laudable Practice

On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from an 1829 sermon by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor, entitled ' The Visible Church of Christ: the United Church of England and Ireland a True and Sound Part of it '. In this extract, Mant - a noted Old High divine - sets forth a defence of sola scriptura  as patristic and catholic. And so, "no article of faith, which was not plainly laid down in Scripture" could be proclaimed by the Church or required of Christians: as affirmed by Article VI of the Articles of Religion, Scripture is "the full and perfect rule for the Church of Christ".  Agreeable to this was the universal testimony of the primitive Christians, both in the Apostolical times, and in those which immediately, and afterwards for many ages uninterruptedly succeeded. The Scriptures, which the Apostles had acknowledged or delivered, the Churches constantly received for their own direction, and regularly transmitted to their posterity. Upon these scri...

On this Saint Patrick's Day, words from Jeremy Taylor's 1663 sermon at the funeral of John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh 1661-63 and, in Taylor's words, "Primate of this National Church".  Some might, of course, ask why Taylor's sermon at Bramhall's funeral makes for appropriate material on this celebration of Ireland's patron saint. Bramhall and Taylor, after all, were both born on the other island, Bramhall in Yorkshire, Taylor in Cambridge. This, however, makes them rather like Patrick: they, too, were British-born bishops who served in Ireland.  Like Patrick, Britannia was for them "my home country", their patria (see Patrick's Confessio , 43). In his sermon, Taylor draws another comparison between Bramhall and Patrick.  Just as Patrick's ministry had established the Church on this Island, even as his homeland experienced the unhappy confusions occasioned by the collapse of Roman Britain, so too did Bramhall's minister as Ar...

Responding to the claim of a Roman apologist that "Pope Celestine" sent "St. Patrick into Ireland", thus supposedly demonstrating that "the Bishops of Rome exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Britannic Churches", Bramhall points to the consecration and sending of Patrick (by bishops in Gaul) as exemplifying a relationship between neighbouring churches rather than any claim jurisdiction.  As an example, he notes how "a French synod" - not the Bishop of Rome - was responsible for aiding the Church of the Britons against the influence of the Pelagians: If the Bishop of Rome had been reputed to be Patriarch of Britain, and much more if he had been acknowledged to be a spiritual monarch, it is not credible that the Britannic Church should have applied itself for assistance altogether to their neighbours and not at all to their superior. When he turns to the mission of Patrick, Bramhall declares that it likewise demonstrates "not one sy...

It is usual to regard Ussher's  A discourse of the religion anciently professed by the Irish and Brittish (1631) as one of the earliest expressions of a Protestant narrative laying claim to Patrick and the primitive Irish Church.  Ussher's claim, however, is rather more specific than that: the religion professed by the ancient Bishops, Priests, Monks, and other Christians in this land, was for substance the very same with that which now by publike authoritie is maintained therein, against the forraine doctrin brought in thither in later times by the Bishop of Romes followers. In other words, Ussher portrayed the primitive Irish Church not merely as Protestant but as sharing the same characteristics as that of the Elizabethan Settlement: Augustinian, episcopalian, liturgical, and under the Royal rather than papal Supremacy.  Alongside affirming that "the Crowne of England hath ... obtained an undoubted right unto the soveraigntie of this countrey", Ussher contrasted t...