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has been discredited, perhaps with sufficient justice, it cannot be altogether set aside; and, accordingly, while we may assume that the Articles were destitute of parliamentary sanction, and could not therefore be legally enforced, we are bound to admit, that there is not enough ground1 for disputing their formal acceptance by the Church, in some kind of synodical meeting.

bishops em

demand

Whether or no they were originally offered for Were the subscription, like our own Articles, after the convo- powered to cation of 1571, and whether the Church ever autho- subscription? rized any of her prelates to exact this subscription from the clergy, are altogether different questions, and such as it is not easy to determine either in one way or the other. The view which is most satisfactorily established2 supposes that where individual bishops made use of the Articles as a positive test of doctrine, they were exceeding the power which had been determined by the language of the Synod; for the decree appended to the document itself betrays no wish to impose the Articles absolutely on the Church, either by the agency of subscription or any other apparatus.

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Introduction to Vol. I. of the MS. Irish Prayer Book, LXIII. ed. E. H. S. But the following extract from an anti-Arminian pamphlet of 1633, entitled The Truth of three Things,' &c. indicates that the royal sanction of them was generally believed: 'I may adde hereunto the doctrine of the Articles of the Church of Ireland, which fitly may here be inserted, as both looking to King James, under whose authority and protection it came forth, and was maintained, and looking to the doctrine of the Church of England, since it were an intollerable and impudent iniury to the wisdome and religious knowledge of these

times, to say that betweene
them there was not a harmonie,'
29, 30. The pamphlet, however,
is full of special-pleading.

1 All the evidence against the
legitimate adoption of the Arti-
cles has been ably stated in the
'Irish Ecclesiastical Journal,'
No. 118, pp. 66, 67.

2 In this way only can we give a satisfactory explanation of the language employed in 1634 by Strafford, Laud, and Bramhall. They all speak as if the Irish Articles needed confirmation, and imply that the Puritan party were fully aware of the defect. See Archdeacon Stopford, ubi sup. LXIII, LXIV.

Proceedings in 1634 and 1635.

English Articles accepted.

It declares, indeed, that whoever shall teach what is contrary to them shall be silenced and deposed, in imitation, it would seem, of the order which had accompanied the Lambeth propositions; yet unlike the authorized determinations of the Church in 1562, they had no more than a negative force, and must have acted rather as Articles of discipline and peace than as a public Formulary of Faith.

But whatever be the amount of authority which they exercised from 1615 to 1635, they were virtually, if not formally, abolished by the Convocation of this latter date. The leanings of the Irish Church in the direction of Geneva were now considerably adjusted, and with men like Strafford and Bramhall presiding in her counsels, it was natural to expect that a fresh effort would be made to remove every obstacle in the way of her cordial agreement with the English. Strafford, in his character of Deputy, had submitted a plan for this entire assimilation as early as 1634; and Laud', with the consent of his royal master, at once adopted the proposal, and urged its immediate execution. It was accordingly submitted to the Irish Convocation of 1635, and by the powerful advocacy of Bramhall, the following Canon was accepted, with a single dissentient voice2: For the manifestation of our agreement with the Church of England in the confession of the same Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments, we do receive and approve the Book of Articles of Religion, agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops and the whole clergy in the Convocation

1 In writing to Strafford, Oct. 20, 1634, he says 'I knew how you would find my Lord Primate [i. e. Ussher] affected to the Articles of Ireland; but I am glad the trouble that hath been in it will end there, without advertising of it over to us. And whereas you propose to have the Articles of England received in ipsissimis verbis, and

leave the other as no way concerned, neither affirmed nor denied, you are certainly in the right, and so says the King, to whom I imparted it, as well as I. Go, hold close, and you will do a great service in it.' Strafford, Letters, 1. 329: cf. Bramhall's Works, v. 80, and notes; Oxf. 1845.

2 Mant, I. 491.

holden at London, in the year of our Lord, 1562, &c. And therefore if any hereafter shall affirm that any of these Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let him be excommunicated, and not absolved before he make a public recantation of his error.'

