By Dr. Joe Thomas
Originally published online in Glimpses by Christianity Today International

Patrick – The Making of a Missionary

The wooden boats tossed to and fro in the heavy seas just off the coast of Britannia. Big, powerfully built men, their long hair bundled up on top of their heads, iron swords in sheaths fastened at the hip to their belts, surveyed the tempestuous sea as they set sail for Ireland.

Patrick lay bound in the cramped hull, one of many captives crammed into the small boat. The sixteen-year-old was motionless, frozen in a state of shock. His father’s estate lay behind him in smoking ruins. Fortunately, his parents had been away from home and were still alive, but Patrick’s life as a pampered aristocrat’s son was over. Now he was a slave to a race his family considered barbarians.

Several hours later, the boat landed on the shore of the strange land. Ireland! It was very different from Britannia. There were no Roman roads, no Roman architecture, no amphitheaters, public buildings or baths. The Irish even preferred to live out in the wilds with their extended family rather than in towns. Even more ominous, Ireland knew nothing of Christianity and its virtues. Instead, it clung to its pagan rituals, which were led by Druid priests.

The contrast between Ireland and his beloved Britannia only served to intensify Patrick’s fears. As he gazed around the slave camp, Patrick realized that thousands of Britons had been captured and brought to Ireland. Eventually, the slaves were organized and marched off to the primitive homes of their new owners. Putting one weary foot in front of the other, Patrick numbly walked the path his captors had forced upon him. What lay ahead for him, he did not know.

Born to Wealth and Privilege
Magonus Sucatus Patricius (Patrick) caught his first glimpse of the world around the year 385 A.D. Born into a British upper-class family that was nominally Christian, Patrick lived out his childhood and youth in the sort of privilege that only aristocratic birth can bring. Part of that privilege included a Roman education and a house full of servants to meet all of his needs.

Surprisingly, out of this life of ease and lax spiritual commitment was born a successful missionary. At the end of Patrick’s life, Ireland had essentially left its pagan roots and become a largely Christian nation, with many men and women eager to give their whole lives to God for the sake of the Gospel. Indeed, a stream of missionaries flowed out of Ireland over the next few centuries, bringing most of the barbarian tribes of northern Europe into the Christian fold.

Yet, how did Patrick come to know God so intimately, growing up in a nominal Christian family? How did he overcome the pampered nature of his childhood to withstand the rigors of a missionary life in Ireland? Part of the answer, it must be remembered, is that nothing is too great an obstacle for God to overcome. So God plucked Patrick from his life of ease and comfort and made him into a man of God. This is the story of how God made a rugged missionary out of Magonus Sucatus Patricius.

A Slave Cries Out to God
Now a slave, Patrick spent his days tending his master’s sheep and trying to learn a new language. He was caught in an alien world of gods and goddesses, magical practices and spells. Once a free man living under the protection of Roman law and a son of a wealthy governmental official, Patrick’s fall into slavery left him feeling hopeless. Caught in the slough of despond, Patrick slowly began to turn to the God he had willingly neglected as a youth. Patrick started praying day and night to the God he did not yet know. In prayer, he poured out his fears and anxieties to God. Shepherding on the slopes of Mt. Slemish, Patrick’s heart began to formulate the words to what would later become his famous prayer:

I arise today
through the strength of Christ
with His Baptism
through the strength of His Crucifixion
with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection
with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent
for the Judgment of Doom

Christ to protect me today
against poison, against burning,
against drowning, against wounding,
so that there may come abundance of reward

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit,
Christ where I arise, Christ in the heart
of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth
of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today,
through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
through belief in the Threeness,
through confession of the Oneness,
towards the Creator
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of Christ.
May Thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

And so Patrick grew to know God intimately and fervently in a way he never did as an aristocrat’s son in Britannia.

The Voice in the Night
One night Patrick heard a voice in his dreams that told him, “Soon you will go to your own country.”

And a little later the voice declared, “See, your ship is ready.”

The next morning Patrick secretly left his master, confident that the Spirit of God would guide him to the promised ship and take him to freedom. Patrick traveled two hundred miles on foot from Mt. Slemish to the ocean’s shoreline and found a ship ready to depart from Ireland. Patrick approached the captain of the ship, which carried Irish wolfhounds meant for Roman entertainment in stadiums across the Empire, and offered to tend to the dogs for free passage.

