various creeds and opinions, as well as to English Christians, who, in general, know little of the great Apostle of Ireland.[1]
The utter impossibility of publishing in Ireland any work of the kind which would be regarded with equal favour by Roman Catholics and Protestants was abundantly proved in this case. An eminent Irish scholar, a Roman Catholic priest, who died some time after the publication of the earlier editions, was asked to join with me as co-editor of the work, in order to secure its impartiality. He, however, stated that he could not approve of publishing St. Patrick's writings without theological notes, and that he would require to be permitted to point out that even the occasional use by Patrick of the term sacerdos (priest) to indicate a Christian minister was sufficient to prove that St. Patrick believed in the Roman Catholic doctrine of 'the sacrifice of the mass.' Of course under such conditions it was impossible to accept his services. The Irish Catholic, a Dublin Roman Catholic weekly journal, in a review of the work after its publication, similarly maintained that the omission in the work of any discussion of the question
- ↑ These expectations were not wholly unfulfilled. Four thousand copies of an 8vo. edition in pica type, published at sixpence sewn, and one shilling in cloth, were disposed of in a little more than eighteen months. This in itself must be regarded as a very creditable fact. But the price at which the work had been issued was unremunerative, and although a sum of £30 was subscribed in answer to an appeal by the Irish Branch of the Evangelical Alliance, that sum was wholly insufficient to print successive editions of the work, and to meet other necessary expenses. Hence the work was offered to the Religious Tract Society, and accepted by that Society for publication in their 'Christian Classics' Series.
