Chapter 18 - FRESH LITERARY LABOURS: "THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE BRITISH CHURCHES": THE EPISTLES OF ST. IGNATIUS.

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THE enacting of the English Articles, and the drawing up of new Canons, was not the only business that engaged the attention of Convocation. The state of the Church was also passed under review, and provision was made to abate many abuses. A petition was addressed to the King, signed by the Archbishops of Armagh and Cashel, representing the miserable condition of the rural clergy, who were reduced to "extreme contempt and beggary," in consequence of "frequent appropriations, commendams, and violent intrusions into their undoubted rights in times of confusion; their churches ruined, their tythes detained, their glebes concealed and by inevitable consequence a system of non-residence forced on them."

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The petition represents to the King the advantage that would accrue to Church and State if a resident clergy were provided, "endowed with competence to serve God at his alter,” not to speak of the general protection of the Almighty which it would most assuredly bring on his Majesty and kingdom. Barbarism and superstition would be expelled, the subject would learn his duty to God, and true religion would be propagated. The petition goes on pray that the King would settle those appropriations which were in the Crown, and not yet disposed of, upon a “rural and resident clergy.” [1]

But the evil condition of the Church at this time was not confined to its temporalities. The clergy, in many instances, were not realising their high responsibilities. We find Lord Strafford addressing Archbishop Ussher and the other Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1636, urging them to stir up the clergy to their duties. “Whereas," the Lord Deputy writes, "we cannot but take notice of the general non-residence of clergymen to the dishonour of God, the disservice of their cures, the vain expense of their means in cities and corporate towns, and the great scandal of the Church; we do hereby require and authorise you to proceed instantly with all severity to the reformation of this great abuse, and to cause all those whom you shall find to live idly about this city of Dublin, or

[1] Collier's Ecclesiastical History, ii. p. 763; quoted by Mant; Church of Ireland, i. part ii. pp 484-5.

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other cities or corporate towns, or upon their farms, to repair instantly to their parish churches to attend that charge, whereof they owe an account both to God and man; and if they shall disobey your command in this respect, to sequester their livings for a year, and if they be still negligent, to deprive them; purposing on our return into this kingdom (if it shall so please God and his Majesty) to take strict account of your proceedings and good endeavours in each of these particulars." [2] Whatever opinion we may form of Strafford, we are compelled to acknowledge that this was the language of one who had at heart the highest and most important interests of the Church of Ireland. And here we may bring under final review the principles that underlay and directed the ecclesiastical policy of the two great men with whom Ussher was brought into such close contact during his Archiepiscopal reign in Ireland, and whose names have been so prominently before us in these pages - Laud and Strafford. The principles that influenced them may be said to have contemplated throughout the social, moral, and spiritual elevation of the Church of Ireland. There was scarcely a beneficed clergyman at the passing of the Irish Church Act who had not reason to thank his stars that Laud and Strafford had lived and worked for the Church of Ireland in the seventeenth century, for his annuity was in a large degree the fruit of the ceaseless and courageous efforts of these men.

[2] Strafford's Letters, vol ii. p. 42.

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By their labours, an annual income of £30,000 was, recovered for the Church, "an incredible sum for that day," [3] representing as it did more than £240,000 a year in our present currency - in a word, about half of the income of the Irish Church at the time of its disendowment. The whole of the tithes impropriated by the Crown were then restored, and, as we have seen, in addition, more than one noble and more than one right rev. robber of churches were made to disgorge their share of the spoil. In addition to these services, Strafford had in his mind a project, which he was not able to carry out, for restoring or rebuilding all the cathedral churches in Ireland, [4] and he was specially interested in giving the diocese of Down a cathedral worthy of its growing importance.

To touch on another and delicate subject, Laud and Strafford may be blamed by some as having unduly interfered with the doctrinal symbols of the Church of Ireland, and deprived her of her Articles of Religion. But what salvation was wrought thereby!

[3] Mozley's Essays, i. p. 31.

[4] Ditto, p. 32.

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Who can doubt that if the Irish Articles (which indeed were not in themselves of a national character at all, but largely modelled on the theology of Geneva) had been retained, the result would have been disastrous to the best interests of the Church? "The awful and immoral system of John Calvin" [5] would have been stereotyped in the Irish Church, and spiritual life dwarfed and starved in proportion. Laud’s great effort was to pull the Church together, and save it from becoming a mere Puritan sect, a poor echo of continental Protestantism. [6]

To do this, he saw that it was necessary to draw the two Churches closely together. He was fighting the same battle in England and Ireland, and in this latter country he found a ready helper in Strafford. Freedom of thought, a wider and more tolerant theology, respect for ancient learning and ancient precedents, these things lay at the foundation of what they did. Laud was one of those few men who see before their times; he had the courage to face great risks and great difficulties in the prosecution of his purposes. As has been well said: he was one man with a view in those temporising days, and he pursued that view through good report and evil report, through all the tangled mazes of Court life.

[5] Aubrey Moore, in Lux Mundi, p. 99.

[6] A predestinarian theology like that set forth in the Lambeth Articles could in no sense be regarded as of native growth; on the contrary, it characteristic features are entirely foreign to the Celtic way of looking at the facts of religion, and can find no counterpart in our primitive national theology.

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He had read and thought, and besides he was a man of action. He never lost sight of the great enterprise he had put before him alike in England and Ireland, and although at the time that policy seemed to perish, it was only for a season. Out of his ashes came renewed vigour for the Churches he loved and served so well, and today we are reaping the fruits of his labours. In the words of Holy Writ, his purpose was "to build the old waste places, to raise up the foundations of many generations, to be the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.”

But to return to our story. Hardly had Convocation ceased to sit when Ussher was invited to take part in the Commencements in Trinity College, July 1635. Writing to Ward, he speaks of his weariness after long attendance in Parliament and Convocation, and then being called upon to moderate in the Divinity Act, and assist in the making of doctors of divinity. He returns, however, with fresh zeal to his, studies, and publishes under the title of "Immanuel, or the Mystery of the Incarnation,” [7] the substance of a series of sermons preached by him at Drogheda.

[7] Ussher's Works, iv. pp. 573-617.

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Judging from this work, we would conclude that the Archbishop's audience had been trained to expect very solid food; they are scarcely sermons which would be listened to now with ordinary patience. The volume is dedicated to Lord Strafford - Grati animi qualecunque testimonium.

Another swing of the pendulum now took place, as the King was urgent for supplies, directions were issued to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Irish Church to make matters more comfortable for the Roman Catholics. In pursuance of these injunctions, Archbishop Ussher addressed a letter to his brother prelates instructing them that, until they received directions to the contrary, they should suspend all proceedings against recusants "for their clandestines," and "in a quiet and silent manner" withdraw them. [8]

A more ambitious work than the above was the next fruit of the Archbishop's pen, "The Antiquities of the British Churches," which was published in August 1639, and an early copy of which he presented to his friend Dr. Bramhall, the learned Bishop of Derry. The book had been commenced at the suggestion of James I., who, as we have seen, gave permission to Ussher to study in England for the purpose of its production.

[8] Ussher'sWorks, xvi. p. 532.

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After an interval of twenty years it appeared, with dedication to Charles I. [9]

There are indications that Ussher was likewise labouring over his great task of a critical edition of St. Ignatius. He is seeing the light more clearly in separating the genuine from the spurious. Writing to Dr. Ward from Drogheda, March 10th, 1637, he says: "The M.S. copy of Ignatius in Caius College Library hath this singular in it - that in the genuine epistles . . . . those passages are wanting which are excepted against, as institutions and oppositions by our writers, and that the place touching the Eucharist cited by Theodoret out of the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, which is wanting in all other books, is to be found in this.

[9] Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, printed in Dublin, quarto, 1639, and reprinted 1677. - Ussher's Works, v.-vi. The closing chapter (xvii.) is full of authorities on the early history of Christianity in Ireland. It sets forth at large the traditions of St. Patrick's visit to Rome, and commission by Pope Celestine. An elaborate chronological index will be found at the close of the work. Ware, in his day, wrote, "This work is so great a treasure of British and Irish ecclesiastical antiquities that all who have since written with any success on this subject cannot avoid owning how much they are indebted to his labours." - Works, i. p. 108.

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But I intend ere long to publish Ignatius myself, as considering it to be a matter of very great consequence to have a writer of his standing freed (as much as maybe) from those interpolations of later times." [10] Several years later he writes from Oxford, June 1640, telling a correspondent that he is searching for a Syriac copy of the Epistles. He is sure such a copy is to be found in Rome. [11] If he could get “either a Syriac, or an Arabic, or an, Armenian, or a Persian translation,” it would serve him “to exceeding good purpose." [12] Eventually the work is published in 1644, and he sends complimentary copies to various friends, including Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich, who writes back expressing his thanks in a Latin epistle, congratulating the Archbishop of the conclusion of his work, and saying it was a cause of thankfulness to himself and it the entire Christian world. [13]

 “To the critical genius of Ussher,” says another great student in the same field, "belongs the honour of restoring the true Ignatius.” [14] If the Archbishop had sent forth no other effort of his brain, this alone would have been enough to have stamped him as one of the greatest and most independent scholars of his own or any age.

[10] Ussher's Works, xvi. p. 34. It is to be observed that in earlier years, when composing his Answer to a Jesuit, Ussher quoted from the Long Recension without any misgivings.

[11] In 1845, Cureton, as is well known, discovered three of the Ignatian Epistles in Syriac version in the British Museum.

[12] Ussher's Works, xvi. pp. 64-5; see also his letter to Ravius, of  November 1639 (ib., p. 53).

[13] Ditto, p. 92; also his letter to Salmasius, of May 31, 1644 (ib., p.72).

[14] Bishop Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Part II. vol. i. p. 231.

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The story of the discovery of the Latin text, by which Ussher was enabled to publish an edition of the Epistles free from corruption and interpolation, is of absorbing interest, and goes far to prove the extraordinary penetration of this remarkable man. We may be excused, therefore, if we enter a little fully into the matter here. [15]

Ussher had been led to observe that the quotations from the Epistles of Ignatius in the writings of three English divines - Robert Grosseteste, John Tyssington, and William Wodeford - the first-mentioned being Bishop of Lincoln, and the two latter members of the Franciscan convent at Oxford; while they differed from the Greek and Latin versions, known as the "Long Recension," agreed with the quotations from St. Ignatius to be found in the writings of Eusebius and Theodoret. Ussher accordingly came to the conclusion that there must be hidden somewhere in the libraries of England MSS. of a version containing this earlier and sounder text. He directed a search to be made, and before long his critical judgment was rewarded with complete success.

[15] For what follows we are much indebted to Bishop Lightfoot's interesting notes. - See his Apostolic Fathers, Part II. vol. i. p. 76 and ff, p. 226 and ff.

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Two MSS. of such a version were discovered, the first now known as Caiensis, and which was presented to Gonville and Caius College by a former Fellow, Walter Crome, D.D., A.D. 1444, as is testified in the fly-leaf in Crome's handwriting. The entire MS., which is a large one, is also the work of Crome, and contains, in addition to the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistles of Dionysius, and some writings of St. Ambrose. The transcript from this MS., for the use of Ussher, is now preserved as one of its most cherished treasures in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and contains on the second page a manuscript note in the Archbishop's handwriting, to the effect that the MS. was transcribed from the Caius College copy above mentioned, and was collated by him with an other MS. obtained from the library of Richard Montague, D.D., Bishop of Norwich. [16] This second MS. was afterwards lost, and the attempts made to recover it have proved fruitless. "I, too, have angled for it," says Bishop Lightfoot, “in many waters, but inquiries made in all likely quarters have failed.”

[16] "The old Latin version of Ignatius, Ussher published out of two MSS. found in England, noting in red letters the interpolations of the former Greek." - Ware, i. p. 110. A copy is preserved in the Library T.C.D. (Class GG. h. 8). The Latin transcript may also be seen (Class D. 3. II).

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Very probably, as the Bishop surmises, it was lost among the confusions and depredations of the Parliamentary regime. Out of these Latin versions, with the aid of the Long Recension, Ussher produced his edition in 1644. There was only one flaw in it, but it was a serious one. Led astray by St. Jerome, who misunderstood a term in Eusebius, and imagined that the historian was speaking of one letter, when in reality he was referring to two - the Epistle to the Smyrneans and that to St. Polycarp - Ussher was induced to reject the latter as spurious, and discarded it from his edition of Ignatius. “It was the one blot," as Lightfoot says, "on his critical scutcheon.” However, with this exception Ussher succeeded in producing a genuine text, and “those who have since attempted to reinstate the Long Recension have beaten their heads against a stone wall." [17] The investigations which led to such happy results were a remarkable evidence of the application to critical science of the principles of the Baconian philosophy which were already taking possession of men's minds.

[17] Bishop Lightfoot as above. Jerome blundered over a Greek word (by which Eusebius meant in a separate epistle"), supposing him to speak of only one letter. "This ignorance,” says the Bishop, “might have been pardoned if it had not misled the greatest of Ignatian critics;" - Apost. Fathers, Part II. vol. i. p. 148 (note).

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"A faculty of wise interrogation,” as Bacon had said some time before, "is half a knowledge.” [18] Nor was Ussher's penetration exhibited only in these discoveries; he also came to the conclusion from certain delicate evidences that would have escaped a less observant mind, that Grosseteste was himself the translator of the first-mentioned M.S., a conclusion the correctness of which has been all but demonstrated by subsequent critics. With equal penetration he anticipated the discovery of an Armenian version, [19] and his forecast was abundantly justified in 1783 by the publication at Constantinople of an Armenian text supposed to be of the fifth century, which was reprinted in 1849. [20]

To Ussher, therefore, belongs the distinguished honour of having produced the first edition of the genuine writings of this apostolic Father, equally removed from the Syriac or Short Recension published by Cureton in 1845, and the Long Recension now universally acknowledged to be spurious.

[18] Adv. Of Learning, pt. ii. p. 95.

[19] Works, xvi. p. 65.

[20] Notwithstanding all these labours bestowed on the Epistles of St. Ignatius there are still living, scholars who refuse to believe their genuineness. - See, e.g., Killen's Ancient Church, period ii. sect. ii., ch. 2 and 3; Bury's Student's Roman Empire, p. 456 (note).

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It speaks volumes for the self-repression of the man, that in 1641, [21] while composing his tract on "The Original of Bishops,” &c. for Bishop Hall and quoting from St. Ignatius, he says not a word about the great work on which he was then engaged. It is to be observed also that he was careful to confine all his extract to the correct text. In this respect he was in marked contrast with Whitgift, Hooker, and Andrewes, who freely quoted from the interpolated form. Among others whom Ussher's reticence imposed upon was Milton, who in fiery language maintained that if God had ever intended we should learn anything from this writer, He would not "have so ill provided for our knowledge as to send him to our hands in this broken and disjointed plight."

[22] The great Puritan little knew that even then Ussher was providing for him the fuller knowledge.

[21] He had begun to print his Ignatius in September 1640 (Works, xv. p. 64).

[22] Milton's Prelatical Episcopacy, Works, vol. iii. p. 72 and ff. Milton's language was utterly unworthy of him, and justifies the criticism of Dr. Johnson, that he had adopted “the puritanical savageness of manners.” In his eyes Ussher was a dunce-prelate." - Equally, violent language may be seen in other writings of the day. - See, e.g., Prynne's Canterbury's Doom, p. 14.

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There was only one thing required to complete the triumph of Ussher and prove him to be one of the keenest and most sagacious of theological critics, was the discovery of a genuine Greek text, which, strange to say, followed almost immediately. Two years after Ussher’s publication, [23] Isaac Vossius published his celebrated edition, taken from a MS. discovered in the Medicean Library at Florence, which contained, in the Greek, six out of the seven genuine Epistles, wanting only that to the Romans, which was lost, the MS. being imperfect at the end. This latter Epistle was found fifty years later, and published by Ruinart in Paris, A.D. 1689, and thus Ussher’s triumph was perfected.

As may well be supposed, the Archbishop's work met with the strongest opposition from the Presbyterian leaders, who had taken their cue from Calvin. That remarkable man had with a bold stroke thrown over all the Ignatian Epistles without exception, as impudent forgeries. “Nothing;" he had written, “could be more disgusting than those silly trifles which are edited in the name of Ignatius. [24] It was felt that the seven genuine letters contained passages as inconsistent with the Presbyterian system as anything to be found in the Long Recension, and therefore the hard word went forth to put them all out of court.

[23] Dissertatio de Ig. et Pol. scriptis. - Ussher's Works, pp. 87-295.

[24] Inst. i. ch. xiii. sec. 29. Extremes meet. Calvin has found a counterpart in our day in the author of Supernatural Religion, who says the whole of the Ignatian literature is a mass of falsification and fraud,” i. p. 269. Quoted by Lightfoot in his Essay on that work, p. 62.

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"The new letters," wrote Claude Salmasius, Professor of History at Leyden, "are as much interpolated as the most reverend and learned Ussher has shown the old to be. They are the false lies of an impostor in the days, perhaps, of Marcus Aurelius.” [25] David Blondel, successor to Vossius in the Chair of History at Amsterdam went even further in his condemnation of Ussher's work. Another able opponent was Daille. At the Archbishop's request, Dr. Hammond answered some of these objections, while Daille was ably handled sometime later by Pearson. [26] An intention which Ussher had of including the Epistle of St. Barnabas was prevented by a fire which destroyed his manuscript.

[25] See, on the other hand, Ussher's graceful letter when sending a copy of his book to Salmasius. - Works, xvi. p. 72.

[26] For his pains Dr. Hammond was dubbed by the Presbyterians "Sir Knave." Ussher writes to him: "I have read with great delight and content your accurate answer to the objections made against the credit of Ignatius his Epistles." We learn from his letter that Dr. Hammond received a second nickname, being "rudely requited with the bare appellation of Nebulo for his assertion of episcopacy." This was done with a view to creating the impression that “the defence thereof was now deserted by all men." - Ussher’s Works, xvi. pp. 135 and 156. Capellus had recently written a book at Sedan, with this object in view.

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As might be expected, the importance of Ussher’s great discovery was duly recognised by scholars, and one of the first learned bodies to honour him was the University of Oxford. A decree was passed at a Convocation held on March 10th, 1645, that a portrait of the Archbishop should be executed at the expense of the University, with a suitable inscription, and prefixed to his work. The engraving eventually appeared in his treatise De Symbolo, with an inscription signed by the Vice-Chancellor, Robert Pink. [27] Ussher himself, it may be observed, was resident in Jesus College, Oxford, at the time, pursuing his studies. He was now a D.D.

Having sent forth his Ignatius, Ussher speedily published a further fruit of his pen in an essay on the Apostles' Creed, and other formularies of the faith, Eastern and Western. The work, which is dedicated to Vossius, whose opinions he was controverting, shows that the latter clauses of the Nicene Creed are older than the Council of Constantinople. [29]

[27] The following is the "Eulogium": "James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland, skillful of primitive antiquity, the unanswerable defender of the orthodox religion, the maul of errors, in preaching frequent, eloquent, very powerful, a rare example of all unblamable life." - Wood's Fasti Oxon. pt. i. p. 427.The Latin original is given in Elrington's Life, p. 236.

[28] Elrington's Life, p. 235 (note).

[29] Ussher's Works, vii. pp. 297-342. Ussher relied chiefly for his view of the matter on the Nicene Creed as recited by Epiphanius in his Anchoratus, a book written seven years before the Council of Constantinople was held, “where in the clauses referring to the Holy Ghost, &c, supposed to have been first added by that Council, are to be found." - See Ussher's Works, xvi. pp. 82, 84, 87-9.

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That to his other attainments Ussher added an appreciation of mathematics, and took an interest in astronomical science, is plain from his correspondence. Thus we find the learned Davenant communicating with him on the subject of "Spherical Triangles" and "Eclipses"; and Dr. Gilbert writes an elaborate essay on the planetary system, in which he anticipates the modern speculation of "the plurality of worlds." [30]

[30] Ussher's Works, xvi. p. 41-5. The letter of Dr. Gilbert, addressed to Ussher from Dublin, Dec. 11th, 1638, is a remarkably eloquent production, and in some respects reminds the reader of some famous essays on the same subject two centuries later. He enlarges on the infinitude of the stellar system, and asks why we should suppose that we alone are an intelligent portion of it, and goes on to say "so might the spider nested in the roof of the grand seignior's seraglio say of herself: all that magnificent and stately structure, set out with gold and silver and embellished with all antiquity and mosaic work, was only built for her to hang up her webs and toils to take flies. We, the glorious ants of this earth, magnify ourselves upon this mole-hill here to be the great and sole end of the world’s workmanship, whilst we consider not how little and nothing we are of it. Another learned correspondent of Ussher's was Henry Briggs, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, 1596-1620. He became acquainted with Ussher in 1609. Briggs was much taken up with “the noble invention of logarithms," and visited Napier of Merchiston, the discoverer. He was a great opponent of the pursuit of astrology, which he pronounced "a system of groundless conceits.” - See Ussher's Works, xv. p. 90; Dict. Nat. Biog., under "Briggs."

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In Parr's catalogue of Ussher's MSS., which were never printed, mention is made of a tract on planetary mathematics. Among other MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin, may be found a catalogue in Ussher's handwriting of fifteen stars of the first magnitude and other astronomical papers. [31] If Ussher had not devoted himself so entirely to the study of theology and ecclesiastical history, there is evidence to show that he might have distinguished himself in the higher walks of mathematical and astronomical science.

[31] Class D. 3. 15 and D. 3. 24.