The captain replied harshly, “It is of no use for you to ask to go along with us.”

Disappointed, Patrick turned to walk back up from the shore. He began to pray and seek God for direction, and soon, one of the ship’s crewmen shouted after him, “Come, hurry, we shall take you on in good faith; make friends with us in whatever way you like.”

The ship sailed for three days, arriving in the Roman province of Gaul (modern France) on the continent of Europe. For several days, the men walked through Gaul without meeting a soul. Food was scarce, and hunger soon started to overtake them.

The captain turned to Patrick in desperation, “Tell me, Christian: you say that your God is great and all-powerful; why, then, do you not pray for us? As you can see, we are suffering from hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see a human being again.”

Full of confidence that the Lord had arranged all things, Patrick responded, “Be truly converted with all your heart to the Lord my God, because nothing is impossible for Him, that this day He may send you food on your way until you be satisfied; for He has abundance everywhere.” As he finished this exhortation, a herd of pigs suddenly appeared in front of them. They spent the next two days feasting on the wild pigs.

The Voice of the Irish
After some time in Gaul, Patrick had the opportunity to return to Britannia and his family. When he arrived, his family was overjoyed to see him, since they had given up all hope of ever seeing him alive again. Patrick again found himself living in his former luxury and enjoyed the privilege that came from being the son of an aristocratic father. But in the midst of the celebration and jubilation at his homecoming, he could not forget his heavenly Father who had rescued him and forged him into a man of God. Patrick could never return to his old way of life, for he was a new man.

Once again, the Lord visited him at night in a vision. A man named Victoricus came to Patrick from Ireland with several letters. Patrick began to read one letter which started, “The voice of the Irish….” Suddenly, a group of people from Western Ireland interrupted his reading and said to him in one voice, “We ask you, holy boy, come and walk among us once more.” The desperate plea from the people broke Patrick’s heart, rendering him unable to finish the letter. At that moment he woke up.

Patrick told his family of the vision he received during the night. They pleaded with him not to leave them again. Hadn’t he suffered enough hardship for one lifetime? How could he return to the people who had enslaved him? How could he bear to leave them again? In turmoil and divided in purpose, he continued to pray and seek God.

The Spirit of God confirmed his call to Ireland. This time, Patrick would go to Ireland as the Lord’s bond-slave to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. To receive training for his missionary work, Patrick traveled back to Gaul to receive instruction from some of the country’s most excellent teachers of the Bible.

Still confident in God’s call for him to go to Ireland, Patrick waited patiently to hear from the leaders of the church. Their decision came in 432 A.D., and after raising him to the level of bishop, the church sent Magonus Sucatus Patricius off to the former land of his enslavement. Fully prepared for the hardships ahead, fluent in the their language and used to discerning the leading of the Spirit of God, Patrick, God’s chosen instrument, set sail for Ireland. The country and, some argue, the world, would never be the same again.

By Dr. Joe Thomas

Originally Published in:  Hillerbrand, Hans Joachim. “Davies, Samuel.” The Encyclopedia of Protestantism. D-K ed. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge, 2004. 558-59.

————–

DAVIES, SAMUEL (1723-1761)
American clergy. Virtually forgotten in the long shadows of such towering eighteenth-century figures as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, Samuel Davies sowed seeds of revolutionary change in colonial America. As Presbyterian’ pastor and leader of the Great Awakening in Virginia, published poet, America’s first composer of hymns, educator of slaves, successful advocate for religious toleration, and the fourth president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he helped shape much of the religious landscape that developed in nineteenth-century America.

Call to Ministry
Born November 3, 1723 to David and Martha Davies in New Castle County, Delaware, his mother named him after the Old Testament prophet Samuel in response to answered prayer for a son, and similarly dedicated him to the service of the Lord. He studied for the ministry in Samuel Blair’s famed “log college” at Fagg’s Manor, Pennsylvania. Davies appeared before the New Light Presbytery of New Castle and received his ordination in 1747.

