Was "Saint" Patrick A Sabbath or Sunday Keeper?
compiled by Pat Arrabito

Patrick was born in the 4^th century, probably around 360. The Roman army was leaving Britain; the Roman Catholic Church had not arrived, in fact at that time, the bishop of Rome was just one of a number of Christian leaders, and was looked to by many as a leader of the Christians in the western world.

Origins of Celtic Christianity

Christianity arrived in Britain very early, but how it came is not known. There are local legends and numerous fictional accounts but no documentation. (See James C. Moffat, The Church in Scotland, p. 23)

Nora Chadwick says this:

"Christianity came to Gaul at a time when a number of other Eastern cults were flourishing, perhaps at the end of the first century...the earliest Christians appear to have been Greek and Oriental...The community at Lyons maintained close relations with the churches of Asia, and after their persecution under Marcus Aurelius they told of their sufferings to their Asiatic brethren. The Christians, so it would seem were something of a faction in the empire, refusing to associate themselves with the Imperial cult." Nora Chadwick, The Celts, Penguin Books: London, 1971, p. 188.

"We do not know the date at which Christianity came to Britain, but it may have been approximately contemporary with its arrival in Gaul. It may be presumed that early Christianity in the more Romanized parts of the province would have been influenced by that of Gaul. Tertullian, writing in about 200, states that the Gospel was preached in parts of the island which the arms of Rome had not yet penetrated, and Origin, c. 240, alludes to the Christian faith as a unifying force among the Britons, although he also tells us that many of the Britons had not yet heard the Gospel. This suggests that by about 200 the existence of Christianity in Britain was known in the Empire as a whole, for both Tertullian and Origen were writing from far away...It look as though Christianity was firmly established before the Peace of the Church, and this supposition is supported by the well-known word-square, or acrostic, scratched on a fragment of red wall-plaster from a house at Cirencester, which has been arranged as a cross composed of the words Pater Noster - in fact as a Christian cryptogram. Its appearance seems to attest the presence of Christians in the Romano-British city of Corinium in the third, or even in the second century." Chadwick, The Celts, p. 191.

But by the third century, Christianity had become rooted in Britain. Tertullian, in defense of the fact that Christ had come, wrote to the Jews in the 3^rd century, "As, for instance, by this time the various races of the Gaetulians, and manifold confines of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nation of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ, and of the Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and Scythians, and of many remote nations, and of provinces and islands, many to us unknown, and which we can scarce enumerate. In all which places the name of Christ who is already come reigns, as of Him before whom the gates of all cities have been opened...In all thes places dwell the 'people' of the name of Christ...Christ's name is extended everywhere, believed everywhere, worshiped by all the above-enumerated nations." (Answer to the Jews, ch. vii.)

That the light of Christianity dawned upon these islands in the course of the first century, is a matter of historical certainty, but the instrument by which this blessed work was accomplished, is a question which will always be involved in obscurity... The conversion of Britain has been ascribed to Peter, James the Great, to Simon Zelotes and to Joseph of Arimathea. The tradition respecting the preaching of Paul in Britain is founded upon a more solid basis, as Clement of Rome assures that he penetrated "to the extreme boundaries of the west." Learning and piety flourished in the British Isles and Ireland was universally celebrated as the center of education. Allemand, a French author, tells us that "it was enough to be an Irishman, or even to have studied in Ireland, to become the founder of some religious seminary in any part of Europe." O'Halloran says that "Agilbertus, a native of Gaul, had sojourned for a considerable time in Ireland that he might study the holy Scriptures;" and he informs us that there were then in Ireland "many Englishmen, both nobles and others of the middle classes, who, leaving their country during the lives of Finan and Colman, had gone thither, either that they might study the Scriptures or that they might lead a chaster life. Some of these faithfully devoted themselves to a monastic life, while others going to the habitations of their teachers, diligently applied themselves to study. All of these the Scots gladly received, supplying them gratuitously with food and books and instruction." Rev. Richard Hart, Ecclesiastical Records of England, Ireland and Scotland, from he 5th century to the Reformation, p. ix)

Ninian is the first recorded missionary, coming about 390. He found Christianity already in existence. He had received some education at Rome, but there is no credible record of variance from the simple practices of the earlier Christians. His mission station later came into possession of the Saxons, and like Lindisfarne, was reconstructed after the Romish model (Historia Ecclesiastica, v. iii.3.)

Caledonia (or what is roughly Scotland now) was never subjugated to the Romans. Their conversion would have been before the end of the 2^nd century, and the Christianity which reached them would have differed very little from that of the apostles. Because of their constant hostility to the Romans, Caledonia wold have been cut off form the influences of the Christianity developing its own style in Rome. South of Caledonia (the very southern part of Scotland and northern England today, there evidently was some Christianity, probably introduced through the Roman occupation and perhaps missionaries. The Roman armies completely pulled out of Britain in 418.

