after he left Lock water, he surprised his family by the bodily exertion he was enabled to make.

His recreations were few and simple; consisting chiefly of walking, and digging in his garden, in which he took great interest, having acquired much skill in the management of plants during his residence in Italy. The furniture of his house was plain, but suitable to his situation, and his table was well covered, and generally well attended with guests; but they were chiefly of those who could make him no return, and he lived amongst his clergy as if they had been his brethren. His humility was great, and finely contrasted with his undaunted firmness, whenever principle was involved, or self-interest to be sacrificed. He selected an ingenious device to express and increase this humility. It was a flaming crucible, with the following motto in Hebrew, "Take from me all my tin;" the word in Hebrew that signifies tin being Bedel. He directed in his will that his tombstone should bear this simple inscription:-"Depositum Gulielmi quondam Episcopi Kilmorensis," signifying that his body was committed in trust to the earth, till the time arrived when she should give up her dead.

JOHN BRAMHAL, PRIMATE OF IRELAND.

CONSECRATED A.D. 1634.-DIED A.D. 1663.

JOHN BRAMHAL was descended from a respectable family in Cheshire: he was born in Pontefract, in Yorkshire, in 1593. He received his education at the university of Cambridge, from whence, after taking his degree of A.M., he obtained a benefice in Yorkshire. A controversy with some Jesuits upon the Romish tenet of transubstantiation, terminated so as to ascertain his being possessed of high logical powers: and thus recommended, he was appointed chaplain to Matthews archbishop of York, whose friendship he soon gained, by his sterling virtues and sound practical ability. By this prelate he was appointed a prebendary of York and Rippon. In this station his character became generally known, and obtained a high influence among the aristocracy of his county; and becoming known to Sir Thomas Wentworth, then president of York, he was selected to be his chaplain. In 1633, there was a regal visitation in Ireland, held by his patron, with whom he came over and acted as one of the chief directors of the proceedings. He resigned his English preferments by the desire of Wentworth, and by his influence and recommendation was soon after appointed to the see of Derry; and was consecrated in the chapel of Dublin castle, on May 26th, 1634, by Usher and Dopping, with the bishops of Down and Cork. He had been recommended to the sagacious Wentworth, by his eminent attainments and talents for the conduct of affairs, at a period when the unsettled state of the kingdom, both in church and state, made such attainments more than usually desirable. In addition to his extensive theological and academical acquirements, Bramhal was also known to have obtained an accurate

knowledge of English law, a fact indicative of the industry of his disposition, and the solidity of his understanding.

In Ireland he quickly launched into a course of useful activity. There he found indeed ample scope for the hand of correction and reformation. Wentworth's visitation had exposed the ruinous state of the church, which was, in every respect, in the lowest condition consistent with existence: its revenues were insufficient for the sustenance of the clergy; and its condition in point of doctrine and discipline had fallen into an entire derangement. Bramhal at once set himself, with all the vigour of his character, to the reform of these defects, so fatai to the maintenance of religion, and no less so to the progress of civil prosperity in this kingdom.

In 1635, there was a meeting of parliament, in which he exerted himself, in conjunction with the lord-lieutenant, to repair the ruins of the church. An act was passed for the execution of pious uses. Another to confirm leases of certain lands made by the bishops of Armagh and other prelates, and empowering them to make leases for sixty years of such lands within five years. Another was passed for the preservation of the inheritance, rights and profits of lands belonging to the church and persons ecclesiastical. Another act was passed to facilitate the restitution of impropriations, tithes, &c., with provisions restraining alienations of such rights. In the course of the following four years, this activity of Bramhal, with the aid of these legal provisions, effected considerable improvements in the external condition of the church: availing himself of the law, and exerting such means as could be made available, he recovered between thirty and forty thousand pounds, per annum, of its income.

