Having these facts in mind, it is easy to interpret the words of St. Patrick: "Though I should have wished to leave them, and had been ready and very desirous of going to Britain [Britanniis], as if to my own country and parents; and not that alone, but to go even to Gaul (Gallias) to visit my brethren, and to see the face of the Lord's Saints, and God knows how ardently I wished it but I was bound in the Spirit, and He Who witnesseth will account me guilty if I do so--and I fear to lose the results of the labour which I have begun. And not I, but the Lord Jesus Christ, Who commanded me to come and remain with them for the rest of my life--if the Lord so will it, and keeps me from every evil way, that I should not sin before Him" ("Confession"). St. Patrick's relatives resided in the Gaulish province of Britain, and the disciples of St. Martin--"the Lord's Saints"--lived at Marmoutier in the province of Gaul. St. Patrick's natural desire was first to visit his relatives in Armorican Britain, and next to renew his friendship with the followers of St. Martin at Marmoutier, but God had decreed that he should spend all the rest of his days in the land of his adoption. Gaul was not only the name of the whole country, which embraced three provinces--Gallia, Aquitania, and Britannia--it was also the name of one of the provinces. As Gaul in its widest sense was a different country from the Island of Britain, so the province of Gaul was quite distinct from the province of Armoric Britain. The Gauls, Aquitanians, and Britons, all possessing, as Csesar testifies, separate governments and different nationalities, regarded one another as distinct races. Thus Sulpicius Severus represents a Gaul as addressing some Aquitanians as follows: "When I think of myself as a Gaul about to address Aquitanians, I fear lest my uncultured speech should offend your too refined ears"--"Sed dum cogito me hominem Gallum inter Aquitanos verba facturum, vereor ne offendat nimium urbanas aures sermo rusticior" (Dialogue 20). ST. PATRICK CALLS COROTICUS, A BRITISH PRINCE, "FELLOW CITIZEN." IT is objected again that St. Patrick called the followers of Coroticus, who were Britons, his fellow citizens, and that, therefore, the Saint and the island Britons are of the same nationality. The objection is founded on St. Patrick's "Epistle to Coroticus," in which the following words occur: "I have vowed to my God to teach this people, although I should be despised by them, to whom I have written with my own hand to be given to the soldiers to be forwarded to Coroticus. I do not say to my fellow citizens, nor to the fellow citizens of the pious Romans, but to the fellow citizens of the devil, through their evil deeds and hostile practices."