ture and Creeds. The second sets forth the sufficiency of the holy II. Holy Scrip canonical Scriptures to salvation; and confesses all the Articles contained in the three Creeds. of the Church. The third is as follows: "I acknowledge, also, III. Authority the Church to be the spouse of Christ, wherein the Word of God is truly taught, the Sacraments orderly ministered according to Christ's institution, and the authority of the keys duly used. And that every such particular church hath authority to institute, to change, clean to put away ceremonies and other ecclesiastical rites, as they be superfluous, or be abused; and to constitute other, making more to seemliness, to order, or edification." ministry. The fourth Article confesses that "it is not IV. Call to the lawful for any man to take upon him any office or ministry, ecclesiastical or secular, but such only as are lawfully thereunto called by their high authorities according to the ordinances of this realm." supremacy. The fifth Article acknowledges "the queen's v. Queen's majesty's prerogative and superiority of government, of all estates and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within this realm." And the sixth denies "the authority of the Bishop of Rome to be more than other bishops have in their provinces and dioceses." VI. Denial of the Bishop of rity. Common Prayer. The seventh confesses the Book of Common VII. Book of Prayer to be "agreeable to the Scriptures, and Catholick, Apostolick, and most for the advancing of God's glory, and the edifying of God's people, both for that it is in a tongue that may be understanded of the people, and also for the doctrine and form of ministration contained in the same." tion of Baptism. The eighth asserts the perfect ministration of VIII. MinistraBaptism, although there is in it "neither exorcism, oil, salt, spittle, or hallowing of the water now used; T IX. The mass. X. Communion in both kinds. XI. Images, reliques, and and for that they were of late years abused, they be reasonably abolished." The ninth condemns "private masses," or a "publick ministration and receiving of the Sacrament by the priest alone, without a just number of communicants:" also it condemns the doctrine of "the mass being a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead, and a mean to deliver souls out of purgatory." The tenth affirms, that the "Holy Communion ought to be ministered to the people under both kinds." The eleventh" utterly disallows the extolling of feigned miracles. images, relicks, and feigned miracles; and also all kind of expressing God invisible in the form of an old man, or the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, and all other vain worshipping of God devised by man's fantasy, besides or contrary to the Scriptures: as wandering on pilgrimages, setting up of candles, praying upon beads, and such like superstition:" and "exhorts all men to the obedience of God's law and to the works of faith." XII. General acknowledgment The twelfth Article is a general acknowledgment of the preceding. of the preceding. "These things, above rehearsed, though they be appointed by common order, yet do I without all compulsion, with freedom of mind and conscience, from the bottom of my heart, and upon most mature persuasion, acknowledge to be true and agreeable to God's word. And therefore I exhort you all, of whom I have cure, heartily and obediently to embrace and receive the same; that we, all joining together in unity of spirit, faith, and charity, may also at length be joined together in the kingdom of God, and that through the merits and death of our Saviour Christ: to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all glory and empire, now and This declaration appears to be the same as one, of which a summary is given by Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Parker, and which was put out in England in the year 1561, under the general name of the Metropolitans and Bishops, but seeming to have been chiefly the work of the archbishop". SECTION II. Two Bishops deprived for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Conformity of the others. Abuse of Episcopal Property. Depreciation of Bishopricks. Exercise of the Royal Prerogative in appointing Bishops. Titular Bishops. Act of Parliament caused by clerical irregularities. General immorality and irreligion. Act for erecting Free Schools. Opposition to attempts at propagating the Reformed Religion. Irish Liturgy and Catechism. Irish New Testament. Bull of the Pope, and its consequences. Declaration in England. agreeable to one bishops deprived of their sees. THE enactments concerning the Church in Queen Two Popish Elizabeth's first Parliament had no unpleasant effect upon its governors; save that by the Act of Supremacy, or rather by their own obnoxious conduct in defiance of it, two bishops were deprived of their sees: Leverous, bishop of Kildare, who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy; and Walsh, bishop of Meath, who not only refused to take the oath, but preached also against the queen's supremacy, and against the Book of Common Prayer. Their places were supplied respectively, by Alex- Supply of the ander Craike in the see of Kildare, and Hugh Brady in that of Meath. The former, who had been pre 18 STRYPE'S Life of Abp. Parker, vol. i. pp. 182, 183. vacancies. Penalties inflicted on the viously in possession of the deanery of St. Patrick's, was permitted to retain that preferment in commendam; but this did not prevent him from alienating the property of the bishoprick much to the injury of his successors'. To the worth of Bishop Brady testimony was borne by the queen, in a letter of October 6, 1564, to Sir Nicholas Arnold, lord justice, and the rest of the commissioners for causes ecclesiastical. "Which commission we send at this present by the reverend father in God, the Bishop of Meath, with whom we have had such conference, as well in the matters contained in that commission, as in sundry other belonging to the weal of that our realm, as we see very good reason to allow of our former choice of him; and do certainly hope, that he shall prove a faithful minister in his charge concerning his pastoral office, and a profitable councillor of our estate there"." The penalties upon the two displaced prelates Popish bishops. varied according to their offences. The former, being deprived of his bishoprick, was left at liberty; and for some time enjoyed the hospitable protection of the Earl and Countess of Desmond, and then earned his livelihood by keeping a school at Limerick, and in its neighbourhood: the latter, after his deprivation, was thrown into prison, and some years later was sent into banishment, and died at Alcala in Spain, January 3, 1577, and was there buried in the church of a Cistercian monastery, of which order he was a monk3. Bishop Leverous's reasons for In a book entitled De Processu Martyriali, &c., non-compliance. printed at Cologne, in 1640, and quoted in Mason's History of St. Patrick's Cathedral', of which Bishop Leverous was dean, his reason for non-compliance with the demand of acknowledging the queen's supremacy is thus recorded. The Lord Deputy required to know the cause of his refusal to take an bath, already taken by many learned and illustrious men. To whom he made answer, that all ecclesiastical jurisdiction was derived from Christ: and, since he thought not fit to confer ecclesiastical authority on the Blessed Virgin, his mother, it could not be believed that supremacy, or primacy of ecclesiastical power, was meant to be delegated by Christ to any other person of that sex. He added likewise, that St. Paul commanded no woman should speak in the church, much less should one preside and rule there: to confirm this opinion, he adduced authorities from St. Chrysostom and Tertullian. The Deputy then represented to him, that, if he should refuse to comply, he must of necessity be deprived of all his revenues: he quoted in answer the text of Scripture, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" An answer which entitles him to respect for integrity in acting up to his conviction, however weak and fallacious may be judged the grounds on which his conviction rested. Whilst we lament that the political offences of these two prelates subjected them to such visitations, we cannot but call to mind that they had in the preceding reign assisted in depriving other bishops of their sees, and other clergymen of their livings, and in particular, each his predecessor of his bishoprick, for the unpardonable offence of being a married man. These are the only two Irish prelates who only two deappear to have been deprived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the anonymous work indeed, noticed above, as cited in STRYPE's Ecclesiastical Annals, prived bishops, |