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Every year as Spring is about to commence, the world seems to turn green as celebrations of St. Patrick of Ireland take place (in some Protestant locales, such as Ulster, orange is the preferred color). But what are we to make of St. Patrick himself, a man who is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church but also greatly admired by Protestant historians too? Was he in fact, as Sheldon Jackson claimed in the Moderator’s Opening Sermon at the 1892 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, “Saint Patrick, Father of Presbyterianism in Ireland”? It may be challenging to discern, but in the words of George Macloskie, Princeton professor of biology and Presbyterian minister, “The St. Patrick of legend and superstition is not attractive, but the historical Patrick is a beautiful personage, whose memory should be revered by all Irishmen and by all Christians” (The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. 8, No. 8 (Apr. 1897), p. 330). A few of our Log College Press authors chime in with these further thoughts.
William D. Howard, A History of the Origin of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church (1872):
I would like to speak of Patrick, who was not, as many suppose, a Roman Catholic saint, but an earnest evangelical missionary, and his successful labors among the Druids of Ireland; and of his successors—Columba, Columbanus, and Gallus — who, long before Gregory the Great had, whilst yet an humble priest, seen the fair-faced Angles in the slave mart at Rome and, of course, long before as Pope he had sent Augustine as a missionary to Britain, had conveyed the Gospel to Scotland and England, Gaul and Germany, Switzerland and Lombardy.
William Craig Brownlee, Saint Patrick and the Western Apostolic Churches: or, The Religion of the Ancient Britains and Irish, not Roman Catholic: and The Antiquity, Tenents and Sufferings of the Albigenses and Waldenses (1857), p. 4:
It is proper to remark, in reference to his title of "Saint," that among primitive Christians, in the early ages, the word Saint seems to have been used, perhaps invariably, as our modern word Reverend. It expressed, at first, veneration for the real virtues of godly pastors; by degrees it became a general title of men in the sacred office. Hence Saint Ibar, the predecessor of Saint Patrick in Ireland; hence St. Cormic, and St. Columbkille. This title, in those apostolic times, was as different, in its use and design, from that of modern Popery, as the title of St. Paul is from the title of Judas.
The Saint Patrick of the primitive and ancient Irish Church is a totally different character from the Roman Catholic Irish Saint Padraig.
E.C. Murray, Presbyterianism: A Historical Sketch (1907), p. 10:
Do you know that Saint Patrick, whom the Irish Catholics worship as their patron saint, was really a Scotch Presbyterian missionary? In the fifth century he evangelized Ireland, organizing 365 churches and ordaining over them 365 bishops or pastors and 3,000 elders.
William M. Blackburn, Preface to Saint Patrick, and the Early Church of Ireland (1869):
No concession is made to superstition by giving the title of "saint" to the man whose name has become so popular, and, after fourteen hundred years, is still as fresh as the shamrock and green as the emerald. Without the title he would hardly be identified or seen in his distinctive character. A good gospel word was abused when Rome assumed to confer upon eminent Christians the honour of being saints, and limited the term to them. By the New Testament charter we may claim it for all true Christians, however humble or unknown.
T.V. Moore, The Culdee Church (1868), p. 36:
St. Patrick or Patricius, the son of a Scottish deacon of Roman blood, indeed a patrician, as his name indicates, was a very successful missionary in Ireland, but not the introducer of Christianity there.
Thomas Smyth, Presbytery and Not Prelacy: The Scriptural and Primitive Polity, Proved From the Testimonies of Scripture;... also, The Antiquity of Presbytery; Including an Account of the Ancient Culdees, and of St. Patrick (1843), 463:
Perhaps the true solution of the difficulties presented by the case of St. Patrick, is that adopted by Dr. Brownlee and others, that while the Romish saint, St. Patrick, or, as Butler has it, 'Padraig,' is a mere creature of the imagination, like many others in the calendar, and his whole history a fabrication, and an absurd and incredible legend, there was, nevertheless, a man named Succathers, born near Glasgow, at Kilpatrick, and a Roman citizen of noble family, and hence called Patricius, a nobleman, which was contracted into Patrick. That this Patrick did labor among the inhabitants of Ireland, and that he did much towards spreading Christianity in the country, we believe; but that he was ever at Rome, that he was related to St. Martin, that he was ordained bishop and afterwards archbishop by the pope, or that he introduced into Ireland the system of prelacy or popery, either as it regards church polity or doctrine, we do not believe. All this we regard as pure fiction, and based upon the contradictory fabrications of the inventors of such ready-made biographies.
In closing we would highlight these lines from a poetic tribute to the legacy of the true St. Patrick by Irish-American Reformed Presbyterian minister Boyd McCullough, The Shamrock; or, Erin Set Free. A Poem on the Conversion of the Irish From Paganism by Succat, or St. Patrick. And Other Poems (1882), p. 80:
This wisdom your auspicious hand
Bestowed on this benighted land.
The blessing crossed the Irish sea
And rendered Scotia Minor free;
Then passing southward o'er the Tweed
Bade every hill and dale, God speed.
The glory brightens as it flies,
Like morning's blush on April skies.
Even now your work God prospers well;
Its fruit the day of doom will tell.
The real St. Patrick, an eminent evangelical minister who spread the true gospel on the Emerald Isle, is worthy of great honor and respect, if not veneration, if you ask American Presbyterians.