out, untrained and unskilled though he was; that there were no worldly inducements to support the divine command, which he obeyed simply without any ulterior motive, and in opposition to the wish of his kinsfolk. Here he is meeting another imputation, which stung him more than the true taunt of illiteracy. His detractors must have hinted that it was not with perfectly pure and unworldly motives that he had gone forth to preach among the Scots. He does not conceal that the island in which he had toiled as a captive slave had no attraction for him; he implies that he always felt there as a stranger in a strange land.[206] “I testify,” he says, summing up, “in truth and in exultation of heart, before God and His holy angels, that I never had any motive save the gospel and promises of God, to return at any time to that people from which I had formerly escaped.”[207] He repudiates especially the imputation that he won any personal profit in worldly goods from those whom he converted, or that he sought in any way to overreach the folk among whom he lived. To show how discreetly he ordered his ways, how careful he was to avoid all scandalous suspicion, he mentions that when men and women of his flock sent him gifts, or laid ornaments on the altar, he always restored them, at the risk of offending the givers. [Sidenote: PATRICK’S DETRACTORS] It is easy enough to read between the lines the kind of detraction that wounded St. Patrick; it may seem less easy to determine in what quarter the unfriendly voices were raised. But there are certain indications which enable us to suspect that it was in his own country and by his own countrymen that the charges to which he obliquely refers were brought against him. At the end of the composition he says that he wrote it “in Ireland”; and this gives us a reasonable ground for supposing that it was addressed mainly to people outside Ireland. When he speaks of “those peoples amidst whom I dwell,” when he mentions “women of _our_ race” (not “women of _my_ race”), in contrast with women of Scottish birth,[208] we can hardly be wrong in thinking that he is addressing not his Irish disciples, but some of his British fellow-countrymen. And we may well believe that if this “apology” for his life had been meant in the first place for Ireland, he would have taken some care to veil his feeling of homelessness; he would not have shown so clearly that he felt as an alien on outlandish soil, and that he was abiding there only from a sense of duty, doing despite to the longings of his heart. This inference is borne out by the writer’s express statement that he wishes his “brethren and kinsfolk” to know his character and nature.[209] Nor is it contradicted by the fact that he closely associates those whom he addresses with his own work.[210] On the contrary, this enables us to identify more precisely the origin of the detraction which evoked the _Confession_. The unfriends who disparaged him were clearly some of