giving or selling to, or intermarrying with the Irish people, but it will be seen that the very beasts of the field were not secure from the bigoted cruelty of the Norman invaders. We give two extracts. It was decreed that

"If any man of English race, should use the Irish dress, or language, or take an Irish name, or observe any rule or custom of the Irish, he was to forfeit lands and tenements, until he had given in the court of chancery, that he would conform in every particular to the English manners!" (p. 166.)

"Further, 'It was made highly penal, to present a mere Irishman to any ecclesiastical benefice, or receive him into a monastery, or other religious house; to entertain an Irish bard, minstrel, or storyteller, or to admit an Irish horse to graze on the pasture of an Englishman. ”—(p. 167.)

Can we feel surprised that the evil effects of such a barbarous law should be deeply felt to the present day? Who can wonder that even still there are in Ireland two distinct races, which the lapse of centuries has utterly failed to incorporate?

"Thus, as if oppression were not sufficient, the most taunting insult was offered to the noblest sentiments of a people, who were at once devoted to the customs of their fathers, and deeply susceptible of early religious impressions. Every thing Irish was denounced as an object of abhorrence both to God and man, and the bitterness of civil strife impregnated with the deadly poison of religious bigotry. There was a cold and exquisite malevolence in this measure, attainable only by a class of beings, which had abjured, or had never known, the kindly sympathies of humanity; and the event proved, that it was no less imprudent than unnatural.”—(p. 168.)

Often throughout this long night of dreary persecution did the English monarchs attempt to interpose their kingly authority in behalf of their Irish Protestant subjects; they were baffled by the interdicts of a violent and haughty prelacy, which at length in the reign of Henry the Seventh, gave full play to its treasonable extravagance, by crowning the impostor Simnel in a Dublin ca

thedral.

"The stripling Simnel, the creature of an obscure Oxford ecclesiastic, was received by these prelates with an extravagant affectation of loyal zeal. On his arrival in Dublin, he was conducted in state to the cathedral of Christ Church; the Bishop of Meath, in a bold discourse from the pulpit, explained and enforced his right to the throne; and a crown taken from a statue of the Virgin in the church of St. Mary les Dames, was placed upon his head, amidst the acclamations of a deluded populace."-(p. 175.)

We now arrive at that period which constitutes the third era in the history of the Church of Ireland. Our Author commences with the reign of Henry the Eighth, and concludes his useful volume with the legislative union between Great Britain and that country. The unanimity with which, in defiance of the thunders of the Vatican, the supremacy of Henry was acknowledged by the

Irish barons and their adherents, comprising the population of Ireland, is a fact of great historical interest.

"Henry VIII. had no sooner prevailed on the Lords and Commons of England to renounce their spiritual obedience to the Roman See, and to acknowledge his own supremacy, than, as a natural consequence, he proceeded to establish it in Ireland. In this attempt he was completely successful. No sooner had Henry asserted his claim to the entire sovereignty of Ireland, than all the nobles, aware of his former severity to the Geraldines, arrayed themselves on the side of the crown. They abolished the subordinate title of lord; the only one which the pope had permitted to be assumed, and proclaimed him King of Ireland, and supreme Head of the Church on earth.”(p. 188.)

The most beneficial effects immediately followed this proclamation of the king's supremacy. And though they were of shortlived duration, Ireland was blessed for a season with a cheering interval of peaceful repose.

"It is recorded for the first time in her annals, that Ireland was now at peace under one acknowledged sovereign. So universal indeed was the tranquillity, that a considerable body of troops was spared for the king's service before Boulogne, where an Irishman had the honour of defeating the French champion; and another force of three thousand men was sent into Scotland to the aid of the Lord Lennox. Even the great feud between the two races was forgotten for a season; and while English and Irish crowded together from all quarters of the island to receive law from the throne, the loyal impulse with which they were animated, seemed already to have borne its most appropriate fruits in the feeling of a common country, and the kindly affections of neighbourhood."—(p. 191.)

This submission to Henry was, in a few years subsequently, followed up by the cordial reception, in the reign of Elizabeth, of the doctrines of the glorious Reformation by the entire body of the bishops, clergy, and laity, who, by this wise act, threw off the trammels of a senseless superstition, which had oppressed them for three centuries, and returned to that pristine faith of the Irish Church, which, in the days of her Patricks and Columbas, had shed its vivid rays throughout Europe. The queen resolved to get rid of the galling yoke of the Roman see, and to arrange the establishment of a national Protestant church.

"As soon as this determination of the queen was known in Ireland, the whole body of the Romish priests abandoned their connection with Rome, and adopted the liturgy of the Church of Ireland, and the entire mass of the population outwardly conformed to the ritual of the established Church. In short, that the whole island did actually profess the Protestant faith in the time of Elizabeth, is a fact as certain as any other in the records of history.” -(p. 205.)

But here we cannot sufficiently deplore the infatuated policy of the British government. Enlightened reason Enlightened reason would have at once suggested the necessity of having the revived gospel preached to the Irish population, not in a foreign, but in their native

tongue, and of placing in the pulpits of the country, men of God capable of addressing them in the Irish language. Strange to say, however, none were admitted to the pulpit or the desk unless they could read and speak in English; and that language, foreign to the feelings and prejudices of a people who were even ignorant of its meaning, was the only one permitted to be read within their churches. Irishmen were systematically excluded from ecclesiastical offices, and their bishoprics were filled by Englishmen incapable of sympathizing with the national feelings of a population emerging from spiritual enthralment. Acts of Parliament in quick succession denounced the language, the manners, and even the dress of the Irish people.

