lity with which the arguments had been brought forward. His letter was as follows: "JAMES REX. 66 Right Reverend Father in God and Right truly and well beloved Councellor, we greet you well. You have not deceived our expectations, nor the gracious opinion we ever conceived of your abilities in learning, and of your faithfulness to us and our service. Whereof as we have received sundry testimonies both from our precedent Deputies, as likewise from our Right trusty and well beloved Cousin and Counsellor, the Viscount Falkland, our present Deputy of that realm: so have we now of late, in one particular, had a further evidence of your duty and affection well expressed by your late carriage in our Castle Chamber there, at the censure of those disobedient magistrates, who refused to take the oath of supremacy. Wherein your zeal to the maintenance of our just and lawful power, defended with so much learning and reason, deserves our princely and gracious thanks; which we do by this our letter unto you, and so bid you farewell. Given under our signet at our Court at Whitehall, the eleventh of January 1622. In the twentieth year of our reign of Great Britain, France and Ireland. "To the Right Reverend Father in God and our Right trusty and well beloved Councellor, the Bishop of Meath." No particulars have been transmitted to us of the manner in which the Bishop of Meath managed his diocese, nor of the measures he adopted to improve the wretched state of his clergy and their churches, which are so fully described in the report made in the first year of his consecration to the Regal visitation. That he made considerable efforts to convert the Roman Catholics by preaching to them has been already mentioned, and that the Roman Catholics took offence at his measures may be collected from a letter of Sir Henry Bourgchier dated April 1622, in which he says, "I hear much murmurings among the Papists f See Letter 1. Works, vol. xv. p. 174. here, especially those of our country against some new persecutions (you know their phrase) lately raised in Ireland, and particularly against some courses of your Lordship's in the diocese of Meath; as namely in the case of clandestine christenings, &c. beyond all others of your rank." Yet the severe remark in Archbishop Hampton's letter before alluded to confirms what a mere inspection of the dates of his visits to England must have suggested to every one, that his private studies occupied too much of his Even before he was Bishop of Meath we may well wonder how he could have discharged the duties of the Professorship of Divinity, when he was two years absent in England, from September 1619 to July 1621. We now find him obtaining a King's letter from James ordering the Lord Deputy and Council to grant him leave of absence for an indefinite time. The letter was as follows: "JAMES REX. "Right trusty and well beloved Cousins and Councellors, we greet you well. Whereas we have heretofore in our princely judgment made choice of the Right Reverend Father in God Dr. James Ussher Lord Bishop of Meath, to employ him in collecting the Antiquities of the British Church before and since the Christian faith was received by the English nation. And whereas we are already given to understand, that the said Bishop hath already taken pains in divers things in that kind, which being published might tend to the furtherance of religion and good learning: Our pleasure therefore is, that so soon as the said Bishop hath settled the necessary affairs of his bishoprick there, he should repair into England and to one of the Universities here, to enable himself by the helps to be had there to proceed the better to the finishing of the said work, Requiring you hereby to cause our Licence to be passed unto him the said Lord Bishop of Meath, under our great seal, or otherwise as he shall desire it, and unto you shall be thought fit, for his repairing unto this kingdom for our service, and for his continuance here, so long time as he shall have occasion to stay about the perfecting of those works undertaken by him, by our commandment and for the good of the Church." The Bishop must have proceeded to London about the end of November 1623. It appears from a letter of Sir Henry Bourgchier, that he had not reached London on the 22nd of November 1623, and Dr. James in the January following mentions that he had been some few weeks there. Dr. Parr is very confused in this part of his narrative, he makes the Bishop return to Ireland in 1624, publish his answer to the Jesuit Malone, and proceed again to England; but the answer to the Jesuit was published in London at the very end of 1624 or beginning of 1625, and I think it could be proved from the dates of letters that the Bishop did not return to Ireland till August, 1626. He preached before the King in June, 1624, was in England certainly in September and November, and resident at Much Haddam in the beginning of January, and in August, 1625. The subject of the sermon he preached before the King at Wansted was the Universality of the Church of Christ, a learned and well arranged discourse, particularly suited to the taste of James, as it enters into the question of the Roman Church as predicted in the Apocalypse, and of the Pope being Antichrist, discusses the different creeds, and then answers the objections of the Roman Catholics in the question, where was