First, in his "Confession" and "Letter to Coroticus", Patrick mentions priests and bishops. One might suppose these are Baptist priests and Bishops. The argument will then be that these bishops are just pastors of Baptist churches. Fine. Who or what are these “priests” of whom he speaks? He mourns in paragraph 1 of the Confession that the people of Ireland have been “quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation.” So undoubtedly, he felt obedience to these priests was important and that disobedience was something for which repentance was needed. That certainly doesn’t sound like any Baptist I’ve ever heard. In fact, I am not aware of them giving obedience to any man.
In paragraph 6 of the Letter, he gives us a very interesting piece of information concerning these priests:
“Coroticus, a man who has no respect for God nor for His priests whom He chose, giving them the highest, divine, and sublime power, that whom ‘they should bind upon earth should be bound also in Heaven.’”That sounds vaguely catholic (little “c” on purpose) to me. It sounds as if he is speaking of the power pronouncing the forgiveness of sins to the penitent. Although it has been a while since I have been to a Baptist church, I don’t think things have changed so much as to include a pronouncing of forgiveness to the penitent. The way Patrick speaks of this “highest, divine, and sublime power” certainly does not sound like any Baptist I have ever heard or heard about ever.
Patrick talks about some other non-typical Baptist folk in paragraph 13 of the Letter:
“Ravening wolves have devoured the flock of the Lord, which in Ireland was indeed growing splendidly with the greatest care; and the sons and daughters of kings were monks and virgins of Christ - I cannot count their number.”
And here from "The Confession" (par. 41): “the sons of the Irish [Scotti] and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ.”
While in the next paragraph of the same, he rejoices,
“a most beautiful, blessed, native-born noble Irish [Scotta] woman of adult age whom I baptized; and a few days later she had reason to come to us to intimate that she had received a prophecy from a divine messenger [who] advised her that she should become a virgin of Christ and she would draw nearer to God.”Again, I was unaware that the Baptist have monks or virgins for Christ (nuns). When did this begin? Where is the Southern Baptist Monastery located? One wonders how many Baptist women have divine prophecies given to them to become nuns and how many Baptist Bishops would give God praise if any women did. We have to admit that Patrick is sounding less and less (rather than increasingly) Baptist.
Patrick also mentions some very un-Baptist acts in his writings.
Note the following:
“I plead with you earnestly, ye holy and humble of heart, it is not permissible to court the favor of such people, nor to take food or drink with them, nor even to accept their alms, until they make reparation to God in hard-ships, through penance, with shedding of tears….” (Letter, par. 7)
“The day after the newly baptized, anointed with chrism, in white garments (had been slain) - the fragrance was still on their foreheads when they were butchered and slaughtered with the sword….” (Letter, par. 3)I have not been apprised of the fact that the Baptist have now begun practicing penance or anointing the newly baptized with oil. When did this start? We all know that it has not started and never will.
Patrick speaks about the “Roman Christians of Gaul” (Letter, par. 15). It would not be too hard to guess what kind of Christians these were. It is certain that they were not Baptist. And it is unthinkable for this Baptist Bishop to be commending a catholic as a Christian at all.
While Landis et al. may be thoroughly convinced of the truth of their claims, there is absolutely no historical evidence to back them up. He asserts that Patrick could not be Catholic because the Catholic Church was “an embryo” during Patrick’s time. If that is the case, we can also say he was not a Baptist because the Baptist church was not even an embryo then and would not begin for another 1000 years at least.