In the 4^th century, the emperor Constantine gave the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria and Jerusalem ecclesiastical authority next to himself. A canon ordered that churches planted among barbarians should continue the practices taught by their founders. Caledonia then continued in their more "primitive" religion. They were subject to raids from the Scots of Ireland, the Picts and the Saxons. It was evidently during one of these raids that Patrick was carried off to Ireland as a slave.

Patrick escaped, by the direction of God (See his Confession), but returned later as a missionary.

"Christianity, as preached by Patrick, observed the simple rites once common to all the churches, Roman as well as the rest, but longest retained in the old, out-of-the-way British churches within which Patrick had received his education. He went to Ireland, not to propagate a sacerdotal system, but from love to Christ and to the souls of men. Of a commission from Rome or from an\y human authority he makes no mention, but says that it was Christ the Lord who, in a vision, commanded him to go, and the admonition of the Holy Spirit which retained him in the work when once begun. He entered upon his work as a presbyter. Concerning his episcopal rank, where and by whom it was conferred, he does not say. And the pretension that he set up a primacy in Armagh has been shown to be unfounded. Those whom he ordained to the ministry he calls clerics, without saying of what rank. Writers of succeeding times classified them according to their own ideas, making five thousand of them presbyters and three hundred and fifty bishops." Moffat, The Church in Scotland, pp. 50, 51

"Such a man was of course, in the records of the Middle Ages, credited with prophetic and miracle-working powers. Everything done by him is done in some preternatural way; and such a mist of absurd fiction is thrown around him that his very existence has been called in question. Careful criticism has winnowed out some grains of truth, but in the mass his mediaeval biographies cannot be accepted as history... His honors of saintship were conferred at a long subsequent time, when papalism, in effort for universal dominion, deemed it expedient to adopt and claim credit for all earlier Christian achievements, disguising them with its own colors and decorations." Moffat, The Church in Scotland, p. 53.

"The external from of Christianity, as carried by Patrick to Ireland, differed from that which prevailed on the Continent at the same date. Confusion was subsequently introduced into the history by attempts of later Romish writers to cover up that difference, or make it appear as little as possible. Because if Western Christianity came from Rome, as they all believed it did, they thought there could be no difference. Patrick was not a heretic nor a schismatic. And yet from his own writings, as well as from some events in the state of the later Scottish Church, which the chroniclers could not omit, it is plain that there were differences. That fact, however, did not amount to the argument which they apprehended against the Roman origin of the British churches. For the Christianity of Rome in the fifth century differed on several points from itself in the second. That the practices in the Church of Strathclyde were not, in the sixth century, the same in all respects as those of Rome, nor of the national churches elsewhere on the Continent, is not now denied; nor that the churches in Ireland within the same period agreed with that of Strathclyde on points whereon they differed from others.

Why did this so agree together, and so differ from Rome?

The answer is, That elsewhere there had been progress in definition and statement of doctrine, in construction of formal orthodoxy, in definition of heresies, in multiplication of rites in worship and sacramental ceremonies, in clerical practices, in distinctions of clerical ranks, and in the development of a great sacerdotal system in union with the Roman imperial government. In Britain the country lying between the walls had never been Romanized, as were the provinces to the south of it. Its communication with the Christian Continent never was as free. A great part of the time, and repeatedly, it was the battle-ground between Romanized and independent Britons... According to the best that historical criticism can ascertain, Patrick was a native of the extreme north-western frontier of that debatable land. It was therefore to be expected that the Irish and Strathclyde churches should agree with each other, as well as that they should differ, in some respects, from those on the Continent..

In the interval of time between the second Christian century and the fifth changes had taken place in the great Church of the Roman empire. Heresies had arisen, new terms had been adopted in statement of the common faith, and controversy had given to certain phrases a conventional meaning which they had not before. But there is no evidence that the Easter controversy, the rebaptism controversy, the Arian or Semi-Arian or Apollinarian controversy, had ever reached the secluded community in which Patrick learned Christ.

