Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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We turn with satisfaction from such things to the two great names in the College and the Irish Church which mark that period—Bedell and James Ussher.

It was by rare good fortune that the nascent College secured such a student as James Ussher. He must have made a name in any case; yet the world is so apt to judge any system not by the average outcome, but by the best and worst, that one such name was at that moment of the last importance. He was the first great home growth, and, though he refused the Provostship, he was so closely connected with the College as Fellow, Lecturer in Divinity, as Vice-Provost and as Vice-Chancellor, that no one has ever thought of denying him and his fame to the College. His works and character will be discussed in another chapter. What I am concerned with is his attitude in the great ecclesiastical quarrels of the day. It was no easy course to steer the Church of Ireland between the “Scylla of Puritanism” and the “Charybdis of Popery.” Ussher well knew that both were dangerous enemies. In his youth, owing to his daily contact with Roman Catholic relatives, with Jesuit controversialists, with the temporising policy of King James, who offered further stages of toleration in return for subsidies of money from the Irish Catholics, he was strong against the danger on that side, and protested with prophetic wisdom that such concessions would lead to rebellion and ruin in Ireland. In his old age, when living constantly, either from his public importance or his persecutions, in England, when witnessing and suffering from the outrages of the English Revolution, he said in a conversation with Evelyn, “that the Church would be destroyed by sectaries who would in all likelihood bring in Popery.” The personal complexion of his religion, his constant preaching, his great liberality and good feeling towards pious Dissenting ministers, show that he was a strong Protestant, and he always showed the strongest apprehension of the ambitious policy of the Romish priesthood, which he feared as a pressing danger; but, nevertheless, he was so loyal a Churchman, that he was content to overlook many abuses in the system which he administered.