e good which they
imagine.

Footnotes:
1. According to Usher and Tillemont, in 372. The former places his
death in 493: but Tillemont, about the year 455. Nennius, published
by Mr. Gale, says he died fifty-seven years before the birth of St.
Columba, consequently in 464.
2. St. Prosper, in his chronicle, assures us that pope Celestine
ordained St. Palladius bishop of the Scots in 431, and by him
converted their country to the faith; this apostle seems to have
preached to this nation first in Ireland, and afterwards in
Scotland. Though Palladius be styled by St. Prosper and Bede their
first bishop, yet the light of the faith had diffused its rays from
Britain into Ireland before that time, as several monuments produced
by Usher demonstrate. But the general conversion of the inhabitants
of this Island was reserved for St. Patrick.

The Scot are distinguished from the native Irish in the works of St.
Patrick, and in other ancient monuments. As to their original, the
most probable conjecture seems to be, that they were a foreign
warlike nation, who made a settlement in Ireland before the arrival
of St. Patrick. We find them mentioned there in the fourth century.
Several colonies of them passed not long after into Scotland. But
the inhabitants of Ireland were promiscuously called Scots or Irish,
for many ages.
3. The style is not polished; but the Latin edition is perhaps only a
translation: or his captivities might have prevented his progress in
polite learning being equal to that which he made in the more
sublime and more necessary studies.
4. A second council, extant in the same collection, ought rather to be
ascribed to a nephew of this saint. Other Irish canons, published in
the ninth tome of D'Achery's Spicilege, and more by Martenne,
(Anecd. tome 4, part 2,) though they bear the name of St. Patrick,
are judged to have been framed by some of his successors. See
Wilkins, Conc. Britan. & Hibern. t. 1, p. 3.

The treatise, of the Twelve Abuses, published among the works of St.
Austin and St. Cyprian, is attributed to St. Patrick, in a
collection of ecclesiastical ordinances made in Ireland, in the
eighth age, by Arbedoc, and in other ancient monuments. The style is
elegant; but it may be a translation from an Irish original. Sir
James Ware published the works of St. Patrick at London