To such a degree was Patrick's work disconnected from the ecclesiastical system of the Continent that his very name seems to have been unknown there. For several generations after his death scarcely an allusion is made to him by men of the Roman Church....But for his undoubtedly genuine autobiography, the reality of his life might have been totally lost in the depths of mythical cloud with which mediaeval writers have actually obscured it." Moffat, The Church in Scotland, pp.54-56

"Not a single writer prior to the eighth century mentions it (Patrick's mission to Ireland by St. Celestine the pope); and even Bede, who quotes the passage in Probus recording the mission of Palladius, and mentions those of Ninian and Columba, is silent as to that of Patrick. Columbanus, and the other missionaries from Ireland who followed him, seem to have told their foreign disciples nothing about him, and in the writings of the former which have been preserved, - in his letters to the Popes and the Gaulish clergy, and in his sermons to his monks, - the name of Patrick, the great founder of his church, never appears. We should be tempted to conclude, as many have done, that the account of Patrick and of his mission was entirely mythical, and that neither the one nor the other had any real existence, were it not that, when we turn to the writings of two of the contemporaries of Columbanus at home, we do find an occasional mention of Patrick at a sufficiently early date to leave no reasonable doubt of his existence, and that two documents are attributed to him which may fairly be accepted as genuine. The oldest authentic notice of Patrick occurs in a letter which is still extant, written by Cummian to Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, regarding the proper time for keeping Easter. In it he refers to the cycle 'introduced into use by our pope, Saint Patricius;' and Adamnan, writing in the end of the seventh century, in the second preface to his Life of Columba mentions 'Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of Saint Patricius the bishop.' (William F. Skene, Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban, Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1887, Vol. II, pp. 16, 17)

"Of the imperial system of church government sanctioned under Constantine, with its authoritatively graduated ranks of clergy, Patrick and his helpers seem to have had little knowledge. In his statement his helpers were all clerics, without any distinction of rank. He is himself, in his old age, a bishop - how constituted or by whom he does not say, but believes that he had received from God what he was." Moffat, p. 59

"When, long afterward (five or six hundred years), Ireland came under papal rule, writers whose ideas had been formed upon the papal system thought that in Irish church history they must find all the prelatic ranks from the beginning, and, not finding them, called what they did find by their names, So, Ireland is forthwith supplied with diocesans and a subordinate parochial priesthood, and Patrick himself is constituted a great metropolitan, and Armagh the seat of a primacy over all." Moffat, p. 64

In about 430, the pope of Rome, Celestine, sent Palladius to the Scots of Ireland to conform existing churches to the Romish model. He gave up and moved to Scotland where there was a Christian community. His mission seems to have been a failure.

Patrick did not recognize the See of Rome and took steps to protect the people from the influence of the extra-Biblical doctrines brought into the land at a later date. They believed that "the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith. Throw aside all merit of works, and look for salvation tot he grace of God alone. Beware of a religion which consists of outward observances: it is better to keep your heart pure before God than to abstain from meats. One alone is your head, Jesus Christ. Bishops and presbyters are equal..." d'Aubigne, The Reformation in England, p. 31.

During most of the 5th and 6th centuries the Celtic Church was cut off from Western Christianity, and developed points of view which were different from those of the broad stream of believers in Mediterranean lands. After their contact with continental Christianity at the end of the 6th century the Celts continued their independence until they were, section by section, gradually absorbed by the Roman Church. Leslie Hardinge, The Celtic Church in Britain, p. xii

Patrick's Beliefs

"One of the most arresting characteristics of the writings of Patrick is the number of Biblical citations they contain. Besides direct quotations there are many phrases filled with imagery borrowed directly from the Scriptures." p.16 "The man of the lasting language, i.e. the holy Cannon. " Whitly Stokes, Tripartite Life of Patrick." II 567. p.17

The Christianity practiced by Patrick's parents and introduced by him into Ireland was characterized by a profound respect for the Ten Commandments. "Wherever Patrick established a church he was believed to have left a copy of "the books of the law and the books of the Gospel." Ibid., p. 45

While the Roman Church claims him for their own, Patrick was a man of the word of God. In this he was typical of the Celtic members who had been carefully taught 'that the Bible was God's Word and could and should be understood by all , and carefully obeyed.' Known in his day as 'the man of the lasting language, i.e. the holy Canon,' Patrick used the Bible extensively. In his writings there are 340 quotations from 46 books of the Bible. By comparison, Gregory Dialogues (the Pope who supposedly sent Christianity to Britain) are liberally peppered with superstitions, unscriptural doctrines and legendary stories.

In his Confession, Patrick shares his belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It has no marks of relation to the Nicene or Constantinopolitan Creeds, nor to the Apostles' Creed. There is no mention of the Virgin Mary. There is no suggestion that implies any acquaintance with the Arian or Semi-Arian controversies, nor with the Pelagian heresy. "This is remarkable for the fifth century, and could not have occurred had its author been educated in France or Italy, where among ecclesiastics those controversies had long enlisted the fiercest partisan zeal and determined certain forms of expression on both sides, heretical and orthodox." Moffat, p. 59

James C. Moffat, a nineteenth -century professor of church history of Princeton, wrote: "It seems to have been customary in the Celtic churches of early times, in Ireland as well as Scotland, to keep Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, as a day of rest from labor... they obeyed the fourth commandment literally upon the seventh day of the week." ⁽¹⁾ James C. Moffat, The Church in Scotland, p.140

"Since the Celtic Church began when Sabbath observance had not been relinquished by Christians at large, it would be surprising, were the Sabbath not revered among them." Leslie Hardinge, The Celtic Church in Britain (London: S. P. C. K., 1972), p. 78.

