Reaction from Calvinism. extorted them from Whitgift, made, in 1604, a fruitless effort to engraft them into our own 'Articles of Religion1.' It was then too late, however; for the Church was daily strengthening her hold on the more sober truths which had been vindicated in the early stages of the Reformation; and in Cambridge even, a new race of scholars and divines, with Overall at their head, were rapidly displacing the adherents of Calvin, and the advocates of the 'Genevan platform.' A reaction was commencing, and the spell by which the able author of the Institutio' had bewildered not a few of the finest intellects of Europe was ere long to be entirely broken; or if some of our divines continued to accept the leading principles of 'Calvinism,' a clearer insight into other and more comprehensive tenets issued in their virtual renunciation of the harsher dogmas of that system. Such amelioration was, indeed, restricted for the present to our own country: since in all the sister-island, as will be observed in the following chapter, the Genevan spirit rankled and prevailed for a much longer period, and succeeded even in communicating to the Lambeth Articles the semblance of ecclesiastical authority. 1 Ibid. p. 480. 2 Several of his disputations on the Five Points exist in the Camb. Univ. MS. Gg, I. 29. CHAPTER VIII. THE IRISH ARTICLES OF 1615. Reformation, THE Church of Ireland, reaching backward like our own to the first ages of the Gospel, had gradually contracted the same errors and diseases, which, immediately before the dawn of reformation, were corrupting the Church of Eng- The Irish land. She awoke and threw them off, however, at the like the Engsame crisis, by her own intrinsic vigour; and, restoring many articles of faith which had been long perverted or forgotten, took her stand upon the tenets of her English sister, in the struggle with the Roman pontiffs. glish. It appears, indeed, that in the reigns of Henry and Edward, Irish prelates were induced to lean almost exclusively on the decisions of the English Convocation, and had so adopted the chief forms of faith and worship which were emanating from this country under the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown'. Yet, after the accession of Elizabeth, when the Prayer-Book, as restored amongst us, had been regularly accepted by the Irish clergy2, in 1560, the main character of the reforming movement was more strictly national. In 1566, as we have seen already, the Brief Brief Decla Declaration' coinciding with our own 'Eleven Articles,' was 1566. ordered to be read by all the Irish incumbents 'at their possession-taking, and twice every year afterwards;' but 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, 1. 204, 205; 2nd ed. Elrington's Life of Archbishop Ussher, p. 42. 3 See above, p. 122. It is noteworthy, that during the reign of Elizabeth and long after the Union of Scotland with England, the Scot tish Church, as well as the Presby. ration of Were the The forma tion of the of 1615. whether the Elizabethan Articles of 1563 were circulated He We may conjecture, even, that the lack of some minuter test than the 'Eleven Articles' of archbishop Parker was one reason operating in the minds of Irish prelates when they countenanced the compilation of the longer set Irish Articles of Articles, which form the subject of the present chapter. Yet, while urging this conjecture, it should not be concealed, that far more questionable agencies were influencing at least some bishops and divines, who aided in the framing of such a Formulary. The rigorous Calvinism,' which had already found a shelter in the Church of England, and had struggled there to silence all dissentients by the imposition of the Lambeth Articles, is said to have been still more dominant at this period in the neighbouring kingdom; and, when ultimately baffled in our island, to have risen. there into an absolute supremacy of power. And the propagation of Genevan tenets, though attributed in some 'Westminster Confession;' while (with some modifications) by the Church in the United States of America. 1 Elrington, ubi sup. p. 43, and note. Ussher, measure, to political causes1, was at length facilitated more than ever by the influence of James Ussher, who had passed with the most brilliant reputation through subor- Influence of dinate stages to the headship of the theological faculty at Dublin. Ussher's views were doubtless afterwards softened, like those of many other theologians who became the brightest luminaries of the Caroline period in our history; but no less certain is it that in years of which we are now treating, he was always the unflinching advocate of 'Calvinism,' thus ranking with the learned Whitaker and others, who were labouring to purge out all 'Popish and Pelagian' errors from the Cambridge-colleges. It has been stated, who made the even, that the Irish Articles of 1615 were drawn up by draft of the Ussher himself upon the nomination of the Synod, which assembled in that year at Dublin and which sat concurrently with the civil legislature1, in accordance with the English usage. The president was Jones, Archbishop of Dublin, but extremely few particulars survive in reference to the acts of the Synod, or the cordiality with which the members of it recognised the code of Articles that still bear its name 5. original Articles. their contents. Those Irish Articles' are a discursive compilation, extending to one hundred and four paragraphs, arranged Summary of under nineteen general heads. They comprehend a large variety of definitions, or more properly disquisitions on 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 General character. 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; 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 the souls of men after they be departed out of this life, together with the general resurrection and the last judgment. Not a few of the Articles, contained in one or other of these main divisions, are borrowed from the corresponding portions of the English series. Some, again, are of a homiletic nature, relating wholly to Christian duties. Others enter upon speculative questions, as the fall of angels, and the aboriginal state of man. One article pronounces absolutely that the pope is 'the Man of Sin' and 'Antichrist'.' The paragraphs, however, which excited the most bitter animadversion2, at the time of their appearance and in subsequent ages, are those which have revived the Lambeth Articles, or bear upon the angry controversies out of which the Lambeth Articles had issued. It is true they are not all incorporated in a body, but dispersed in various sections of the work; and further, the original copy of the Irish series contained no reference to the English manifesto of 1595; yet the identity is so complete, with one or two verbal exceptions, that no reader could have doubted the connexion which the framers of the Irish Articles were anxious to establish5. 1 A similar decree had been made just before in a 'Calvinistic' synod at Gappe: Collier, II. 708. 2 Mant, I. 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, p. 44, note (ƒ). |