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"Boniface IV. respecting the question of the three "chapters." Now, this letter, and this discussion, must have preceded the paschal controversy by some years; for you inform us that St. Columbanus died 66 on the 21st of November, A.D. 615." That this question, the nature of which I need not detail, was a serious one, you have sufficiently proved, where you represent it to have engaged the attention of princes, in a manner that "awakened the alarm of the Roman court," and formed a subject for "the "decision of the fifth general council held in the year 553:" it indeed agitated the entire Christian world, and was therefore a serious, as well as a previous, occasion. Your comment on this letter is as follows:-" Setting aside the consideration of the "saint's orthodoxy on this point, his letter cannot "but be allowed the praise of unshrinking manliness "and vigour. Addressing Boniface himself in no very complaisant terms, he speaks of his predecessor, Pope Vigilius, with bitter, and in some "respects deserved, reproach; declaring that pope to "have been the prime mover of all the scandal that "had occurred." But this, you say, is “ compatible" with "the most profound and implicit reverence "towards the papacy." What to abuse two successive popes, and in this manner, and upon a question of orthodoxy! I leave this to the reader to determine. At all events, you are surely under the obligation of proving that "profound and implicit reverence" by some overt act, and not merely to imagine it first, and then to make conclusions from it. Yet it may

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be said, and with far more propriety, that, after all, St. Columbanus was only an individual, and not the Irish church; but that he spoke the sentiments of that church is quite indisputable from the testimony of Cardinal Baronius, with which you must have been acquainted, for it has been quoted by Archbishop Usher (p. 69), in his work which you refute. The cardinal informs us that "ALL the bishops that were "in Ireland, with most earnest study, rose up jointly "for the defence of the three chapters. And, when "they perceived that the church of Rome did both "receive the condemnation of the three chapters, and "strengthen the fifth synod with her consent, they departed from her, and clave to the rest of the "schismatics-animated with that vain confidence, "that they did stand for the Catholic faith, while they defended those things that were concluded "in the council of Chalcedon ;" against which the decree of the fifth synod was opposed. Whether or not the Irish deserved the name of schismatics I shall not now inquire; the entire transaction demonstrates, that any connexion our early church might have had previously with Rome was quite voluntary and independent; and that, so far from acknowledging her supremacy, on the very first serious occasion of "controversy which presented itself," the Irish bishops decidedly and unanimously opposed and rejected her authority. The date of this occurrence in Baronius' annals is 566, sixty-seven years before that which you call the first occasion, and which I now come to-the reference to the "Head of Cities" on the controversy respecting Easter.

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This matter divides itself into two distinct histories, the relation of which will demonstrate, that you had no right whatsoever to assert, that for the decision of the question, "a deputation was despatched to Rome" by the Irish church. That deputation, of which you have given an account in your 271st page, was sent so late as the year 633; and, as Bede expressly informs us, (lib. 3, c. 3, Ec. Hist.) and you have allowed, by the inhabitants of the southern part of the island -“Gentes Scotorum quæ in Australibus Hibernica "insulæ partibus morabantur." We have already seen that the Abbé M'Geoghegan has stated, that the Roman mode of celebrating Easter was not conformed to by some of their greatest saints, viz. St. Colum66 banus, St. Columba, St. Aidan, St. Finian, St. "Colman, the monks of the Abbey of Hy, and many "others among the northern Scots," or Irish-the reference, therefore, made to Rome was not by the native Irish church. But even in the manner in which the story of that deputation is told by Cummianus, in his letter, although he confers upon Rome the respectful title of the "Head of Cities," it appears manifest, that she was not then considered as possessing, solely and exclusively, the supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters. He does, indeed, as you have mentioned, (p. 272,) enforce "the great argu"ment derived from the unity of the church;" but he also relies, as you have not thought fit to mention, on "the canonical decree of the FOURFOLD APOSTOLIC SEE, to wit, of Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and "Alexandria." "Statutum canonicum quaternæ sedis

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66 Apostolica, Romane, viz. Hierosolymitanae, An"tiochenæ, Alexandrinæ." So that it appears, even after our limit of time, A.D. 600, that, in whatever degree of estimation the Head of Cities might have been possibly holden, she was not considered, even by her best friends in Ireland, as solely supreme in matters of ecclesiastical controversy.

But there is another portion of this subject which remains to be considered. The greatest of the Irish saints, and the northern part of the island, united with the monks of Iona, in adhering, quite in opposition to Rome, to the ancient mode of celebrating Easter. This fact you acknowledge, (p. 273,) although not so fully as it is to be implied from Bede. The account of the Synod of Whitby, as related by that historian, has been given before; the arguments made use of by the Irish clergy at that meeting were, the practice of St. Columbkille and his successors, traditionally continued from St. John the Apostle; not a single word of St. Patrick, or St. Peter. I have remarked upon this most striking fact before, in connection with our consideration of the former of those saints, as the first great missionary from Rome; I shall urge it here again, as it bears upon the supremacy of St. Peter-and strange to say, so far from this being referred to by the Irish church, it is not even mentioned by them in the argument. The matter, indeed, was brought into discussion, in consequence of letters from Pope Honorius I. and the clergy of Rome, addressed to the people of Ireland; but these were couched in terms which were far

from implying an assumed superiority;* the decision was left to, and made by the King; and Wilfred, the Romish agent, instead of demurring to the jurisdiction, argued, apparently for the first time(certainly Oswin and his people were not previously convinced of it)-for the authority of St. Peter. All this is very unlike the interference of an acknowledged supremacy; and unquestionably it was quite the reverse of acknowledged by the Irish bishop and clergy; for St. Colman was so discontented with the decision, that "he resigned this see of Lindisfarne, and returned to "his home in Ireland, taking along with him all the "Irish monks." p. 282.

I now come, in the 4th place, to a still further proof, that the supremacy of Rome was not acknowledged by the Irish church, even at the period I have been last speaking of; which, let it be remembered, was so late as the year 633, and more than two centuries after the alleged arrival of St. Patrick. The venerable Bede is again our authority-in speaking of Oswin, the king of Northumberland, already mentioned, he uses these remarkable words,-"Intellexerat "enim veraciter Oswi, QUAMVIS educatus a Scotis,

quia Romana esset Catholica et Apostolica ecclesia." "For Oswin truly understood, ALTHOUGH he was "educated by the Scots, how the Church of Rome

*The style of Honorius to the Irish clergy was exhorting them" exhortans"-that they would not continue to celebrate Easter, "contrary to paschal computations, and the "Synodal decrees of the Bishops of the whole world,”— Bede, lib. 2. c. 19.