the religion of the Protestants before Luther. The sermon was published by command of the King. The Bishop also published his answer to the Jesuit Malones, which had been for some time in preparation. Six years had elapsed since William Malone, an Irish Jesuit, published a challenge for any Protestant to answer him, g William Malone was born in Dublin about the year 1586. He went at an early age first to Portugal, then to Rome, where he became a member of the Order of Jesuits in the twentieth year of his age. He soon after returned to Ireland, and remained there till he was sent for to Rome and appointed Rector of the Irish College of St. Isidore. After governing this College for six years he returned again to Ireland as Superior of the whole Mission of the Jesuits. In this office he excited the suspicion of the Government, and was arrested; but having contrived to make his escape, he fled to Spain, where he died in 1659, Rector of the Irish College at Seville. What Bishop of Rome did alter the religion which the Protestants acknowledge to have been true for the first four hundred years? and how can their religion be true which disalloweth the chief articles which the Saints and Fathers of that primitive Church held to be true? Dr. Ussher put forth a short answer at the time, replying in general to the question proposed, and accepting the challenge by calling upon Malone to bring forward his proofs. This Malone never did; and Ussher would not have proceeded further, had not, as he says himself in the preface, "some of high place in both kingdoms advised him to go forward and to give the judgment of antiquity touching those particular points in controversy wherein the challenger was so confident, that the whole current of the doctors, pastors, and fathers of the primitive Church did mainly run on his side." The work consists of eleven chapters, on Tradition, the Real Presence, Confession, the Priest's Power to forgive sins, Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, Limbus Patrum, and Christ's descent into Hell, Prayers to Saints, Images, Free Will, Merits, and is dedicated to King James, but I believe he died before the work was actually published. The author declares, "the doctrine which I take upon me to defend is that which by public authority is professed in the Church of England, and comprised in the Book of Articles agreed upon in the Synod held at London in the year MDLXII. concerning which I dare be bold to challenge our challenger and all his complices that they shall never be able to prove that there is either any one article of religion disallowed therein, which the Saints and Fathers of the primitive Church did generally hold to be true, or any one point of doctrine, which by those Saints and Fathers was generally held to be untrue." In this work, as in that "De Ecclesiarum Christianarum Successione et Statu," the number and variety of the quotations must astonish the reader; the very list of authors which are quoted is sufficient to impress the mind with wonder at the learning and diligence of the author. This work will always hold a foremost place among the bulwarks of the Protestant faith against the innovations of Romanism, and is particularly VOL. I. F successful in exhibiting the novelty of the doctrines, which are triumphantly put forward as the "Quod ubique, quòd semper, quod ab omnibus." To give any abstract of the work would be impossible, it must be read through in order to form any opinion of its merits. Three years elapsed before Malone took any notice of this work, and he then published at Douay an answer, the title of which was "A Reply to Dr. Ussher's Answer about the Judgment of Antiquity concerning the Romish Religion." The argument was weak, and supported either by false and garbled quotations from the Fathers, or by extracts from books of doubtful authority containing such false miracles and legends as could only impose upon the ignorant, and the style was such as rendered it unworthy of the Bishop's notice. "Not a page," says Dr. Synge, "may be found, wherein he useth not a licentious libertie and a reviling tongue against the most learned answerer. Whereupon some Divines did labour to dissuade the most Reverend the Lord Primate from rejoining thereunto, in regard of the indignity of the raylor and violence of the work, and also because it would hinder him in other studies more necessary for the Church, and did offer their endeavours to examine the same, which being accepted the work is now so farre prepared that it waytes at the presse." Dr. Synge then adds that he published the first part because he understood that the adverse party had used deceit, and got possession of the sheets as they were printed in order to answer them. This first part is stated to be, "wherein the general answer to the challenge is cleared from all the Jesuits' cavills." The whole work was never published. Dr. Hoyle, who also published an answer in 1641, states that "it was first intended that all should go under one as a common work, without any particular name," and that he, for his part, was ready. But seeing, he says, "the work suffered some unexpected delayes, he undertook a more laborious task, and as the Lord Primate had prevented him in the Fathers, he directed his A third answer was published by Mr. Puttock, who styles himself, Minister of God's Word at Navan. |