But his exertions were in nothing more successfully exerted for the church, than in the sharp struggle, which, at the same time took place, to restore the suspended uniformity of the two national churches. For this object there were many strong motives to be found in the then existing political state of the two kingdoms. The tremendous struggle of the civil wars was then developing in the distance; and the more tremendous element of religious dissent, though, not yet disclosing any thing of its real power as a principle of revolution, had begun so early as the previous reign, to make itself sufficiently sensible in the balance of opposing powers, to have become an object of earnest and anxious attention in the view of all thoughtful and observant politicians. The church of Ireland had received a tinge of the Calvinistic spirit, which had then presented itself, in a form opposed to the principles of the episcopal church of England, and was feared by the court, and the court party also, as inconsistent with the principles of monarchical government then held. The puritans were becoming already formidable in England, and it was reasonably feared, that if their influence should increase, all classes of Christians who concurred with them in general views of doctrine or discipline, would eventually be found to make common cause with them against the crown; and such, indeed, afterwards turned out to be the actual fact. These considerations, then, sufficiently apparent, had a prevailing weight in the policy of Charles, and of the sagacious Wentworth. Unquestionably, reasons of a still more influential description were not without their due weight:

both the king and his lieutenant were men susceptible of a strong tinge of religious notions; and it is not necessary to point out those which must then have pressed strongly on the heart of every Christian member of the episcopal church. To every consistent member of this church, there were questions of far higher interest than those paltry considerations of nationality, which engross the narrow scope of popular opinion, and cloud the intellect of the partisan; it was obvious, that the adhesion of the Irish church, to the uniform state of the English, was not only an accession of strength to the whole; but, as matters then stood, essential to the reformation, and even the safety, of the church. The disunion of the Irish church, like that of any smaller and less matured system comprising human principles of conduct and feeling from a larger and more matured system, with which it has such a connexion as subsists between the two countries, is not unlike that independence, which children would willingly gain, from the control of their parents: in all such cases the premature arrogation of self-government is sure to be maintained by every deviation from the course of prudence and discretion, that pride, passion, and the natural combativeness of human nature, can suggest. There are, it is true, abundant grounds of exception to this general rule; but, at that time, such grounds had no existence in a country, in all things characteristically governed by party feeling, and at that time especially, subject to this and all other deleterious influences, from the deficiency of those counteracting processes which belong to knowledge and civilization Our church could only attain to a healthy state, and preserve its vitality by that incorporate vigour and regulated action, to be attained by a union like that then designed, and against which, there was no objection in principle; governed by English bishops, and ostensibly agreeing in forms of worship, doctrine, and church government, the same in all essentials that have any practical importance, the Irish church had fallen into the utmost irregularity in these respects, and having in itself no sanatory principle, might be restored but could not be impaired by such a connexion.

We have already had occasion to state the change which had been some time before effected in the form of the Irish church, by the substantial adoption of the articles of Lambeth. We are now, at the distance of twenty years from that incident, to relate the re-adoption of the articles and canons of the English church, a course advised by Bishop Bramhal, and violently resisted by many other influential members of the convocation. The plan of proceeding devised for the occasion, appears from a letter from Laud to Strafford, to have been this, that the articles of the church of England should be received ipsissimis verbis, and leave the other articles unnoticed, on the obvious principle of the statute law, that such a silence would amount to a virtual annulment. The propriety of this course was made clear enough from the justly anticipated risk of opposition. Such indeed, when the matter was first moved, seems to have been the suggestion of Usher himself, if we rightly interpret a passage in one of Strafford's letters to Laud, in which a way was "propounded by my lord Primate, how to bring on this clergy the articles of England, and silence those of Ireland, without noise as it were, aliud agens." Usher, however,

retracted; from what influence it is not now easy to ascertain farther than conjecture; but of his dislike to the proposed alteration there is no doubt. His change of opinion was expressed, and awakened the suspicions of Strafford; but he was at the moment too heavily encumbered with the pressing hurry of parliament, to interfere; and the convocation in which the proposal was introduced proceeded in its own way: what this was, and its likely result, may best be told in the words of the same letter: "At length I got a little time and that most happily too; I informed myself of the state of those affairs, and found that the lower house of convocation had appointed a select committee to consider the canons of the church of England; that they did proceed in that committee, without at all conferring with their bishops, that they had gone through the book of canons, and noted in the margin such as they allowed with an A; and on others, they had entered a D, which stood for deliberandum; that into the fifth article they had brought the articles of Ireland to be allowed and received under the pain of excommunication," &c.

