Page:The most ancient lives of Saint Patrick - O'Leary.djvu/342

 have with them cymbals, for the expulsion of evil spirits, for their own bodily exercise, to proclaim the hours of the day and night, and for I know not what other causes. One thing, however, is certain, that many miracles are known to have been performed by the sound or the touch of these cymbals. Therefore at the Lord's Supper, the blessed Patrick going forth of his retirement into public view, rejoiced with his presence the whole church of the saints who were born of his preaching unto Christ. And there he discharged his episcopal office, the which he always joined with those sacred seasons; and thus went he forward in the work of salvation.

Then at the Paschal tide, his accustomed devotions being finished, he went round the whole island with a holy multitude of his sons whom he had brought forth unto Christ; and everywhere teaching the way of the Lord, he converted to, or confirmed in, the faith the dwellers therein. And all the islanders, unto whom had come even the knowledge of his name, for this so strange and wondrous miracle surrendered themselves to him and to his doctrine, as to an angel of light, and devoutly they obeyed him for their peculiar apostle. Then this most excellent husbandman, seeing the hardness of the Lord's field to be softened, and the thorns, the thistles, and the tares rooted forth, labored to fertilize it so much the more abundantly with the increase of profitable seed, that it produced