Davies settled in Hanover County in May, 1748 to pastor four meetinghouses of Presbyterian dissenters. Willing to work within the ecclesiastical system of the Church of England, the established church of Virginia, Davies sought and obtained a license to preach from the colonial governor. Unlike many New Light preachers, the temperate Davies took care to cultivate warm relations with those who belonged to the established church and colonial government. He did not openly evangelize their members, nor did he disparage the Anglican ministers. Indeed, on October 4, 1748 he married Jane Holt, the daughter of a prominent family from Williamsburg and a member of the Church of England. As a result, even those who disagreed with him found no grounds to criticize his character or actions.

Great A wakening in Virginia
The Great Awakening solidified its hold in Virginia under the ministry of Davies. Soon the number of Presbyterian congregations was spreading beyond Hanover County. Davies found a ready audience for the gospel when he arrived in the colony. New Light evangelists before him had brought many people into the faith and prepared many for the evangelical message. Davies’s own revival success was not predicated on the great emotional outbursts or physical manifestations common elsewhere during the Great Awakening. His moderate disposition and his audience’s Anglican background served to restrain such behavior. For his part Davies neither encouraged nor discouraged excess emotionalism, although he did consider it to be a valid expression of the salvific experience.

The fine oratorical ability and humble demeanor of Davies received favorable responses wherever he preached. He focused the content of his sermons on the harsh reality of frontier life, especially the imminence of death. Because of his own weak physical constitution he carried the conviction that his life had been spared from premature death so that he could preach to the people of Virginia. Consequently he considered his own PREACHING to be “as a dying man to dying men” (Pilcher 1971 :65). He balanced such dire preaching, however, with sermons on the enjoyment and pleasure to be derived from the justified life. His sermons, which were collected and published as Sermons on Important Subjects, were still being read on both sides of the Atlantic a century after his death.

Preaching did not exhaust the means that Davies used to reach Hanover with the gospel. He also wrote poetry to explicate further the divine truths gathered from his sermon preparations and to express his own devotional feelings toward God. They appeared in the local Virginia Gazette and were collected for the private libraries of a number of Anglican planters. In 1752 over fifty of his poems were published under the title Miscellaneous Poems. He was, as well, the first colonial American to write and publish hymns, many of which he wrote to accompany his sermons and to prepare his parishioners for the Lord’s Supper. His “Communion Hymns” were still being used into the twentieth century.

Davies, himself a slave owner, made the evangelistic outreach to the slave population a significant priority of his ministry. By 1755 nearly three hundred slaves attended his church services. With the help of friends in England, John and Charles Wesley numbered among them, Davies provided spelling books, catechetical material, and the hymnals of Isaac Watts for the slaves. The slaves especially valued Watts’s hymnals. Davies recounted that at times the “sundry of them were lodged all night in my kitchen; and sometimes, when I have awaked about two or three a-clock in the morning, a torrent of sacred harmony poured into my chamber and carried my mind away to heaven” (Pilcher 1971:112).

Advocate and Educator
Davies’s revivalistic success brought him into frequent conflict with the colonial government. Davies pressed the officials in Wi1liamsburg to recognize the Act of Toleration passed in England in 1689 as having force in the British colonies. Not until his trip to England (1753-1755) did he successfully secure a declaration from the royal government that the Act of Toleration extended to the dissenters in Virginia. With the commencement of the French and Indian War, the government of Virginia found it expedient to ignore remaining restrictions on the Presbyterians to ensure their loyalty to the Crown. Davies’s fight for the toleration of dissenters is recognized as laying the groundwork for the separation of Church and State in the United States.

In 1758 Samuel Davies became the fourth president of the College of New Jersey. He had earlier visited England with Gilbert Tennent to raise money for the fledgling college. The funds procured on the trip built Nassau Hall and helped to put the college on sound economic footing. During his brief two years as president he raised the standard for both entrance and graduation and planned to expand the library. His untimely death came on February 4, 1761, at the age of thirty-seven.

————

References and Further Reading

Primary Sources:
Davies. Samuel.  Letters from the Rev. Samuel Davies, &c., Shewing the State of Religion Particularly Among the Negroes. London: R. Pardon, 1757.
—. The Duty of Masters to Their Servants in a Sermon. Lynchburg, VA: William W. Gray, 1809.
—. The Godly Family. Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications. 1993.
Davies. Samuel and George William Pilcher. The Reverend Samuel Davies Abroad. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967.
Davies, Samuel and Thomas Gibbons. Sermons, Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1864.

