CHAPTER VIII. THE IRISH ARTICLES OF 1615. The Irish Reformation, like the English. HE Church of Ireland, after existing from the Tearliest ages of the Gospel, had gradually con tracted the errors and diseases, which in the time preceding the Reformation were corrupting the Church of England. She threw them off, however, at the same period, by her own intrinsic vigour, and restoring the verities of the faith which had been partially perverted or forgotten, took her place at the side of her English sister, in the struggle with the Roman pontiffs. During the reigns of Henry and Edward, the Irish prelates had been accustomed to lean almost exclusively upon the acts of our own Convocation, having adopted the formularies of worship which emanated from this country under the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown1. But, in 1560, the Elizabethan PrayerBook was regularly accepted by the clergy2, and the character of the Irish reformation became henceforward far more national. In 1566, as we have before Brief Decla noticed3, the Brief Declaration' of doctrine coinciding with our Eleven Articles,' was appointed to be read by the incumbents at their possession-taking, and twice every year afterwards;' but whether the ration of 1566. 1 The English Prayer Book was first used on Easter Sunday, 1551, at the commandment of Sir Anthony St Ledger, the Lord Deputy. Mant, Hist. of the Church, II. 204, 205; 2nd ed. 2 Dr Elrington's Life of Archbp Ussher, 42. 3 See above, p. 121. It is worthy of remark, that during the reign of Elizabeth and long after the Union of Scotland with England, the Scottish Church, as well as the Presbyterians, made use of the 'Confession of Faith' drawn up in 1560. Stephen's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, 1. 95. Lond. 1843. The Presbyterians subsequently adopted the 'Westminster Confession,' and the Church our authorized' Articles,' in the Convocation at Laurencekirk, 1804. English authorized? English Articles of 1562 were circulated simultaneously, as a co-ordinate authority, does not seem to have been fully settled. Archbishop Ussher stated, Were the in a sermon which he preached in 1629, before the Articles English House of Commons, We all agree that the Scriptures of God are the perfect rule of our faith; we all consent in the main grounds of religion drawn from thence; we all subscribe to the Articles of doctrine agreed upon in the synod of the year 1562, for the avoiding of diversities of opinions,' &c.; yet his learned biographer contends, that this language cannot be considered as absolutely decisive when weighed against the evidence which may be urged on the other side of the question. He argues that the archbishop 'might have used the words in a general sense, as merely expressive of assent, and, indeed, must have done so, for many of the persons he addressed had never subscribed the Articles1." tion of the of 1615. It is not unlikely that the want of some minuter The formatest than the Eleven Articles' of archbishop Parker Irish Articles was one of the reasons which operated in the mind of the Irish prelates when they consented, in 1615, to the compilation of the longer series, which is the subject of the present chapter. Still, it may not be concealed, that more questionable agency was at work among some of the bishops and divines, who took part in the framing of such a Formulary. The rigorous Calvinistic spirit, which had before invaded the Church of England, and had struggled to fetter the working of her system by means of the Lambeth Articles, is said to have been even stronger at this period in the whole of the neighbouring kingdom; and, though baffled on our own side of the Channel, to have been there for a while triumphant. The propagation of the Genevan tenets, if due, in some measure, to political causes, was now more peculiarly aided by the influence of the learned Ussher, who had Influence of passed with unsullied reputation from his course of Ussher, 1 Ubi sup. 43, and note. 2 Ibid. 43. who made the original draught of the Articles. Summary of their con tents. laborious study to occupy the chair of divinity in the University of Dublin'. His opinions were afterwards softened, like those of many other theologians who were the glory of the Caroline period of the Church, but it is unquestionable that in the years of which we are now treating he was the unflinching advocate of Geneva, ranking with Whitaker and the rest, who endeavoured to purge the colleges at Cambridge from Popish and Pelagian' errors. Ussher is even said to have drawn up the Irish Articles himself, at the nomination of a Synod, which assembled at Dublin in 1615, and which sat concurrently with the civil legislature3, according to the English usage. The president was Jones, the Archbishop of Dublin, but very few particulars have, unhappily, survived of the nature of its proceedings, or the degree of cordiality with which it had accepted the Articles bearing its name1. They are a long and discursive compilation, extending to one hundred and four paragraphs, arranged under nineteen general heads, and comprehend a variety of statements, or rather disquisitions, upon the following theological topics: The Holy Scripture and the three Creeds; faith in the Holy Trinity; God's eternal decree and predestination; the creation and government of all things; the fall of man, original sin, and the state of man before justification; Christ, the Mediator of the second Covenant; the communicating of the grace of Christ; justification and faith ; sanctification and good works; the service of God; 1 Ubi sup. 44. He was also Vice-chancellor in the previous year, 1614. Ibid. 49. 