Chapter 7 - THE IRISH ARTICLES OF 1615: CORRESPONDENCE.

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USSHER was now to play a prominent part in moulding the theology of the Reformed Church of Ireland as far as compiling Articles of Religion could do it. Up to this time it is difficult to say what were the doctrinal standards of that Church. In the matter of reformation it naturally lagged behind the Church of England, which had in a large measure reformed itself before it introduced the principles of the Reformation into Ireland. It is not certain whether the Elizabethan Articles possessed at this time the authority of law in Ireland. There is no evidence to show that they had been accepted in any way by the Irish Church or had received the sanction of the Irish Parliament. In the year 1566, as we have seen, a book off Twelve Articles of Religion had been published by authority of the Lord-Deputy Sidney and the archbishops and bishops, and directions given that they should be read by the clergy at their possession-taking, and thrice every year afterwards.

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These Articles were of the same nature with a similar set of nine Articles (the Lambeth Articles) published in England, and which were afterwards superseded by the Thirty-nine Articles. In the year 1615, a Convocation of the Church of Ireland was summoned in conjunction with a new Parliament. [1] Dr. Jones, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was President of the Upper House, and the Rev. Randolph Barlow, chaplain to the Lord-Deputy Chichester and afterwards Archbishop of Tuam, was Prolocutor of the Lower House. This Convocation of the clergy, which was strictly modelled after that of Canterbury, sat in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, from May 24th, 1613, to April 25th 1615, when the subsidies were granted. It is regarded as the first Convocation held in Ireland. [2]

Dr. Hampton, Archbishop of Armagh, who had been consecrated only sixteen days previously, has in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury given us an account of the opening proceedings: “When the day of the Convocation came, my Lord Chancellor would have the sermon after

[1] For an account of the proceedings of this Parliament, see Cox, vol. ii. Pp. 21-31.

[2] Ball's History of the Reformed Church of Ireland, pp. 108-9; Elrington’s Life of Usher, p. 38.

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dinner, but yielded to me therein that it should be at nine o'clock of the morning, after the manner of England, and I did requite his Lordship's kindness therein with relenting in the matter of our habits, albeit I and most of my suffragans were provided of scarlet robes. Yet, finding my Lord Chancellor unfurnished thereof for Convocation, I persuaded my suffragans to leave their scarlets at home, and to go to Convocation in our rochets to cover my Lord Chancellor and his omission. After sermon his Lordship, taking the first place, caused the bishops to be called, and first himself by the name of Thomas, Archbishop of Dublin, then by three suffragans; afterwards Christopher, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland. Before I would answer to my name I excepted against the injury that I held it a wrong done to the Primate to be called in a national Council after the Archbishop of Dublin and all his suffragans. His Lordship answered, 'It was God's business.' I replied He was the God of order, and His business might be done in order." [3]

[3] See Dr. Reeve's Convocation, &c., paper read at the Dublin Church Congress - Report, p. 752: also Whitelaw and Walsh, History of Dublin, ii. pp. 1027-8. The last Convocation of the Irish Church was held in the tenth year of Queen Anne, 1711. An informal Convocation was held in St. Patrick's Cathedral immediately after the passing of the Irish Church Act in 1869.

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The principal business of the Convocation was to draw up Articles of Religion for the Church of Ireland, a task in which Ussher, as the Professor of Divinity, had a chief share. [4]

These Articles are 104 in number, and are an additional proof of the strong hold Puritanism had got on the Church of Ireland. The Lambeth Articles, which, under the advice of Andrewes and Overall, Queen Elizabeth had refused to sanction for use in the Church of England, are here reproduced almost word for word. [5]

[4] See Carte's Ormonde, i. p. 147; Leland's History of Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 458-9. Ussher, at the time of the adoption of these Articles, had "not yet got over the tincture he received in his first studies from the modern authority of foreign divines." - Carte's Ormonde, i. p. 77.

[5] The Lambeth Articles are reproduced “almost verbatim." - Cox's History, ii. p. 31. Marginal references to the Lambeth Articles are to be found in the original editions of the Articles of 1615 - Maskell’s Second Letter on Articles of 1615, pp. 21-2. “It is true that almost every word of the nine Lambeth propositions is to be found in the Articles agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops and the rest of the clergy of Ireland in 1615, and through these Articles probably much of the phraseology passed into the Westminster Confession of Faith." - Tulloch's Rational Theology, vol. i. p. 44. “The Irish Articles of 1615 remain the abiding memorial of the hardy predestinarianism of the Irish Protestant Church. Ussher, their reputed author, was Provost of Trinity College” - Ditto, p. 82. Of course this last statement is a slip on the part of Tulloch. Gardiner makes the same mistake in Diet. Nat. Biog., ix. p 246.

