Page:The most ancient lives of Saint Patrick - O'Leary.djvu/154

 their outward habit and abiding they seemed to serve under the yoke of Babylon, yet did they in their acts and in their conversation show themselves to be citizens of Jerusalem. Therefore, out of the earth of their flesh, being freed from the tares of sin and from the noxious weeds of vice by the ploughshare of evangelic and apostolic learning, and being fruitful in the growth of all virtues, did they, as the best and richest fruit, bring forth a son, whom, when he had at the holy font put off the old man, they caused to be named Patricius, as being the future father and patron of many nations; of whom, even at his baptism, the God which is three in one was pleased, by the sign of a threefold miracle, to declare how pure a vessel of election should he prove, and how devoted a worshipper of the Holy Trinity. But after a little while, this happy birth being completed, they vowed themselves by mutual consent unto chastity, and with an holy end rested in the Lord. But Calphurnius first served God a long time in the deaconship, and at length closed his days in the priesthood.

A certain man named Gormas, who had been blind even from his mother's womb, heard in a dream a voice commanding him that he should take the hand of the boy Patrick, then lately baptized, and make on the ground the sign of the cross&mdash;adding that at the touch a new fountain would burst forth, with the water whereof,