Dublin

repealed by

No doubt can, therefore, exist as to the formal Were the adoption of the English Articles by the whole of the Articles sister Church; but it has always been warmly disputed this act? whether the fact of such an approbation has absolutely repealed the Dublin Articles. It is probable that the original promoters regarded the Canon of 1635 from very different points of view. Ussher, who was still unweaned from his Calvinistic tenets, though at this time the intimate friend of Laud, has left his own opinion of the case in the following extract from a letter addressed to Dr Ward: "The Articles of Religion agreed upon in our former synod, anno 1615, we let stand as we did before. But for the manifesting of our agreement with the Church of England, we have received and approved your Articles, also concluded in the year 1562, as you may see in the first of our Canons. On the other hand, it is clear that both Strafford and Bramhall anticipated the abrogation of the Irish Articles as the result of the present measure: the former actually expressing his intention to silence them without noise2,' and the latter hoping to 'take away that Shibboleth which made the Irish Church lisp too undecently, or rather, in some little degree, to speak the speech of Ashdod, and not the language of Canaan3.' Heylin has indeed asserted that the Dublin Articles were actually called in';' but there is no sufficient proof that any order was given pro

1 Elrington's Life, 176.

2 Strafford, Letters, Dec. 16, 1634, 1. 342: cf. Neal, Puritans, II. 107, ed. 1733.

3 Mant, I. 493, and Bp Taylor's Sermon upon the Lord Primate

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[Bramhall]: Works, vIII. 411,
412, ed. Eden.

4 Life of Laud, Part I. 271-
274: Hist. of the Sabbath, Part
II. C. VIII. § 9.

Failure of attempt

both series

with autho

rity.

hibiting the use of them by individual bishops, and the practice of Ussher himself1 in requiring subscription to both the series would lead to the conclusion that that they were still in some degree permitted. The attempt, however, rising out of the predilection of the Primate, to retain them by the vote of the Synod, as a co-ordinate authority in the Irish Church, was strongly discountenanced by the Deputy, and ultimately abandoned; so that however much of forbearance may have been exercised in abstaining from a direct repudiation of those Articles, they were in truth tacitly withdrawn, together with a Canon of the same period, which deliberately strove to set them on a level with the authorized English Articles. Whatever may have been the precise nature of their claims during the interval which elapsed between the two Convocations of 1615 and 1635, they were henceforth in the condition of a will, in which the latest declaration has the force of overruling the earlier provisions, so far at least as they may seem to have worn a somewhat different aspect, or to have been capable of a contrary meaning3. Accordingly, after the Rebellion, in which most of the remaining Puritanism of Ireland had been tempered or exploded*, no further instance

The Irish Articles virtually withdrawn.

1 Elrington's Life, 176: cf. a letter of Laud to Ussher, May 10, 1635; Ussher's Works, xvI. 7, 8.

2 This appears from the draft of the following canon proposed in the Convocation, but withdrawn through the influence of Strafford: 'Those which shall affirm any of the Articles agreed on by the clergy of Ireland at Dublin, 1615, or any of the 39 concluded of in the Convocation at London, 1562, and received by the Convocation at Dublin, 1634, to be in any part superstitious, or such as may not with a good conscience be received and allowed, shall be excom

municated and not restored but only by the Archbishop.' Pref. to Vol. II. of 'MS. Book of Common Prayer for Ireland,' E. H. S. CXVIII. The note of Strafford is remarkable as indicating some defect in the authority of the Articles of 1615: 'It would be considered here whether these Articles of Dublin, 1615, agree substantially with those of London, or confirmed equally by the King's authority: else I see no reason of establishing them under one penalty.'

3 See Collier's observation to this effect, II. 763.

4 It is well observed by a

occurs of a desire to enforce subscription to the Dublin Articles on the part of a single prelate. The English have alone been regarded as the preliminary test of doctrine on admission into holy orders1, and long before the civil enactment at the opening of the present century the two sister Churches, upon opposite sides of the Channel, were constituted by ecclesiastical usage the united Church of England and Ireland.

writer in the 'Irish Ecclesiastical Journal' for June, 1850, that notwithstanding the strength of feeling at this period, in Ireland as elsewhere, against every thing 'Genevan,' the Dublin Articles of 1615 were unnoticed by the

Convocation (from 1661 to 1665); which is a strong proof that they were considered as no longer possessed of the slightest authority or obligation.

1 Elrington's Ussher, 177.

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