on their country: it might have been expected that when the tie of a common religion came to exist, the old animosities which divided the two nations would have been greatly forgotten, and that they would have been made "one in Christ." Such however was not the case; only the quarrels between the Saxon and British nations were succeeded by contentions between the Saxon Church and the Church of the British and Irish Christians. The former of these parties meanwhile kept up the closest intimacy and communion with the see of Rome, from which all their ecclesiastical authority was derived; while the British and Irish Christians on the contrary were so far from admitting any of that superiority in the Roman Church, which the others acknowledged, that they were quite separated from her communion, and made little of her judgment in controverted matters which they thought of prime importance. But of the disputes between the British Churches and the Church of Rome, we shall have to speak more particularly in the next sections. BETWEEN CHRISTIANS THE EARLY BRITISH AND IRISH If any of my readers be simple enough to imagine that in these early times which we have been considering, our Irish forefathers ever cherished towards the Church of Rome that extravagant reverence for her authority and blind submission to her dictates, which some of this day would consider worthy of all good Catholics, I can perhaps suggest to such an one no better means of correcting his mistake than the account given by Cardinal Baronius of the part the Irish bishops took in the disputes connected with the Nestorian controversy in the sixth century. Much contention had arisen at that time about the orthodoxy of a collection of writings known by the name of the "Three Chapters," which were considered by many to favour the Nestorian heresy. Baronius tells us that all the Irish bishops united in opposing the view taken of this point by the Church of Rome: the passage alluded to in his "Annals" is headed with this title, "THE BISHOPS OF IRELAND SCHISMATICS;" and the words of it are as follows--(A.D. 566.) H "But through the malice of the demon of evil it came to pass at this period, that while the Church of France was illuminated by so many bright stars, the Church in Ireland which had been up to this time thriving well, became overspread with thick darkness; having made shipwreck in consequence of not following the bark of Peter, which takes the lead of all, pointing out the road to the gate of salvation for while desirous to appear more righteous than others, and more wise than was meet, she is unknowingly misled by the schismatics. For a false report having reached them, through the dishonesty of these schismatics, stating that the Fifth Synod had transgressed against the holy Council of Chalcedon, (as if by the condemnation of the Three Chapters it had condemned at the same time the acts of that synod ;) all the bishops that were in Ireland with one accord rose up in the most determined spirit of zeal for the defence of the Three Chapters. And they were guilty moreover of this further wickedness, that when they had perceived the Roman Church to be equally determined in condemning the Three Chapters, and strengthening the Fifth Synod with her consent; they at once separated from her, and joined themselves with the rest of the schismatics that were in Italy, or Africa, or other places: puffed up with the vain conceit, that they were standing up for the Catholic faith, in defending the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. So these unhappy misguided persons, influenced by a kind of show of apparent right, having a zeal, but not that which was according to knowledge, (since they dwelt in a very remote part of the world, where they could not have been very easily admonished and corrected, to which circumstance were added the other embarrassments that wars, plague, and famine usually bring in their train,) continued in such a state for a length of time; feeling a pity for those who followed the Fifth Synod as persons who had forsaken the right way of faith; so far were they from being able to comprehend that it was they themselves who were led astray. And they cling the more obstinately to their error from conceiving the idea, that whatever Italy suffered from the troubles of war, famine, or pestilence, all such misfortunes had befallen her in consequence of her having acted as the champion of the Fifth Synod against the Council of Chalcedon. And in this most unhappy position they continued ever to the times of Pope St. Gregory, that is, to the close of this century, when these bishops above mentioned wrote a letter about these matters to the same Gregory so eminent for sanctity, whom they knew to be a friend of God. But of the answer which Gregory returned to them, we shall speak in the proper place." Thus far Baronius, out of whose narrative we may collect with Archbishop Ussher, "that the bishops of Ireland did not take all the resolutions of the Church of Rome for undoubted oracles; but when they thought that they had better reason on their sides, they preferred the judgment of other churches before it." And as to their afterwards applying for counsel to Pope Gregory, the words of Baronius himself are sufficient to suggest to us why they did so: not because they considered the bishop of Rome possessed of authority for regulating with his Church the doctrine of all Christians in the world, but because they regarded him as a worthy counsellor, not only for his high station in the Church, but especially on account of his being |