Stories of Patrick and the Sabbath persisted for years after his death. Muirchu, one of Patrick's biographers, records that "An angel was wont to come to him on every seventh day of the week; and, as one man talks to another, so Patrick enjoyed the angel's conversation." He suggests that this angel may have been a human friend who met with Patrick "every seventh day" for "prayer and spiritual converse." For this insight Hardinge refers to A. Anscombe, "St Victricius of Rouen and St Patrick," ERIU, vol. 7, (1913), pp. 13-17, and N. J. D. White, St. Patrick, His Writings and Life (Dublin: n.p., 1920), p. 109 (Celtic Church in Britain, pp. 78, 79).

According to Bede, the Catholic historian, these Britons "in very many particulars they differed from the Church of Rome;"

When the Roman missionaries came to Britain in 597AD with instructions to spread the Latin version of the Gospel message, they found a Celtic Church already well grounded in Biblical truth.

"Every such clerical fraternity was also a seminary of learning, and besides its family maintained a body of youth in the course of instruction. It was still a missionary system, designed to set an example of Christian life in a state of self-denial and the practice of Christian virtues and affections, and to furnish protection for persecuted converts. Its accommodations were humble, consisting mostly of huts made of wattles and earth of boards but it was 'defended by a wall of veneration, and belief prevailed that the peace of the religious society could not be violated with impunity.'

Care of scriptural instruction was an inheritance from early Christian times faithfully retained by the great missionary to Ireland, and by the clergy who succeeded him. As stated by Columbanus, a monk of the second period, their Church insisted upon knowledge of the Scriptures, and accepted as a standard of doctrine nothing beyond the teaching of the evangelists and apostles. Concerning a daring controversy of his time, he said that, 'excepting those statements which either the law of the prophets or the Gospels or the apostles have made known to us, solemn silence ought to be observed with respect to the Trinity. For it is God's testimony alone that is to be credited concerning God - that is, concerning himself.'" Moffat, pp. 67, 68.

He appealed solely to the Scriptures in support of what he believed, practised, and propagated: "The words are not mine, but of God and the apostles and prophets, who have never lied, which I have set forth in Latin. He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. God hath spoken."

Secundus wrote of Patrick:

"He finds in the sacred volume the sacred treasure...
Whose words are seasoned with the divine oracles...
Whose seeds are seen to be the Gospel of Christ...
He sings Hymns with the Apocalypse, and the Psalms of God,
On which also he discourses, for the edification of the peopl of God;
Which Scripture he believes, in the Trinity of the sacred name,
And teaches the One substance in Three Persons."

"The Celtic Christian's devotion to the scriptures has been demonstrated from his writings [Patricks] and from the records of his contemporaries. From the Bible Patrick derived his understanding of what should be believed and practiced. He took his duties as the apostle of Ireland very seriously, affirming that according to the rule of faith in the Trinity, it should define doctrine, and make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, without being held back by danger and spread everywhere the name of God without fear, confidently." Hardinge, p. 53, Confession par 14.

"Appreciation for the great love Christ manifested in taking human nature in order to die for the fallen race is often noted." Titus 3:4 T.P. I, 701. p.52

"But in the works of Patrick and other Celtic writers, including the glossators, there is no mention of the virgin birth, nor is there any conscious effort to suppress the fact. Faith is simply expressed in His birth.

Preaching was an important means by which the Celtic missionaries, Patrick and Columba, etc. spread the gospel.

"There is no hint of any other intermediary, angel, saint or priest, between God and fallen man in the writings of Patrick and for three centuries after his day, Christ alone was regarded as making intercession." p.54

"The Spirit, also enables man to discover truth by illuminating his mind through grace, and directing his prayers, which were held to be ineffectual without the inspiration of the Spirit. This illumination will bring about "the resurrection" or new birth through baptism, which results in the believer's possessing the mind or desires of the Spirit, for it is the Spirit who places holy aspirations in the soul of man. An Old-Irish poem epitomized the longing for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit."

The Holy Spirit is to inhabit
our body and our souls,
to protect us speedily...
O Jesus, may it sanctify us,
May the Spirit free us." p.57

"His immortality, the Celts felt, was contingent on his obedience to the law of God."

"There is no indication that Patrick or Celtic Christians for two centuries after him, invoked saints or angels." p.70

ON THE TRINITY