2 Waterland, Works, п. 346, and Dr Elrington's Life, 290, seqq. 3 Parr, an older biographer of Ussher, implies that the two legislative bodies were convened at the same time, but the Parliament met May 18, 1613, and the convocation did not assemble till the end of 1614, or the beginning of 1615. Elrington, 39. 4 'Articles of Religion, agreed vpon by the Archbishops and Bishops, and the rest of the cleargie of Ireland, in the Convocation holden at Dublin in the yeare of our Lord God 1615,' &c. They will be found at length in Append. No. vI., printed from a copy of the original edition in Dr Elrington's Life of Ussher, App. IV. the civil magistrate; our duty towards our neighbours; the Church, and outward ministry of the Gospel; the authority of the Church, General Councils, and bishop of Rome; the state of the Old and New Testament; the Sacraments of the New Testament; Baptism; the Lord's Supper; the state of souls of men after they be departed out of this life, together with the general resurrection and the last judgment. character. Many of the Articles, contained in one or other General of these divisions, are borrowed from the authorized English series, on corresponding points; some, again, are of a homiletic nature, relating wholly to Christian duties; others enter upon speculative questions, such as the fall of angels, and the primeval state of Adam; one absolutely pronounces that the pope is the man of sin' and antichrist'; but the paragraphs which excited the strongest objection2 at the time of their first appearance, as well as in later ages, are those which include the Lambeth Articles, or bear upon the controversy out of which those Articles had issued. It is true that they are not incorporated altogether, being dispersed in various portions of the work, and that in the original copy3 there was not the slightest reference to the compilation of 1595; yet the resemblance, with one or two verbal exceptions, is so manifest and complete, that we cannot possibly mistake the connexion between them 5. 1 A similar decree had been made just before in a Calvinistic synod at Gappe, Collier, 11. 708. 2 Mant, 1. 385. seqq. 3 Bp Mant's copy had such a reference to each of the nine Articles of the Lambeth series; but it must have been either the London edition of 1629, or that which is appended to Neal's Hist. of the Puritans. See Elrington's Ussher, 44, note (ƒ). 4 One of these is important, for while the Irish Articles (§ 37) affirm that true faith is 5 Some persons, like Heylin, A mount of their authority before 1635. Doubts on this subject. Referring the reader to an Appendix for the Articles themselves, it is desirable to ascertain the amount of their authority, even with respect to the Irish clergy; and the rather because this question has been lately reopened, and made the ground of a resolute attack upon the two sister Churches. The document (as we have seen) professed to have been sanctioned by the Convocation of Dublin, and a paragraph appended to the original edition, authoritatively decreed as follows: 'If any minister, of what degree or qualitie soeuer he be, shall publikely teach any doctrine contrary to these Articles agreed upon,-if, after due admonition, he doe not conforme himselfe and cease to disturbe the peace of the Church, let him bee silenced and depriued of all spirituall promotions he doth enjoy.' The novelty, however, of the Synod, at least in its present constitution, and the informalities which may be traced in some of its proceedings', appear to have excited considerable doubts at the time of their publication, as to the ecclesiastical authority of the Dublin Articles; for we find Dr Bernard, one of the biographers of Ussher, himself strongly tinged with Calvinian notions, and a uniform admirer of the Articles, under the necessity of meeting this prevalent objection, and of asserting, on the verbal testimony of his patron, that the Formulary was actually signed 'by archbishop Jones, the president of Convocation, by the prolocutor of the lower House, in the name of the whole clergy, and also by the Lord Deputy, by order of James I.2 Although part of this evidence 1 Elrington's Ussher, 39, 40. the solution of Wood, (in Dr Elrington's Ussher, 47, 48,) is far more probable. Archdeacon Stopford discredits the testimony of Bernard, suspecting that the deputy never signed the Articles at all, and contending, that if he did, such an indirect exercise of the supremacy was invalid. |