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been refuted; and further investigation has confirmed many of his opinions, particularly that there exist several Christian Churches, which have always rejected the doctrines of popery, refused submission to its authority, and escaped extermination or apostasy under its persecutions. Dr. Usher's work was carried down only to the latter part of the fourteenth century. In a letter written a few years after its publication, he speaks of his intention of filling up what is wanting to complete the work. "I purpose," he says, " to publish the whole work together, "to much augmented, but do first expect the publication of my uncle Stainhurst's answer to the former, which I hear, since his death, is sent to Paris to be printed." The remaining period, however, was never completed, owing in some measure to the loss of his papers, during the unhappy disorders which rent society in the latter part of his life.

About the same time he married the orphan daughter of his friend Dr. Chaloner. That gentleman was descended from an ancient family in Yorkshire, and was a learned and pious man. He had been a great benefactor to the college, and took a deep interest in all that concerned its welfare; and therefore he watched with pleasure the honour that accrued to it from the fame of one of its earliest members. He also entertained a very high opinion of the private worth of Dr. Usher, and as he lay upon his death-bed he spoke to his daughter of a hope very near his heart, that she might one day become the wife of his friend. Not long afterwards, the good man's wishes were accomplished; but of his daughter's character we have scarcely any intimation. Dr. Parr, who must have known her well towards the close of her life, scarcely mentions her at all, and no family letters are found in that portion of Dr. Usher's correspondence which was pub

lished. For forty years, however, they participated in many vicissitudes of fortune, and in their deaths they were not long divided, since her husband survived her only about eighteen months. They had one child, a daughter, who was married to sir Timothy Tyrrel, and will be mentioned again in these pages.

Dr. Usher now passed several years in the enjoyment of a growing reputation. His fame had reached the Continent, and the most eminent persons at home and abroad consulted him on doubtful points of learning and theology, and were ambitious of his acquaintance and correspond

ence.

His character as a scholar, a divine, and a christian, marked him as a fit person to fill some distinguished office in the church; and his advancement to a bishopric, and his conduct in that distinguished situation, will be the subject of the ensuing chapter.

CHAPTER II.

HIS PROMOTION.

I venerate the man whose heart is warm,

Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life

Coincident, exhibit lucid proof

That he is honest in the sacred cause.

COWPER.

THE dawning of the Reformation was hailed with joy in England by multitudes of every class; but, "in Ireland," as Leland remarks, "it was tendered to a prejudiced and a reluctant people." Perpetual domestic warfare had left them little time for any kind of improvement, and they were in a state of extreme rudeness and igno

rance, which made them unfit, as well as unwilling, to enter upon a discussion of the great points in controversy. Considerable numbers of the priests, attached to their church, abandoned their wretched cures rather than forsake it; and they taught the people to believe that the attempt to change their religion was a fresh cause for hating the English government; reminded them how venerable popery had become by its antiquity, and fenced it round by extreme maledictions against innovation and heresy,

Unhappily, no such zeal was manifested by the professors of a purer faith. "Hard it is," said a chancellor of Ireland, in the reign of Edward the Sixth, "that men should know their duties to God and to the king, when they shall not hear teaching or preaching throughout the year." It seems probable that the only protestant clergy who could speak the language of the country were those who had conformed to the protestant doctrine for the sake of retaining their benefices, who readily returned to popery in the reign of Mary, and as easily made one more change in their profession on the accession of Elizabeth. In such hands, and even they were few, the cause of the truth was not likely to prosper; and the persons of English or Scottish descent, who were afterwards ordained, could not converse with the people in the mother-tongue. The total number of the protestant clergy was quite inadequate to afford ministers even for half the livings in the island; and Leland, and others, represent their moral character and mental attainments in no very favourable light. The difficulty of printing the Irish language, and the paucity of those who could read it, presented a further obstacle to the diffusion of divine truth; and the benefices were miserably impoverished, the glebe-houses falling to decay, and the

churches themselves too often in ruins. Well might sir Henry Sydney write to Queen Elizabeth, "Your majesty may believe it, that, upon the face of the earth where Christ is professed, there is not a church in so miserable a case; the misery of which consisteth in these three particulars; the ruin of the very temples themselves; the want of good ministers to serve in them, when they shall be re-edified; and competent living for the ministers, being well chosen."

All who had the interest of religion at heart mourned over this desolate state of the protestant church, and longed for the means of shedding warmth and light upon this moral wilderness. Their efforts, however, were only partially successful; in the following reigns these evils were mitigated but not removed. The complaints of Bishop Bedell, in the reign of Charles the First, describe the general state of the Irish church. "I have been about my dioceses," he says, "and can set down, out of my knowledge and view, what I shall relate; and shortly, to speak much ill matter in a few words, it is very miserable. The cathedral church of Ardagh, one of the most ancient in Ireland, and said to be built by St. Patrick, together with the Bishop's house there, down to the ground. The church here built, but without bell or steeple, font or chalice. The parish churches all in a manner ruined, unroofed, and unrepaired. The people, saving a few British planters here and there, (which are not the tenth part of the remnant), obstinate recusants. A popish clergy, more numerous by far than we, and in full exercise of all jurisdiction ecclesiastical, by their vicar-generals and officials..... For our own, there are seven or eight ministers in each diocese, of good sufficiency; and (which is no small cause of the continuance of the people in popery still) English, which have not the

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tongue of the people, nor can perform any divine offices or converse with them; and which hold, many of them, two or three, four, or more vicarages a-piece." He says, in another letter, written in the same year (1630), that in his diocese of Kilmore and Ardagh, there were sixty-six popish priests, including their bishop, while the ministers and curates of the church were only thirty-two; and laments that this great superiority in point of numbers should be given to those who already possessed immense advantages in a knowledge of the language, the prejudices of the people, and the countenance of the nobility and gentry.

Whatever improvement had taken place may be attributed in part to the establishment of the university of Dublin, and in part to the introduction of men of piety, zeal, and learning, from England and Scotland; and it so happened that both of these measures were at the same time the means of diffusing throughout the Irish Church a strong bias towards the religious views of the puritans.

"From the first beginnings of the Reformation," says Leland, "the difficulties of finding pastors, the negligence of governors in affairs of religion, and the opposition given to every attempt to provide for the instruction of the people and the real establishment of the reformed faith and worship, gradually reduced the church of Ireland to a state of desolation ;" and the obvious means of remedying this dreadful evil appeared to be to qualify the inhabitants to become ministers of the gospel. Hence the establishment of Trinity College in Dublin, in the year 1591; and Neal states that, when the University was opened about two years afterwards, it was "furnished with learned professors from Cambridge, of the calvinistic persuasion." The other method of advancing the protestant cause was recommended, so early as the year 1576,

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