Future state of the church supernaturally revealed to him. A miracle of the church he had founded, offered up a fervent prayer to God, to know what its destiny would be in future ages. The Lord, having heard his prayer, first presented to his view an island, as if all on fire, and covered with a flame which raised itself to the skies: he afterwards beheld only the tops of the mountains burning. Those first visions may be applied to the four first ages of Christianity in this island, when religion was still in all its splendour. But the eclipse, occasioned by the incursions of the barbarians of the north in the ninth and tenth centuries, is strongly represented by the darkness, which, according to the vision, had succeeded to the light, and by the thinly-scattered sparks which the saint beheld in the valleys, and the still lighted coals which lay concealed beneath the ashes. The light which the apostle saw coming from the north, and which, after dispelling the darkness, lighted the whole island, implies the re-establishment of religion after the expulsion of the Danes; which that author ascribes to the zeal of the learned Celse, otherwise, Celestine, Ceallach, or, in the language of the country, Kellach, who was Archbishop of Armagh in the beginning of the twelfth century, and of his successor St. Malachi"." The latter legend is cited by the modern historian of St. Patrick's Cathedral from the Register of John Alan, the last Archbishop of Dublin before the Reformation, and it is said to have been written with the archbishop's own hand. Mr. Mason adds, that this story of Satan flying from the holy man, and escaping into the earth at Puck's Rock, is preserved among the neighbouring people by tradition. MAC GEOHEGAN's Hist. vol. i. p. 457. It seems that on an island, called "Ireland's Eye," not far from the main land, a monastery was founded, in 570, by St. Nessan, thence denominated St. Nessan's Isle in the Bull of Pope Alexander the Third, which was issued in 1179. Alluding to this island, the archbishop describes it as the spot "where that holy man, St. Nessan, was instant in frequent prayers, fasting and watching. In which place," he continues, "there appeared to him the evil spirit in the form of a very black man, whom with some indignation he pursued, with hyssop full of holy water; walking over the sea for the space of about a mile, and bidding the Devil to enter the rock at a place which is called Howth, where that hill is vulgarly named 'Powkes-rock,' and outside is seen his image in stone of a very common appearance. Where it is related, that, at the time when he put the devil to flight, there fell into the sea his own book of the Gospel, called by the inhabitants "The Keslowre,' which afterwards being found by sailors uninjured, it has thenceforth, and to this day, been there held in great value, and no common veneration: so that scarce a religious man dares to swear upon it, on account of the vengeance of God hitherto manifested on men, who have sworn on it falsely"." But these, perhaps, may be regarded as mere private tales. One, therefore, shall be added from the authorised publick services of the Church. It relates to a very distinguished Irish saint; and is taken from the supplement annexed to the Roman Breviary, and containing proper offices commemorative of certain of the saints of Ireland, published by the MASON'S St. Patrick's Cathedral, p. 64. His personal defeat of the evil spirit. Miraculous legend of St. Bridget, or Brigid. Her miraculous deformity. Miraculous resto ration of her former beauty. printer and bookseller of the Royal College of Maynooth, Dublin, 1808. "Brigid," says the lesson for the 1st of February, being the festival of St. Brigid, virgin, patroness of Ireland, "Brigid, a holy virgin of the province of Leinster, in Ireland, born of noble and Christian parents, became the mother of many holy virgins in Christ. When she was yet a little infant, her father saw men, clothed in white garments, pour oil upon her head, thus prefiguring the future purity and holiness of the virgin. Arriving at the first years of childhood, she so earnestly, from the bottom of her heart, clung to Christ the Saviour, whom she chose for her spouse, that, for love of him, she expended on the poor whatever she could acquire. And lest the suitors, by many of whom, on account of her incomparable beauty, she was sought in marriage, should compel her to break the vow of virginity, by which she had bound herself to God, she prayed God to make her deformed, and presently she was heard; for one of her eyes immediately became swollen, and her whole face was so altered, that she was permitted to send back a message to her suitors, and to consecrate her virginity to Christ by a solemn vow. "Having then taken to her three maidens, she proceeded forth to the Bishop Macheas, St. Patrick's disciple, who seeing over her head a pillar of fire, put on her a shining vest, and a white robe, and having read holy prayers, admitted her to the canonical profession, which the blessed Patrick had introduced into Ireland. Whereupon, whilst she was stooping her head to receive the sacred veil, when she had touched with her hand the wood at the foot of the altar, that dry wood, on a sudden, became green again, and her eye was healed, and her face restored to its pristine beauty. And afterwards, by her example, such a multitude of maidens embraced that institution of a regular life, that in a short time, it filled all Ireland with convents of virgins: amongst which that, over which Brigid herself presided, was the chief, and on that as their head, all the rest depended. formed by her. "Moreover the holiness of this virgin is attested Miracles perby the miracles wrought by her both during her life, and after its termination. For ofttimes she cleansed lepers, and, by her prayers, procured health for those who were afflicted with various infirmities; yea, she also gave sight to a man blind from his birth. And when Bishop Broon was falsely accused, by an unchaste woman that she was with child by him, by making the sign of the cross on the mouth of the new-born infant, who thereupon announced his real father, she rescued the accused from calumny. Nor was she wanting in the spirit of prophecy, whereby Her spirit of she foretold many future things, as if they were pre sent. To St. Patrick, also, the apostle of the Irish, to whom she was joined in the most holy intimacy, she foreshowed the day of his departure from this life, and the place of his burial, and was present at his departure, and gave him a linen cloth, which she had prepared beforehand for swathing his body. At length, yielding up her beautiful soul to her spouse Christ, she was buried in the same tomb with the blessed Patrick." prophecy. divine worship. 3. For the scriptural and primitive modes of wor- Celebration of ship, publick prayers, and the ministration of the sacraments, were celebrated in an unknown tongue, with the inventions of a fond imagination. Some of these are described feelingly and for Remnants of cibly, but, as it should seem, not untruly, by Bishop Romish supersti- Bale, who, on his arrival in Ireland in 1552, found tion in 1552. Manner of celebrating mass. the remnants of the Romish superstition still in operation, notwithstanding the progress of the Reformation, and thus speaks of the religious rites which first fell under his notice in Waterford. 66 In beholding the face and order of that city, I saw many abominable idolatries maintained by the priests for their worldly interests. The communion, or supper of the Lord, was there altogether used like a popish mass, with the old apish toys of antichrist, in bowings and beckonings, kneelings and knockings. . . . There wailed they over their dead with prodigious howlings and patterings, as though their souls had not been quieted in Christ, and redeemed by his passion, but that they must come after, and help at a pinch with requiem eternam, to deliver them out of hell by their sorrowful sorceries." And when, by the removal of the restraint imposed by the Reformation under King Edward the Sixth, the former observances revived, and "the clergy resumed again the whole possession, or heap of superstitions of the Bishop of Rome," "they brought forth their copes, candlesticks, holy water-stocks, crosses, and censers; they mustered forth in general procession, most gorgeously, all the town over, with Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis,' and the rest of the Latin Liturgy; they again deceived the people as aforetime, with their Latin mumblings; they made the witless sort believe that they could make, every day, new gods of their little white cakes, and that they could fetch their friends' souls from flaming purgatory, if need be, with other great miracles else"." Add particularly the manner of celebrating the 10 BALE'S Vocacyon. |