as the sole standard of the Irish Church for the future, he voted in the minority; and when the Lower House attempted a counter-movement by their votes and Committee, he remained silent, and gave the Lord Deputy no warning, until the Committee were ready to lay their Canons before the House that very evening; and then he merely said that he grew fearful he should not be able to effect it.' Lord Strafford having relied upon that former judgment of his' (that he was confident such a Canon would pass), justly complained of this, but adds an apology equally honourable to them both: but he is so learned a Prelate, and so good a man, as I do beseech your Grace it may never be imputed to him.'

"We see now the absurdity of the popular opinion, originating, I think, with Dr. Heylin, that Usher had been deceived and outwitted by Strafford: certainly no man ever was more openly dealt with. He was told from the first what the plan was, and its object: there was certainly no concealment of the object in the debate in the Upper House, when he voted against it; and when he drew up a canon according to his own views, Lord Strafford rejected it, and insisted on his original plan. If Usher was deceived, he deceived himself, by persuading himself that the canon would not have the effect which its promoters avowed; and if any members of the Lower House were deceived, there can be little doubt that it arose from their trusting to Usher's opinion, expressed to them in some private

conference.

"And this brings us to Bishop Vesey's account of the transaction in his 'Life of Bramhall,' which requires notice, chiefly because I think he has unwittingly done an injury to the candour and honesty of the great man whose life he was writing. He represents Bishop Bramhall as arguing thus in Convocation: But for the Confirmation of the Articles of 1615, he knew not what they meant by it, and wished the propounder to consider whether such an act would not, instead of ratifying what was desired, rather tend to the diminution of that authority by which they were enacted, and seem to question the

value of that synod, and consequently of this: for that this had no more power than that, and therefore could add no moment, but by so doing might help to enervate both. By this prudent dressing of the objection he avoided the blow he most feared, and therefore again earnestly pressed the receiving of the English Articles, which were at last admitted, whereupon immediately drawing up a Canon, and proposing it, it passed immediately.' On this, Dr. Elrington very justly observes, in his Life of Usher, 'The mode which Bishop Vesey describes of dressing the objection would not reflect much credit upon the talents or honesty of Bishop Bramhall.' The weight of this evidence is indeed very small: it was not written until more than forty years after the event-a long time after to report a speech. The writer did not hear the speech himself; neither did the person from whose oral account the writer professes to have it. This was Archbishop Price, who, in 1634, was Archdeacon of Kilmore, and therefore a member of the Lower House; and the information was evidently incorrect, for Bramhall is represented as drawing up a Canon himself immediately upon the debate, whereas we know that several days must have intervened, and the Canon was neither drawn, nor proposed by Bramhall. And further, it was not possible that Bishop Bramhall should have so answered such an objection in debate in Convocation, for there was no proposal in the Upper House to confirm the Irish Articles. Usher could not have proposed it there, without grossly deceiving Lord Strafford; and it is clear, from Bishop Bramhall's statement, that the minority in that House followed Usher's guidance. They refused to concur in an express vote for setting aside the Irish Articles, but they made no proposal to confirm them. That motion was made in the Lower House only, where a Bishop could not have debated it, or dressed the objection.' There can be but one explanation of this story. Archbishop Usher, when unable to oppose Lord Strafford's Canon, no doubt communicated to Bernard and other members of the Lower House his construction of it. This opinion of Usher, being very favour

able to its passing the Lower House, those who gave Bishop Bramhall the credit of getting the Canon passed, would naturally give him credit for thus persuading Usher, and so the story would spread: but we have seen that Usher's persuasion was his own.

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Having thus traced the opposite parts taken by Archbishop Usher and Bishop Bramhall (as he then was) in this important transaction, it is interesting to learn the relations that subsisted between two such men, so opposed to each other: and it is well calculated to moderate our present contests. As far as it could be so with such minds, they were engaged in opposite parties, of which they were respectively the worthiest of any whom the English and Irish Churches have produced, to be the exponents and the leaders.

