present-day Glasgow. While he was there, we know nothing at all of his infancy or of his boyhood.
All he says is this—you can read all of this for yourself; I'm just reading it for you. He says in his Confessions that the only thing about his boyhood was that he was taught to read the Bible, but he loved pleasure instead. He was warned of his salvation, but heeded not the warning. He was taught the commandments of God, but he didn't keep them. He did not know God savingly, he says, and he turned aside from the preaching of his grandfather and from the fine example of his deacon father. That's all he speaks about his boyhood.
When he was 16 years of age, there came one of those raids, a piratical raid, an incursion from Ireland. That was a thing constantly done up and down the coast of Britain. And this boy, Patrick, 16 years of age, was taken captive, he and 200 other people. And they were taken in small boats across the Irish Sea and were sold as slaves in Ireland.
This boy Patrick, 16 years of age, was sold to an Irish chieftain by the name of Miliucc, and Miliucc lived in the valley of the Braid River in County Antrim. That's the top county on the right, on the east, north and east. And on a hill called Slemish, he was sent to herd swine. And for six years this captive British boy lived in servitude, in slavery, in misery, in hunger and dirt and filth and cold. His condition was deplorable. He says in his Confessions that he was like a stone stuck in the mud.
All right. Now, we must look at Ireland to see the kind of a country in which he lived and to which, after he returns in freedom, he is going to preach the gospel. What kind of country was Ireland? When the British—when the Romans were introduced to Ireland, it also was inhabited by a branch of the Celtic race, or Gaelic race. And they called them Scots and the country Scotia. Those Celts were Gauls, and the Franks came and conquered them from the Romans and gave it the name of France. They were Iberian Gauls. They were Britons. They were Caledonians, or Picts. They were Irish.
The Romans described the Celtic race like this: The Romans said they were tall and big. They were fair‑skinned. They were yellow‑haired. They were blue‑eyed. And, they were very volatile in their disposition. When you're in France and see a blond French woman, or in Spain and see a blond, she inherited that from the Celts. They even migrated into Asia Minor. And the Romans hemmed them in into the province of Galatia, to which Paul wrote one of his letters.
Well, anyway, the Irish are about the only unmixed Celts in the world today. And they still speak the Gaelic, or Celtic, language, that is, when they speak a native tongue.
Now, they were organized there under a government like this: There were four kingdoms, and a fifth was Meath, in the center of the island, by taking territory from the other four. And the social organization of the Irish Celtic people was in tribes. It was in clans, and a chief over each tribe and a chief over each clan, and then the king over that province and then the central king over them all.
And in this study you'll find poetry—poetry. How much poetry will you find in Ireland, about everything of it, the country, the king, the chief, the clan?
Here is one written by Thomas Davis a long time ago on a true Irish king:
The Caesars of Rome
Have a wider domain,
And the great King of France
Has more clans in his train.
The scepter of Spain is
More heavy with gems,
And our crowns cannot buy
With the Greek's diadems.
But kingly afar
Before heaven and man
Are the emerald fields
And the fiery‑eyed clan.
The scepter and state
And the poets who sing
And the swords that encircle
A true Irish king.
For he must come
From a conquering race.
They herald their valor,
Their glory, their grace.
His frame must be stately;
His step must be fleet;
His hand must be trained.