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The Westminster Confession of Faith is largely modeled on these Irish Articles. [6] There is a marked similarity between the two documents in the order and titles of many of the chapters, as well as in the language of entire sections.

We may see in the drawing up of these Irish Articles the same desire to be independent of the Church of England that was manifested two centuries later, when the Book of Common Prayer was revised. Had the Church of Ireland in Ussher's time been possessed with a desire to conform to that of England, there was no reason why the Irish Convocation should not have met at this time pro forma, and adopted the English Articles. The Puritan element was at work then as it was in our own day, and on both occasions that strange feeling was uppermost that always been antagonistic to English influences. “Whether they wearied of their dependence," says Mant, "or abated of their reverence for the Church of England, there were at this time some of the clergy of the Church of Ireland who were ambitious of establishing an independent character, of framing Articles of Religion of their own, and by their own authority, and so of distinguishing themselves by their own peculiar character as a free independent Church.

[6] See Professor Mitchell's Introduction to the Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly, p. xlvii.; and Stanley's Essays on Church and State, p: 390.

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But the more powerful and real actuating motive was that innovating spirit which, having failed some years before in the attempt to engraft the doctrines of Calvin on the profession of faith of the Anglican Church by means of the notorious Lambeth Articles, was now to be employed in attempting to substitute in the Irish Church a new profession with which those Articles should be incorporated.  [7]

These Irish Articles certainly betray no desire to lessen the differences which existed between the Established Church and the Roman Catholic community. On the contrary, they were all calculated to widen the gulf. On the other hand, there is a clear approximation towards Presbyterianism. There is no mention, for example, of the three orders of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. A Sabbatarianism as severe as the most rigid Scottish divines could have desired may be found in them. The Bishop of Rome is the "Man of Sin" and the "Anti-Christ," [8] foretold in the Apocalypse and by the Apostles; the chief errors of the Church of Rome are condemned, the endless torments of the wicked are unequivocally declared.

[7] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 383. See also, for a similar view, Ball's Reformed Church of Ireland, pp. 110-111.

[8] This was at the time as much an Article of Faith with the Puritans as any clause in the Apostles Creed.

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The doctrine of sacramental grace corresponds with that afterwards laid down in the Westminster Confession. Baptism deals unto us our new birth, and consequently our justification, adoption and sanctification by the communion which we have with Jesus Christ; in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Body and Blood of Christ are really and substantially presented unto all those that have grace given unto them to receive the Son of God, but they are not otherwise present with the visible elements than symbolically and relatively.

The Articles were of such a nature as to permit their acceptance by several Presbyterian ministers, who crossed from Scotland and were ordained and licensed to benefices in the north of Ireland.

These Articles of Religion "agreed upon by the archbishops and bishops, and the rest of the clergy of Ireland, in the convocation holden at Dublin in the year of our Lord God 1615, for the avoiding of diversities of opinion and the establishing of consent touching true religion" - so ran their official title - were, as Ussher testified, [9] duly signed by the President and the Prolocutor, and then ratified by the Lord-Deputy as representing the King; but they never received the authority of Parliament.

[9] Bernard's Life of Ussher, pp. 49-50. See also Parr's Life, p. 14.

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As might be supposed, many "hard questions" were submitted from time to time to one who had now gained a reputation in theological knowledge. Thus a Mr. Edward Warren, [l0] writes from Kilkenny, in 1617, asking for Ussher's views on the extent of Christ's knowledge as a man, and whether habitual knowledge grew by degrees in Him as in other men, a subject which has not ceased to interest Christian thinkers and the discussion of which has been revived in our own day. [11] He also inquires about the knowledge Adam possessed, whether it was as great "as the nature of man was capable of." Unfortunately, Ussher's answers are not always forthcoming. Thanking him for his reply on June 11th, 1617, Warren goes aside to notice the fact that "Mass was said in Kilkenny very lately by one, to an assembly of women (and one boy that by chance fell in among them, by whom also the matter was discovered) that when it was ended the priest transformed himself into a he-goat with some other unmannerly pranks which I had rather that he should do than I relate." [12]

[10] Warren was a. Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and became Dean of Ossory in 1626 - Dublin University Calendar for I877, pt. ii. p. 194.

[11] See, e.g., Mr. Gore's essay in Lux Mundi. Ussher discusses this difficult question of the nature and extent of Christ's knowledge in his Tract. de Controv. Pont., under the head De Scientia Anima: Christi - Works, vol. xiv. p. 187. The reader will find there a suggestive and helpful contribution to the study of the subject.

