Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

Protestants in Ireland has been diminished by the remissness of the clergy of the Established Church *. On the whole, however, the number of conversions cannot have been considerable; and it is certain that, from the very beginning, the Irish church has been on a scale too large for the wants of the existing Protestants; but at a time when it was attempted by penal laws to reduce the entire population to the Protestant faith, it would have been wholly inconsistent with the policy of the government not to maintain such a Protestant establishment as would have been requisite if that end had been attained.

The excessive number of ministers of the Established Church in Ireland is likewise evident from this consideration. The number of members of the Established Church in 1834 was 852,064; of churches, 1338; of clergymen of the Established Church, 2086: the number of Roman Catholics, 6,427,712; of Roman Catholic places of worship, 2105; of Roman Catholic clergymen, 2074: that is to say, for the members of the Established Church there is 1 clergyman to 408 persons, and 748 more clergymen than places of worship; while for the Roman Catholics there is 1 clergyman to 3099 persons, and the number of places of worship exceeds that of clergymen, by 31†. Now, it is not to be

* The number of Roman Catholics in Ireland with English names is sometimes cited as a proof that many Protestants returned to the unreformed faith. But this fact proves nothing, as the ancestors of these persons might have settled in Ireland before the Reformation; and as the Reformation never made any progress in Ireland, not even within the English pale, they and their descendants would naturally have remained Catholic. On the inefficient state of the Established Church and the prevalence of Catholicism in Ireland, during the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles I., see Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. iv., pp. 229, 243.

See the Appendix to the First Report of the Commissioners of Public

denied that the diffusion of a thin Protestant population over the whole face of the country makes the mere comparison of numbers not altogether just, inasmuch as it would probably be impossible to assign to single Protestant clergymen districts sufficiently large to average 3099 Protestants*: but even with this allowance, the disparity of the numbers is out of all reason; especially when it is remembered that, from the nature of the Roman Catholic system, much more is required of the priest than of the Protestant minister. The sacraments of confession and extreme unction alone impose on the Catholic clergyman a host of duties from which the Protestant clergyman is altogether exempt; so that it probably may be said that, other things being the same, the duties of a priest would be twice as onerous as those of a Protestant clergyman with congregations of equal number.

The following extracts from the evidence of witnesses before committees of the House of Commons will serve to explain the difference between the two causes of the unpopularity of the Irish Established Church which have just been stated.

Instruction, for a list of the clergy of the Established and Roman Catholic Churches in Ireland. From the Report of the Commissioners for inquiring into the Ecclesiastical Revenues of England and Wales, it appears, that in the dioceses of Chester and London, there are 1389 clergymen of the Established Church, employed among a population amounting to 3,629,025 (i. e., Chester 1,940,126, London 1,688,899), that is, in the proportion of one clergyman to 2612 persons. There is no means of ascertaining the proportion of Dissenters in these dioceses, but if the estimates of churchmen may be trusted, they are probably less than a sixth of the population.

* For instance, the entire diocese of Emly only contains 1246 members of the Established Church; yet it consists of 17 benefices, with 11 churches, in all of which service is performed, and small congregations attend.

Matthew Singleton, Esq., chief magistrate of police in the Queen's County :

"What construction was put by the tithe-payers in Ireland upon the declaration of the Secretary of State that tithes were abolished?—That they would be shortly extinct.

66

Then by tithe do they understand the payment of a tax in support of the church in the abstract, or merely the present form of paying that tax?—I think there is a portion of both persuasions, Protestant and Catholic, very hostile to the payment of tithe.

"Upon what does their objection rest; is it an objection to the tithe regarded as a tax, or an objection to the support of an hostile establishment?-The Catholics object to it as an hostile establishment, and the Protestants object in consequence of the pluralities and the number of bishops.

"When you say the Protestants, what do you mean, what class?-I mean nine-tenths of the Protestants in Ireland I have been speaking to.

"Members of the Established Church ?—Yes.

"Do you think that the objection to the payment of tithes, on the part of the members of the Established Church, is really an objection to the thing, or the effects of intimidation ?—I think that the Protestants in Ireland would cheerfully pay the tax to support the clergymen, but they are not satisfied to pay it to absentee clergymen, and to the number of bishops and dignitaries in the church."-H. C., 1832, Nos. 4157-62.

