The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick/The Life and Acts of St. Patrick/Chapter 183

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The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick
by James O'Leary
The Life and Acts of St. Patrick by Jocelin, translated by Edmund L. Swift
Chapter CLXXXIII: The Daily Prayers and Genuflexions of the Saint
180213The Most Ancient Lives of Saint PatrickThe Life and Acts of St. Patrick by Jocelin, translated by Edmund L. Swift
Chapter CLXXXIII: The Daily Prayers and Genuflexions of the Saint
James O'Leary

The Daily Prayers and Genuflexions of the Saint.

And now, the cloud of unbelief, by whose eclipse the people of Hibernia so long had wanted the warmth and the light of the true sun, being dispersed, now did the tongue, the life, the virtue of the blessed Patrick, so long as the breath and the Spirit of God were in his nostrils, avail unto the things which were begun, continued, and ended in the Lord; giving the knowledge of salvation, affording the example of holiness, extending the remedy of all diseases. And verily, this peculiar habit of life, which he exercised in secret, was daily and perpetual; inasmuch as every day was he wont diligently to sing the entire Psaltery, with many songs and hymns, and the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, and two hundred prayers before God; three hundred times did he bend his knees in adoration of the Lord; every canonical hour of the day did he one hundred times sign himself with the sign of the cross. Nevertheless did he not omit every day worthily and devoutly to offer up unto the Father the sacrifice of the Son; and never ceased he to teach the people or instruct his disciples.