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nunquam aliquis pervenerat qui baptizaret, aut cle-
ricosordinaret,autpopulum consummaret ? I went
every where to promote your cause, even to remote
districts where no one had ever arrived who could
baptize, or ordain clergy, or complete (perhaps confirm)
the people ?a testimony which appears to be stronger than that which is conveyed in your extract. Upon the evidence of two witnesses such as these I might be contented to rest my case. The first, you at least must allow to be unimpeachable ; and against the second you cannot object, as it is given upon authority and documents which you yourself have produced and relied on : but I have many more witnesses in reserve, and some of them whose credit shall also be confirmed by your introduction and approval. In your account of the first efforts of Pope Celestine to relieve
the wants of the Irish, and to appoint
a bishop for the superintendence of their infant
church, (p. 209,) you relate, that
the person
chosen for this mission to the Scots believing in
Christ, (for so it is specified by the chronicler,)
was Palladius, a deacon of the Roman church ….
and, whatever preachers of the faith, foreign or
native, might have appeared previously in Ireland,
it seems certain that, before this period, no Prosper Chron. Bass, et Antioch. Coss. It is scarcely necessary to state, and quite unnecessary to prove, that, by the Scots, the inhabitants of Ireland were, at that time, exclusively meant. It is not only a truth relied on throughout your work, but one that is denied by no one of any authority that has examined the subject. Us. Prim. p. 734. - hierarchy had been there instituted; bat that in
Palladius the Irish Christians saw their first bishop. Now, as this mission is confessedly to the Sco…