Secondary Sources:
Alley. Robert S. “The Reverend Mr. Samuel Davies: A Study In Religion and Politics, 1747-1759.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton U ni versity, 1962.
Bost, George H. “Samuel Davies: Colonial Revivalist and Champion of Religious Toleration.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1959.
Larson, Barbara Ann. “A Rhetorical Study of the Preaching of the Reverend Samuel Davies in the Colony of Virginia from 1747 to 1759.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1969.
Pilcher, George W.  Samuel Davies: Apostle Dissent in Colonial Virginia. Knoxville: University Tennessee Press, 1971.

by Aaron Meeks, MAR student

Hi–my name is Aaron and I don’t always fit in well within church culture.  You might think this odd coming from someone who has been in the pastoral ministry for over 12 years, but it is true.  You see, I am either too conservative or too liberal depending on who you talk to.  I guess you can label me how you want once you’ve read this blog (or not).

I grew up under the influence of some very conservative Baptist teaching, some results being good and others bad.  The first result of this was that I developed a very high appreciation for the truthfulness, validity and applicability of all Scripture.  I still carry a conservative theology largely based on the formative influence of the spiritual teachers of my youth.  In this way I am proud to be “conservative.”

However, even within this conservative framework, I found myself questioning some long-standing teachings held dear by some of my conservative brethren.  Issues such as alcohol consumption, rock and roll, women in ministry, and others were all handled in the same way.  Rather than engaging in a discussion over the scriptural passages addressing these issues, it was just simpler to latch on to a few isolated scriptures (in or out of context) and leap to the simple black and white answer of “NO”.  Never drink alcohol under any circumstance.  Rock and roll is always evil.  Women should never speak from the platform, let alone be involved in pastoral ministry.

Even as a young man, this reduction of complex issues to a simple “NO” bothered me.  Could it be that simple?  The fact that I even raised these questions got me labeled as a “liberal” within the conservative circles that I grew up in.  Is it possible that it is ok to drink alcohol in moderation?  Can rock and roll be used to glorify God?  Do women have something worth while to add to the faith conversation?  The answer to all of these is of course “YES”.  And yet, I have been labeled liberal by some because I have come to this conclusion.  In this way I am proud to be labeled “liberal.”

It is with this baggage that I entered the Urbana Seminary class on “Women in Ministry” last summer.  It was a bit nerve racking after I realized that I would be the only man in a class on women in ministry.  I knew that I probably represented a more conservative view than most on this topic, but I was more nervous that I would once again be met with a dogmatic “YES” or “NO” answer that would shut down the dialogue.  You see, I was looking for the conversation.  We had many conversations in this class.

The very cool thing was that as this class progressed, we grew in our ability to learn from those who disagreed with us.  We recognized the presence of God within each other and allowed Him to speak through us to teach each other so that we could continue to grow as a result of the conversation.  It wasn’t about who was “conservative” or “liberal”.  It became about followers of Jesus exploring the scripture and personal experience together in community.  We all grew and we all changed.

In the end, none of us completely changed our stand, but all of us left the class with a greater understanding of the others’ view.  We all influenced each other in a way that drew us closer to God and to each other.  I learned a great deal from these women of God.  I have no doubt that He has great plans to use these women in His church.

If you are wondering where I ended up concerning the topic of women in ministry,  you are in good company.  I am still wondering that myself.  I don’t believe that my personal exploration of this topic has ended.  This I know for sure, women should have the opportunity to exercise their spiritual gifting within the local church.  God has gifted women just as he has gifted men to accomplish His purposes.  Women should be allowed to teach, preach and lead within the context of the local church.  Some would label me as liberal for this view.  I still have questions about whether the role of elder should be reserved for men.  The fact that I entertain this question will have me labeled as conservative by others.  I don’t personally put much stock in labels and you can feel free to disagree with my current tendencies.  I just believe that it is important to keep having the conversation and to continue exploring Scriptural issues beyond what our opinion is at any given moment.  Let’s talk it out…