R. de la Cour, Esq., banker and treasurer of the county of Cork :

"You state that there has been a good deal of indisposition to pay tithes lately; does that prevail generally among Protestants as well as Catholics?—I do not know how it prevails now, but I think I may observe, if it is not an obtrusive observation to make to the committee, that the late Bishop of Cork said to me- We are in the habit of blaming the Roman Catholics for the resistance to tithes, but I believe if the real

truth was known, there is scarcely any country gentleman in Ireland who is not in his heart a Whiteboy*."

"You think that the opposition to the tithe system is not so much an opposition upon religious grounds as an opposition to a system that is vexatious?—I think it is combined; I do think it is but natural that the Catholics should be unwilling to pay a clergy whom they do not acknowledge as their spiritual instructors."-H. C., Committee on Tithes in Ireland, 1832, Nos. 2703-4.

66

Rev. W. Phelan, B.D. :

"Should Roman Catholic emancipation take place, may not the payment of tithes, and the very existence of a Protestant establishment still be productive of animosity and ill-will between the Roman Catholics and Protestants?-Certainly it may; there is a very strong declaration of Dr. Doyle upon that subject, in his letter to Mr. Robertson, in which he says, Emancipation alone will not be a remedy for the grievances of Ireland; it will not allay the animosities between two churches, both high-minded, both perhaps intolerant; it will not remove the grievance of tithes." He uses other expressions to the same effect which I do not remember now. in justice to Dr. Doyle and other Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, I must say that what is called the grievance of tithes is as much spoken against by Protestant landholders in Ireland as by them there is a remarkable coincidence in the language of the two classes on the subject.”—H. C., 1825, p. 527.

But

Having now given a brief description of the ecclesiastical state of Ireland, and of the principal evils resulting from it, we will proceed to inquire by what means these evils may be best removed; for which purpose it will be convenient to begin by examining the principles on which the present system is founded, since it is only by obtaining a precise knowledge of the doctrines maintained, either avowedly or implicitly, by

* On the encouragement given by the landed proprietors to the resistance to tithes, see above, pp. 22-4.

its advocates, that we can form any just estimate of the merits of their cause.

All the ecclesiastical grievances of Ireland, so far as they can be the subjects of legislation, arise from what is termed the connexion between church and state. By the connexion of church* and state is meant in a general sense that an ecclesiastical society, or a body of persons professing certain religious doctrines, have certain exclusive civil rights or privileges; for the most part, however, this connexion is understood to be confined to one such religious persuasion, although the civil community may comprise persons of other religious persuasions.

The doctrine of the connexion of church and state, and the various practical results to which that doctrine

* The Greeks had two words to express the notions of a body of Christians and a place of Christian worship, viz., ἐκκλησία and κυριακόν. We extract from Schleusner the meanings of ¿кλŋoía (originally used in the general sense of a meeting or assembly), which occur in the New Testament, arranged in the order in which they seem to have followed :' 1. Cœtus Christianorum in ædibus privatis cultus divini causâ convenientium, (1 Cor. xi. 18.) 2. Cœtus Christianorum hoc vel illo loco versantium, (Acts viii. 1; Rev. i. 11.) 3. Pauci Christiani qui ad unam familiam pertinent, (Col. iv. 15.) 4. Universus Cœtus doctrinam Christianam profitentium per orbem terrarum dispersorum, (Ephes. i. 22, and Matt. xvi. 18.)' Ecclesia had, however, in the third century, acquired the sense of a Christian place of worship, as it is thus used by Aurelian in addressing the senate.-Vopisc. Aurelian. in Hist. August. Kvpiakóv (the Lord's House) always signifies a place of worship in Greek.-See Euseb. de Laud. Const., c. 17, quoted in Bingham's Qrig. Eccl. viii., 1, § 2.

It is singular that the Romance languages have adopted the word ecclesia in the sense both of a body of Christians and a place of Christian worship (chiesa, Italian; iglesia, Spanish; église, French), and have no derivative of Kupiaкóv; while the Teutonic languages want the former word and use derivatives of the latter, in the sense not only of a place of worship, but also of a body of Christians: (Church, English; kirk, Scotch ; kirche, German; kerk, Dutch.) The former word, therefore, properly signifying the worshippers, afterwards was also used for the place of worship; the latter word properly signifying the place of worship, afterwards was also used for the worshippers.

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »