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sent opposition to the Irish Church arises from the earnestness with which she is devoting herself to her own proper work. Her enemies feel more and more the energy which she is shewing, and therefore seek to destroy her by a single blow. The evils of pluralities, of sinecures, of non-residence, which once existed, have passed away. The Irish clergy desire to do their work quietly and unostentatiously, not wishing to boast of it, or parade it before the world, but content to do it, and leave the result to God. But this their enemies would gladly, if possible, prevent; they seek to distract their minds and divide their energies by constant and uncalled-for attacks; and therefore they are unwillingly dragged into the glare of political controversy, and made to speak when they would gladly, if they dared, be silent. In justice to that beloved Church of which they feel it their highest honour and greatest privilege to be ministers, they are compelled to state the facts of the case as they really are, hoping thereby to do somewhat towards removing the gathering prejudices by which this question is being surrounded, and to place before the public the true old Catholic Church of Ireland in her due proportion and actual lineaments, believing that when they know her as she really is, and not merely as she has been stated to be, they will learn to respect, to venerate, and effectually defend her.

ESSAY V.

The Influences exerted on Ireland by the Irish.
Church Establishment.

1. The necessity of Christianizing the civilization of the Kingdom agreeably to the ideas of the age, led to the establishment of the Irish Reformed Church.-2. The conversion of the Roman Catholics not the sole end of the Irish Church Establishment.-3. Causes of the small progress made in any part of the world by. Protestantism among the members of the Church of Rome during the last two centuries.-4. Special hindrances to its progress among them in Ireland arising from difference of language and political contention ;—5. and not, as has been alleged, from the establishment of the Church.-6. Notice of some of the labours of the Irish Church among the Roman Catholics.-7. Its indirect influence on them, specially important at the present time.-8. Effects of the establishment of the Irish Church through its own members, in guarding the Protestantism of Ireland,—9. and in producing its own present religious condition.-10. Dangers which now threaten the faith, and which imperatively demand the maintenance of the Establishment.-11. Examination of the intellectual influence of the Irish Church Establishment on the lower classes in Ireland,-12. and on the upper.-13. Its influence on the civilization of Ireland.-14. The Church Establishment not the cause of the troubles of Ireland.-15. These arose from the spoliation of the native Proprietors,-16. and continued because of the continuance of the effects of Confiscation.-17. The Establishment not supported by those who pay its revenues.-18. Not the cause of the inferior position of Roman Catholics, nor felt as a grievance by the Roman Catholic population.-19. No burden to the country.-20. The Establishment of the Church should be supplemented by the endowment of the other religious bodies.-21. The Irish Church Establishment not a source of dissension ;-22. but an indispensable bond of union with England, and agent of English civilization in Ireland.

1. RELIGION claims to govern the life of man with supreme authority; and as it commands in the name of God and professes to declare His will whose kingdom ruleth over all, it founds in the midst of the civil union a spiritual kingdom by which the civil system

cannot but be affected. Even if religious law go no further than to ordain motives and dispositions, these must affect the mental habits and practical character of the people; and if the habits and character which religion imparts to them do not harmonize with the natural spirit and tendencies of their civilization, the vigour of the State will be impaired. The prevailing influences of religion must agree with the characteristic principles of the national life, or that life will lose its strength, and the momentum of its activity will be reduced by the opposition between its civil and religious tendencies. But the spiritual kingdom affects the civil kingdom more directly when it assumes to regulate not only the motives and dispositions of men, but the particular actions in which these are embodied. When its ministers extend its law to all the details of action and punish those who transgress that law by depriving them of access to divine grace, the spiritual power enters the domain of the civil power, and must become either its ally or its enemy. In this case, opposition between the civil and religious systems tends to the abolition of law and the dissolution of social union; for when the actions of men are regulated at once by two conflicting powers, the authority of both is lowered, and though society may be controlled by force, there can be no growth of those sentiments of social order of which civilization consists. The indispensable condition of Christian civilization is harmony between the civil and religious systems; and it was under the guidance of the obvious necessities of their time, that the monarchs of Europe, when men were led by religious authority, maintained the harmony between that authority and their own.

Prior to the Reformation the civil power

for the most part adapted itself everywhere to the authority of the Church, and the Church exercised a commanding influence over all the affairs of Europe. The civil power and the spiritual power generally upheld and enforced each other's authority; and in doing so each was confirmed in the habit of bearing rule both in civil and spiritual affairs. The King, while maintaining the authority of the Church and extending its influence amongst his people in the degree which the Church demanded, learned to exercise a dominion over the religion of his subjects more imperative than naturally belonged to his office. The Pope in confirming the authority of the King and enforcing with the sanctions of religion the allegiance of his subjects, gradually assumed to be the source and arbiter of all civil power. It was in consequence of this union of spiritual and temporal power in the national sovereign and in the Pope that the Reformation was attended everywhere with civil disturbance. In those States in which the civil ruler renounced the authority of the Pope, he maintained his own authority to regulate by law the religious system of the nation, and those subjects who did not follow him in his change of religion were violators of the law, and were naturally suspected as rebels to their sovereign. The Pope at the same time maintained and exerted his right to deprive heretic princes of the title to their throne and of the allegiance of their subjects; and thus the religious difference in the nation divided it between Pope and King, and produced not only the suspicion but the reality of rebellion. That rebellion was both civil and religious, and Christian civilization required that, whether it was concluded by victory or defeat, the religious terms

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