Page images
PDF
EPUB

Ireland. The clergy do not appear to have granted any subsidies, or even to have claimed the right of taxing themselves. There is no Act of the Irish Parliament to confirm the grant of a subsidy by the clergy, yet there is in existence the transmiss of an Act for confirming the subsidies granted by convocation. The existence of the transmiss proves the wish of the English Government to have all things done regularly after the model of the Convocation in England, and its not being made use of establishes the fact that the Irish Convocation did not understand the proper mode of proceeding. The only business that is recorded to have been transacted,—the formation of the Articles,—was not concluded in proper form. They were not signed, as in England, by all the members, but by Archbishop Jones, Speaker of the House of Bishops in Convocation, and the Prolocutor of the House of the Clergy in their names. the reign of Henry VIII. there does not seem to be any reference of ecclesiastical matters to the convocation, nor any claims of exemption on the part of the clergy. They were taxed in common with his Majesty's other subjects. The preamble of the 28 Henry VIII. c. 12. seems to prove that no convocation existed in Ireland, as it states that "At every Parliament begun and holden within this land, two Proctors of every diocese within the same land have been used and accustomed to be summoned and warned to be at the same Parliament, which were never by order of law, usage, custom, or otherwise, any member or parcel of the whole body of the Parliament, nor have had by right, any voice or suffrage in the same, but only be there as counsellors and assistants to the same; and upon such things

In

of learning as should happen in controversy, to declare their opinions, much like as the Convocation within the realm of England is commonly at every Parliament begun and holden by the King's Highness special license." This reference to the Convocation of England appears to be decisive proof that there was no such body existing in Ireland at that time; for if there had been, the comparison would, undoubtedly, have been made with their own convocation.*

In the second year of Elizabeth a Parliament was assembled, and no mention is made of a convocation, though Acts with respect to the Church were passed. And in the third year of Elizabeth there was not any Parliament, yet she signifies her pleasure to Lord Sussex, the Lord Lieutenant, for a general meeting of the clergy, and the establishment of the Protestant religion. This, of course, was an order to summon not a convocation, but the ancient synod of the clergy, which had the power of settling all matters concerning religion. It would appear, then, that the dissimilarity of the proceedings in England and Ireland with respect to the Reformation, arose from the different constitutions of the two Churches. In England the Convocation, originally instituted for the purpose of managing the temporal concerns of the clergy, had gradually usurped the powers of the Provincial Synod, and become the instrument of framing Articles and Canons for the Church. In Ireland the Provincial Synod had not been superseded, and by their consent given at three different times, in the reign of Edward, when summoned by Sir Anthony St. Leger; in the third of Elizabeth, called together by Lord Sussex; and

in the year 1565 by Sir Henry Sidney, the clergy received the use of the English Liturgy and expressed their conformity to the doctrines of the English Church. There is, indeed, a passage in the manuscript collections of Dudley Loftus which has been adduced as proof of a convocation having been held in 1560: "This yeare was held a Convocation of Bishops at the Queen's command for establishing the Protestant religion." But he must have used the word convocation merely to express a meeting of the Bishops, and would have adopted a very different phraseology had he intended to describe the assembling of the Convocation.*

The spirit which had endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to force the Lambeth Articles on the English Church, had acquired fresh strength in Ireland from the unjustifiable conduct of the Government in their selection of persons for the high offices of the Church, and was now enabled to carry through the Convocation, and obtain the assent of the Lord Deputy for a system more exclusive and more dogmatical than that which had been attempted by Whittaker and his associates.

On the meeting of the Convocation, in 1615, Randolph Barlow, B.D., Chaplain to the Lord Deputy Chichester, was elected Prolocutor of the Lower House. Jones, Archbishop of Dublin and Chancellor of Ireland, presided in the Upper House. It is said that Dr. Ussher was appointed to draw up the Articles, and there is not anything contained in the Articles which is not in strict conformity with the opinions he entertained at that period

of his life. The Articles were 104 in number, drawn up under nineteen heads. Of these Dr. Elrington* observes some are of a character unsuited to articles of faith, and approach that of a homily; such are the tenth and twelfth, of the service of God, and of our duty towards our neighbour. Others, with rigid precision, determine questions which had hitherto never been introduced into articles of faith; thus there is a particular explanation of what in Scripture is only revealed in general terms concerning the generation of the Son, which, in conformity with the notions of Calvin, the Article pronounces to be from the person, not the essence of the Father. Thus, the Pope is pronounced to be antichrist. Thus, also, decisions are given about the primeval state, and the fall of the angels, and the state of the souls of men after death. But the most important ground of objection to the Irish Articles is the introduction of the Lambeth Articles, which had been so recently rejected by the Church of England. By this unfortunate proceeding a serious impediment was interposed to prevent any agreement between the Churches of England and Ireland. It is impossible but Ussher and those who acted with him must have been aware of this evil, and great must they have thought the necessity of introducing the Lambeth Articles when they chose such an alternative; they must have considered that the English Articles expressed imperfectly, if at all, their views of Christian doctrine. It has, indeed, been confidently put forward by the advocates of Calvinistic opinions in the English Church, that the Thirty-nine Articles are exclusively Calvinistic, and that they cannot

admit an interpretation at variance with those particular views. In vain has the history of the introduction of the Articles claimed as exclusively favourable, in vain have the known opinions of the framers, been brought forward to oppose such an assertion, yet still arguments and facts are alike disregarded, and still the assertion is confidently repeated. Another line of argument is suggested by the conduct of the Predestinarian party. They never had, nor ever thought they had, the power of making a change in the Articles without exerting it, of which the Lambeth Articles, the alterations proposed by the Assembly of Divines, and the Irish Articles are decisive proofs. Their opponents never proposed any such measure; satisfied with the guarded forms of expression in these Articles, they shrunk from incurring the danger of unsettling the established profession of faith. And it cannot be said they had not the power; to omit other periods, at the Convocation of 1661 they would not have any difficulty in raising a hostile cry against them, and excluding everything which could favour the opinions of their bitterest enemies, who had trampled under foot the Church of their fathers, and had persecuted the individual members of it with the most relentless severity.

The following is a copy of the Articles, and which has been extracted from Dr. Elrington's Life of Ussher, App. xxxiii-1.

« EelmineJätka »