[12] Ussher's Works, vol. xvi. pp. 342-3.

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Another question with which the same correspondent plies Ussher is that of God tempting man to evil. A further voluminous and gossiping correspondent was Sir Henry Bourgchier, afterwards Lord Bath, who keeps him well posted in London news. [13] If he wanted a book, Sir Henry was the man to get it. Ussher was not only a bookworm, but an inveterate borrower and purchaser of books. "Peto primo, secundo, et tertio, instanter, instantius, et instantissime" (he writes to Lydiat, in 1617), "that you will let me have the use of your Geminius and Albategnius." [14]

[13] Henry Bourgchier was a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1601, and came to his title in 1636. Lady Bath in 1671, bequeathed £200 to the Library "as a signall memoriall of the kindness her Lord had for the College." - Dublin University Calendar for 1877, pt. ii. p. 164. Dunton, in 1698, speaks of the Countess of Bath's library filled with many handsome folios and other books in Dutch binding, gilt with the Earl's arms."

[14] Works, vol. xv. p. 128. Thomas Lydiat was brought to Ireland by Ussher in 1609, where he became a Fellow of Trinity College in the following year. Ussher got him rooms in College, and a Readership worth £3 6s. 8d. a quarter. An entry in the College account-book has the following: "Mr. Lydiat, partly for reading, partly by way of benevolence, '£5, December 23rd, 1609." Subsequently Lydiat returned to England, where he was thrown into prison for a debt incurred for others, and was only liberated by the kind offices of Ussher, seconded by Laud. In gratitude to the latter he dedicated to him a treatise "On the Setting up of altars in Christian Churches, and bowing in reverence to them." Kippis, in his Biog. Brit., vi. p. 4067, is in error when he represents Lydiat as Ussher's brother-in-law, and that he signed himself as such. The signature is really "your most assured loving friend and brother." - See Ussher's Works, xv. pp. 112, 150; Todd's Graduates, p. 357; Ath., Oxon. iii. pp. 185-9.

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Sometimes correspondents complain that he is keeping their books a long time or has not returned them, and Ussher himself has to make the same complaint of others. Sir Henry, writing under date 1618, says: "Here are few books lately published; if there be any old or new which you desire you may command my purse and credit as your own." In the same letter he tells Ussher of "one Thrasco, a minister," who had been imprisoned for diverse fanatical opinions . . . . The particulars would stuff a letter too much." But he tells him how he was compelled to "stand on the pillory with his ears nailed and branded in the forehead, that so he that was schismaticus might likewise be stigmaticus." A brutal jest! But then "it was," says the writer, as a kind of apology, “the Lord Chancellor's phrase.” [15] In a former letter he had let Ussher know that the Reformed Church had held a synod at Rochelle, and that Sir Walter Raleigh was then at Southampton.

[15] Ussher's Works, xvi. p. 359. Thrasco was considered to be a broaker of  Judaism;” - Fuller, Church History, vol. iii. p. 274. His sect was identified with. "Sensualists" and "Antinomians."

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A third correspondent was Heartwell, who, writing in 1618 of the Papal Church, says "the beast rages now, "and mentions that a massacre was nearly taking place in Venice, but was by a wonderful providence discovered.” [16] He excuses the thinness of his communication by saying in the quaint language of the day, "whilst you fill your sides with ambrosia and nectar, raining down heavenly manna therein, I am glad for barrenness to patch up anything in post to you again." He desires further - "out of your belly may flow rivers of the water of life to water the Lord's garden, and long may you flourish as a palm-tree and a cedar in the courts of our God, until filled with your reward, He gives you to drink out of the river of His pleasures," [17] a mixture of figures of speech which may well have puzzled the recipient. About the same time, Ussher is exercised about "our great St. Patrick and his miracles," and asks Camden to search for a MS. in Sir Robert Cotton's library; written before the time of Bede, "bound in blue leather," and which was found among Jocelin's remains. [18]

[16] This was the conspiracy aimed against Paolo Sarpi and the Protestants in Venice.

[17] Ussher's Works, xvi. pp. 356-7.

[18] In addition to the above, Ussher enjoyed a learned correspondent in William Brouncker, afterwards second Viscount Castlelyons. He was the first President of the Royal Society. His grandfather, Sir Henry, had been President of Munster, and died and was buried in Cork in 1607. Brouncker made two important mathematical discoveries. "He was the first to introduce continued fractions, and to give a series for the quadrature of the equilateral hyperbola." - Dict. Nat. Biog., vi. p. 470.