The indignation of Strafford will easily be conceived; he at once summoned before him the chairman of the committee who was desired to bring with him the book of canons to which the above marks were annexed, with the draught of the canons which they had drawn up to present the same evening in the house; and having expressed his strong disapprobation, he peremptorily forbade the presentation of the report, till further notice. He then convened a meeting composed of Usher, Bramhal, and other bishops, before whom the committee had also been summoned to attend. In this assembly he sternly rebuked them for the whole of the proceedings. He then directed the prolocutor of their house, who was present by his desire, that he should put no question in the house, touching the receiving or not the articles of the church of Ireland; but that he should simply put the question for the allowing and receiving the articles of the church of England, "barely content, or not content."

Usher was desired to frame the canon for this purpose; but having done so, Wentworth, not contented with his draft, drew up another himself and sent it to Usher, who soon came to tell him that he feared it could never pass in that form. But Strafford, whose suspicions as to the primate's good-will, on the occasion, had been strongly excited, announced his determination to put it to the vote as it stood; and forthwith sent it to the prolocutor. This was the first canon of the convocation, and declaratory of the adoption of the thirty-nine articles, in the following form: "For the manifestation of our agreement with the church of England, in the confession of the same Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments; we do receive and approve the book of articles of religion, agreed upon by the archbishops, and bishops, and the whole clergy in the convocation, holden at London, in the year of our Lord 1562, for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true religion. And, therefore, if any hereafter shall affirm, that any of those articles are, in any part, superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let him be excommunicated, and not absolved before he makes a public recantation of his error." By this canon, the thirty

nine articles were adopted; but the natural question arose among the clergy-on whose part, in general, there remained a strong leaning in favour of the former articles-whether they were to be regarded as abolished or not. Some conceived that, by the new canon, they who should subscribe would only thereby declare their agreement with the doctrines of the English church, while the former still continued in force. Others, thinking more precisely, saw that the Irish articles were annulled by the canon. And it cannot but be admitted, that a recent enactment, of which the provisions were in direct contrariety to the previous law on the same points, must needs be considered as a virtual repeal. On points of coincidence, the former provisions would be merely superseded; and the question can only properly arise on points unaffected by the new law. Such must have been the decision, had the case been referred to judicial consideration; but in such a question relative to an entire system of fundamental provisions, imbodying, in fact, the constitution of a church, there would seem to be a question of fitness antecedent to any such considerations. A church intending to unite itself with another, by the reception of its symbols and forms, must be referred to the design of such an act; and thus the maintenance of its ancient frame must be regarded as a plain absurdity, and wholly inconsistent with the object. Usher, indeed, with an inconsistency which we can but imperfectly account for, by allowing for the partiality of parentage-for the tenets of Usher are not represented by the Irish articles-considered that the English articles were only received subject to the construction they might receive from the Irish, and for the purpose "of manifesting our agreement with the church of England." For some time after, the primate and several of the bishops required subscriptions to both sets of articles; but it was not without strong doubts of the legitimacy of such a procedure, an application was made to the lord-deputy for consent to re-enact the Irish articles, which he refused. Most of the bishops, however, adopted a course more in unison with the intent of Bramhal and the government. And in the troubles, which immediately after set in, the matter was dropped, and the thirty-nine articles have ever since been received without any question, as those of the united church of England and Ireland.

A similar effort was made with respect to the canons, but resisted by the primate, on the ground that the Irish church would thus be reduced to an entire dependence on the English; to prevent which the good primate proposed that, in this respect, some differences should be maintained, to preserve independence in that church of which he was the ecclesiastical head. Such a reason was consistent with the patriotism of Usher, and the no less respectable corporate feeling which is a main preserving principle of public institutions: but it was little consistent with a more enlarged view of the true interests of Ireland, which has in nothing suffered more than from its high pitch of nationality, maintained by distinctions, of which most, arising from the state of things, could not be removed. In thus excepting against the primate's reason, we may say, en parenthese, that eventually, this slight distinction between the two churches has been of service to religion in this island. But there were indeed better reasons for differences in the canons of