Indeed, if not genuine, it is impossible to assign any motive for such a forgery. The tone and spirit of the entire are such as could only come from one who was filled with the apostolic spirit. Many incidental references to Decurions, to the 'Brittaniae,' or Britains, to slave-traffic--all point to the fifth century as the date of its composition. The rude and barbarous Latinity, which some writers use as an argument against its authenticity, is in reality a strong proof in its favour, for it is exactly what we should expect from one who, like St. Patrick, spent the six years which are generally given to the acquisition of a liberal education, herding sheep and swine on the hills of Antrim. As Patrick himself remarks in apologizing for the rudeness of his style, of which he was fully sensible, he had to forego the use of his vernacular Latin during the years of his captivity, and his speech and his language were changed into the tongue of the stranger, "as any one may perceive from the flavour of my style."[88] Of course we should make allowance for the faults of copyists--especially where the original MS. itself seems to have been illegible or obscure, still it must be confessed that the Latin is very rude, sometimes even ungrammatical, and not always intelligible. But the spirit of deep humility and fervent devotion, which breathes in every line, is of itself sufficient to stamp this work as genuine. A falsifier, or impostor, might possibly write such Latin, but he never could forge the spirit that breathes in the language, which is the manifest outpouring of a heart like unto the heart of St. Paul. The _Book of Armagh_ contains the earliest copy of the Confession that we possess, and it appears not a little strange that several important passages are omitted from this copy, which are found in the copies preserved in the Cottonian and Bodleian Collections. Some writers have suggested that these passages of the later copies are interpolations. It is far more likely, however, that the Armagh scribe left out some passages from his own copy, that he could not decipher in the original, which as the marginal notes show, was in some parts obscure or illegible. These omitted passages too are manifestly written in the same style, and in the same spirit as the body of the Confession, and may certainly be regarded as genuine. It may be, also, that the scribe of Armagh left out certain passages from a groundless fear that it would not be to the honour of the great Apostle to speak so strongly of his own unworthiness. That passage, for instance, has been omitted in which the Saint refers to certain elders, who opposed his elevation to the episcopacy on the ground that thirty years previously, before he became a deacon, he had committed some sin, which he then confessed to a dear friend, and which it was now sought to make an obstacle to his promotion.