"An act passed in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Henry VIII. chap. xv. entitled An Act for the English order, habit, and language,' &c., &c., was the first heavy blow' which the Reformed Church received. That act directed that the Irish habit and apparel should be abolished, and the peculiar form in which the Irish wore their hair should be discontinued."— (p. 219.)

"It further provided that spiritual promotion should be given only to such persons as could speak the English language, unless, after four proclamations in the next market-town, such could not be had."—(p. 223.)

This fatal and mistaken policy, productive of such disastrous results, was stupidly adhered to throughout the reign of Elizabeth. In addition to the preamble of an act of uniformity passed by that queen, the Dean cites a portion of Lord Clare's speech on the Union, in which his lordship alludes to the act in question in these words::

"In the reign of Elizabeth the reformed liturgy was again enforced, and the English act of uniformity was enacted by the colonial parliament, and what seems a solecism in the history of legislation, in the body of this act, by which the use of the English liturgy, and a strict conformity to it, are enjoined under severe penalties, a clause is introduced, reciting that English ministers cannot be found to serve in Irish churches, that the Irish people did not understand the English tongue, that the church service cannot be celebrated in Irish, as well as the difficulty to get it printed, as that few in the whole realm could read; and what is the remedy? If the minister of the gospel cannot speak English, he may celebrate the church service in the LATIN TONGUE, a language certainly as unintelligible to his congregation as the English tongue, and probably not very familiar to the minister thus authorized to use it."-(p. 224.)

Our author justly laments this miserable and short-sighted policy, in the following observations, with which every sound Protestant will cordially agree.

"Had the great enemy of truth been the concoctor and passer of these parliamentary and royal enactments, no surer method could have been devised to arrest at once the progress of the Reformation in a country whose prejudices, feelings, and best interests, were thus alike insulted. The interfering with non-essential customs, which long habit had made a second nature, would of

itself have unsheathed the sword of resistance, in the hands of a half-civilized and enthusiastic people. But as if this were not enough, every avenue of light and knowledge, under the withering statute-book of England, was at once closed up by their being deprived of instruction in their native language, and either the hateful English, or the equally unintelligible Latin being substituted in its place."-(p. 225.)

This legislation, so utterly opposed to common sense, soon produced its natural consequences. The Reformation in Ireland was almost strangled in its birth. The Church of Rome, with lynxeyed sagacity seized the golden opportunity. She poured her Jesuits and missionaries into a country smarting under the excitement of these national insults. Unfurling the standard of her lately discarded superstition, she employed the wounded pride of Ireland as the lever for again raising herself in that unhappy country. And, alas! she was too successful. A titular hierarchy was forthwith organized, and has ever since exerted its hateful and rival influence in opposition to the Irish Protestant Church.

After detailing the frightful excitement which those zealous agents of Rome stirred up in Ireland; the hatred to England as an invader, and to Protestantism as a heresy, which they enkindled; while the pope was pouring oil into this popular conflagration, in the shape of a plenary remission of all sin to those who should unite in a mighty effort to depose Elizabeth, and arrest the pro. gress of the gospel, the Dean adds:

"Such were the measures employed to subvert the Reformation in Ireland. Rebellion, Treason, and Blood. The Romish priests were the movers and instigators of all this mass of crime. The people were, and still are, the unhappy victims; and just as the work of the gospel was then stifled by the ignorant prejudices and national hatred to England, its laws, and its religion; so is the work still restrained by the same means, and the same parties. The priests still excite the worst passions of their deluded followers against England, and awaken every motive of hatred against all that emanates from the sister land."-(p. 216.)

Our limited space does not admit of our following the Dean through his most interesting secular history of Ireland, which runs parallel with her ecclesiastical records, to which we have solely confined ourselves. We shall only remark, that its perusal will richly repay the reader. But we cannot conclude this brief notice of a work destined to no ephemeral existence, without adverting to the deplorable fact which pervades its pages, viz. THAT ENGLAND, -yes, ENGLAND HAS PLANTED, FOSTERED, MATURED, AND STILL UPHOLDS POPERY IN IRELAND. The recent acts of the legislature have been pre-eminently calculated to hand over the Irish population, bound in spiritual fetters, to the uncontrolled tyranny of the Church of Rome. Protestantism has been frowned upon and discouraged; the ancient Protestant Church of Ireland has

been robbed and persecuted, her bishoprics have been annihilated, her clergy have been spoliated, her scriptural education of the population has been sacrificed; while the Church of Rome,—a noxious, modern, and foreign exotic,-has been petted, nurtured, and maintained, by a British government, falsely styling itself Protestant. The dazzling victories of her armies, the splendid triumphs of her navies, the indomitable prowess of her captains, the commercial enterprise of her sons, can never wipe off this foul blot from the escutcheon of England. Nothing short of a national repentance for this great national sin can satisfy any true lover of the country. And that the most desolating judgments for such crying iniquity have hitherto been withheld, must be solely ascribed to the long-suffering patience of our God. We earnestly recommend the Dean of Ardagh's book (which we are happy to find is to be followed by a second volume) to the attention of the British public, and we sincerely trust that it will be most extensively read, and valued, and circulated.