Posted on 03/17/2016 2:42:08 AM PDT by RaceBannon
http://www.baptistpillar.com/article_054.html
Was Saint Patrick a Baptist?
W. A. Jarrell
The year of St. Patrick ‘s birth is variously assigned to the years 377 and 387, the latter being the more probable date. His original name is said to have been Succat Patricus, being the Roman appellative by which he was known. The exact place of his birth is uncertain. It was somewhere in Britain.
In the sixteenth year of his age, while on his father’s farm, with a number of others, he was seized and carried by a band of pirates into Ireland, and there sold to a petty chief. In his service he remained six years.
At the expiration of this time he succeeded in escaping. He was “brought up in a Christian family in Britain, and the truth which saved him when a youthful slave in pagan Ireland was taught him in the godly home of Deacon Calpurnius, his father, and in the church of which he was a member and officer.” On his escape from Ireland he was twenty-one years of age.
Being a stronger Christian the Lord soon called him back to Ireland as the missionary for that blinded country. About this time, or before it, a missionary named Coleman, established a church in Ireland. Some think that “in the south of Ireland, from some very remote period,” “Christian congregations had existed.”
Usher puts Patrick’s death at A.D. 493 - making his life a long and useful life, and his age, at the time of his death, over one hundred years.
The Bellandists make his death earlier - A.D. 460. According to accounts of his Irish biographers, he, with his own hands, baptized 12,000 persons and founded 365 churches.
Within the last few years scholars have succeeded in stripping his history of much of the Romish fables.
The more this has been done, the more he stands out as a Baptist:
1. At the time of St. Patrick the Romish church was only an embryo.
2. In St. Patrick’s time the authority of the bishop of Rome was not generally recognized.
3. There is no history to sustain the Romish claim that Patrick was sent to Ireland by “Pope Celistine”. Throughout his life Patrick acted wholly independent of Rome.
Patrick was a Baptist:
(1) He baptized only professed believers.
(2) He baptized by only immersion. Dr. Catchcart says: “There is absolutely no evidence that any baptism but that of immersion of adult believers existed among the ancient Britons, in the first half of the fifth century, nor for a long time afterwards.” In St. Patrick’s “letter to Crocius” he describes some of the persons whom he immersed as “baptizedc captives,” “baptized handmaidens of Christ,” “baptized women distributed as rewards” and then as “baptized believers.”
(3) In church government St. Patrick was a baptist. Though this appears in the note to this page, I will add proof to it. “Patrick founded 365 church-es and consecrated the same number of bishops, and ordained 3000 presbyters.” “If we take the testimony of Nennius, St. Patrick placed a bishop in every church which he founded; and several presbyters after the example of the New Testament churches. Nor was the great number of bishops peculiar to St. Patrick’s time; in the twelfth century St. Bernard tells us that in Ireland bishops are multiplied and changed...
(4) In independence of creeds, councils, popes and bishops Patrick was a Baptist. “Patrick recognized no authority in creeds, however venerable, nor in councils, though composed of several hundred of the highest ecclesiastics, and many of the most saintly men alive. He never quotes any canons and he never took part in making any, notwithstanding the pretended canons of forgers.”
(5) In doctrine Patrick was a Baptist. He says Christ who “gave his life for thee is He who speaks to thee.”
(6) In the later or Romish meaning of the term, there is no indication of Monastacism in Patrick ‘s writing or in the history of the first Irish church. “Monastacism, in the proper sense of the word, cannot be traced beyond the fourth century”.
Cathcart: “It is difficult to fix the date when the first monastery was established in Ireland. It is certain that Patrick was long in his grave before it took place.”
Thus, first, Irish Monasteries were originated after Patrick’s death. Thus, in only believer ‘s baptism; in only immersion; in church government; in salvation by only the blood; in justification by faith only; in rejecting penance; in knowing nothing of transubstantiation; in giving both the bread and the wine to the laity.
In being independent of Rome, St. Patrick was a Baptist and the first Irish churches knew nothing of priestly confession and priestly forgiveness; of extreme unction; of worship of images; of worship of Mary; of the intercession of Mary or of any departed saint; of purgatory; of persecution of opposers of the church - nothing of any of the Romish distinguishing peculiarities.
Were Patrick not turned to dust, and were the body able to hear and turn, he would turn over in his coffin at the disgrace on his memory from the Romish church claiming him as a Roman Catholic.
http://www.baptistpillar.com/article_054.html
history of the Irish primitive Church
https://books.google.com/books?id=7l6r6MLbehwC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Bishop+Ussher+St+Patrick&source=bl&ots=FWqGJuH1Tk&sig=upCdtxxzUikhhQzP5nxQOaAy22w&hl=en&sa=X&ei=naIIVYXPDMSUyATHs4KYCw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Bishop%20Ussher%20St%20Patrick&f=false
Uh...no he wasn’t. This is trotted out every year.
See this? GARBC !
Interesting, thanks!
The RC Church baptizes thousands of people a day. Doesn’t make them (or Patrick), ‘Baptists’.
Could you make the font any smaller?
This is kind of silly. St. Patrick was an Orthodox christian, as anyone who was a christian at that time (and who wasn’t a heretic) had to be. Pretending that he was something that didn’t exist until 1,200 years after his death is ludicrous.
Saint Patrick was born in 387 AD.
The Protestant religion wasn’t invented yet.
I have heard rumors that John the Baptist was also a baptist, since he also baptised people.
The "anabaptists" on the continent were around 80 years or so earlier, but they were spiritually the ancestors of the Mennonites and Amish, not of the denominations called "Baptist" in the modern day USA.
This whole article is basically arguing (a) St. Patrick was a Christian; (b) everyone knows those awful Catholics aren't Christians; therefore (c) St. Patrick was a Baptist.
The problem is that (b) is false, and (c) doesn't necessarily follow even if (a) and (b) are true.
Wait, I thought the "Romish" [sic] church was founded by Constantine the Great, after deceiving a bunch of folks who had kept the faith through the persecutions of Domitian at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), and immediately imposed by penalty of death on almost everyone.
At least that's what some of the Protestant, excuse me "Bible Christian," posters on here tell us.
How then can it have been "an embryo" 350 years later? That's one long gestation period!
Got any evidence that he never baptized any infants? Of course not. Obviously he "baptized believers"; he was evangelizing a pagan country, so most of his converts were adults.
"He baptized only by immersion."
Immersion is valid in every rite of the Catholic Church, and is the normative mode of baptism at least in the Byzantine Rite, as well as in the Orthodox churches, so that proves nothing except the author's ignorance.
I have seen videos of orthodox churches in the Middle East baptizing by immersion - even the infants.
There is no history quite like revisionist history, eh?
I was going to say, “You just can’t make this stuff up.” but apparently if you are anti-Catholic you can.
Do Baptists fast?
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention St. Patrick's 40 day fast on the summit of Croagh Patrick.
He lost me with “the Romish church” and “worship of Mary”.
BTW, try saying “Romish” without snarling.
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