"To judge by present strifes, we should expect to find them almost as wide asunder as Arius and Athanasius: but how greatly should we be mistaken. Bishop Bramhall's 'Discourse on the Sabbath' was written at the request of a friend who had been disturbed by a controversy which Bramhall had not read. At the conclusion, he had discovered the origin of his task, and he adds a postscript: Christian reader, when I first handled this controversy, I knew nothing at all of the present occasion of it, neither did I dream that any of my friends were engaged in it. Since, I learn, that my learned and most reverend Metropolitan is concerned indirectly in it, I mean the late Lord Primate of Armagh, under whose pious and moderate government I lived sundry years a bishop in the Province of Ulster, whilst the political part of the care of that Church did lie heavy on my shoulders. I praise God we were like the candles of the Levitical Temple, looking one towards another,

"In recovering the property of the Church which had been fraudulently abstracted to an extent which rendered it impossible to provide an efficient ministry.

and all towards the Stem. We had no contention among us, but who should hate contention most, and pursue the peace of the Church with swiftest paces.' He then, in answer to Bernard, who had made himself a party in the controversy by his 'Judgment of the late Archbishop of Armagh,' notices the Convocation of 1634 as already related, and he goes on to notice a slander countenanced by Heylin, who was also a party, that Usher, from an old grudge against Lord Strafford for having outwitted him about the Articles of 1615, had encouraged King Charles to consent to his death. To confute this, Bramhall appeals to the constant friendship which Usher and Strafford had maintained while Strafford continued Lord Deputy, and also to the fact of Lord Strafford choosing him to be his ghostly father and spiritual adviser at his death;' and he adds, 'If the honour of a third person were not deeply concerned in it, I could add something more of what passed between them two at that time-whilst my Lord Primate was fitting him for Eternity, and like a light in a watch tower shewing him the dangers that were in the mouth of the harbour, and pointing him out the ready way into the arms of his Saviour,―to evidence to the world the great care of the one, and the great observance of the other, and the great love of them both:' in which beautiful words one knows not which most to admire, the brightness of the light, or the appreciation of its brightness. Bishop Bramhall thus concludes his postscript: 'I have a request to both the antagonists, that they . . . . will suffer the ashes of this reverend Prelate to rest in ease, who was an honour to his native country, an ornament to the Reformed Church, a conscionable preacher, and an exemplary pattern of piety.'

"Such were the great men of our opposing parties. 'Nor can any one Church in our day (says Bishop Vesey) boast of the immediate succession of one so famous a Prelate to another.' And being dead they yet speak: now resting together in Abraham's bosom, notwithstanding what they differed in here, they have left us an example that the master minds and

Christian spirits on either side of the chief controversies in our Church, have never exaggerated those differences to the destruction of charity and peace. As from another world, they tell us of a day to come, in which a spirit of love and peace shall be more honoured before the angels of God than the learning of Usher, and the wisdom of Bramhall, and the talents of them both.

"But there is a great gulph between, which we cannot pass: we follow them in their parties, but not in their spirit. So it ever is with great men: the world can copy them in the fail ings of humanity, but cannot comprehend the virtues by which those failings were redeemed."

II.

THE IRISH ARTICLES SUBSEQUENT TO 1634.

"It is sometimes assumed, as already proved, that Archbishop Usher and other Bishops continued for seven years or more from 1634 to take subscriptions to the Irish as well as to the English Articles; and that this practice was only put a stop to by the interruption of all subscriptions at the Great Rebellion; but for which that practice might have continued, and even become perpetual. The proof of this is certainly

not so plain as to exclude further examination.

"We have two opposite statements on the subject; one from Dr. Heylin, in his Life of Archbishop Laud, first printed in 1668; the other from Dr. Parr, printed in 1686.

"Dr. Heylin's is as follows:- which Canon (the first Canon of 1634) was no sooner passed, confirmed, and published, but the Primate and his party saw the danger into which they cast themselves by their inadvertency, and found too late that by their receiving and approving the English Articles, they had abrogated and repealed the Irish. To salve this sore, it concerned them to bestir themselves with their utmost diligence, and so accordingly they did. For first the