I do with myself: the grounds whereof, I dare confidently say, are such, as no wit of man can overthrow or weaken.

Now what say my Smectymnuans to this? "For brevity sake, we will content ourselves with what that learned Rivet spake, when these two treatises of Scultetus were showed to him, by a great prelate amongst us, and his judgment required: Hæc omnia jamdudum sunt protrita et profligata; all these have been long since overworn, and beaten out, and baffled.”

In good time, brethren! And why should not I take leave to return the same answer to you, in this your tedious velitation of Episcopacy? There is not one new point in this your overswoln and unwieldy bulk. No hay-cock hath been oftener shaken abroad, and tossed up and down in the wind, than every argument of yours hath been agitated by more able pens than mine: Hæc omnia jamdudum sunt protrita et profligata. Why should I abuse my good hours; and spend my last age, devoted to better thoughts, in an unprofitable babbling?

You may, perhaps, expect to meet with fitter matches, that have more leisure. The cause is not mine alone; but common to this whole Church, to the whole Hierarchy, to all the Fathers of the Church throughout the world, to all the dutiful sons of those Fathers wheresoever. You may not hope, that so many learned and eminent divines, who find themselves equally interested in this quarrel, can suffer either so just a cause unseconded, or so high insolence unchastised.

It

For myself, I remember the story that Plutarch tells of the contestation between Crassus and Deiotarus; men well stricken in age, and yet attempting several exploits, not so proper for their gray hairs. "What," said Crassus to Deiotarus, "dost thou begin to build a city, now in the latter end of the day?" "And truly," said Deiotarus to him again, “I think it somewhat with the latest for you to think of conquering the Parthians." Some witty lookers-on will, perhaps, apply both these to me. is the city of God, the evangelical Jerusalem, which some factious hands have miserably demolished: is it for shaking and wrinkled hands to build up again, now in the very setting and shutting-in of the day? They are dangerous and not inexpert Parthians, who shoot out their arrows, even bitter invectives, against the sacred and apostolical government of the Church; and such, as know how to fight, fleeing: are these fit for the vanquishing of a decrepit leader?

:

Shortly, then, since I see that our Smectymnuans have vowed, like as some impetuous scolds are wont to do, to have the last word; and have set up a resolution, by taking advantage of their multitude, to tire out their better-employed adversary, with mere length of discourse; and to do that by bulk of body, which by clean strength they cannot; I have determined to take off my hand from this remaining controversy of Episcopacy (wherein I have said enough already, without the return of answer; and, indeed, anticipated all those threadbare objections, which are here again regested to the weary reader), and to turn off my combined opposites to matches more meet for their age and quality with this profession, notwithstanding, that, if I shall find, which I hope I never shall, this just and holy cause, whether out of insensibleness or cautious reservedness, neglected by more able defenders, I shall borrow so much time from my better thoughts, as to bestow some strictures, where I may not afford a large confutation. I have ever held μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακὸν : which, as it holds in whatsoever matter of discourse, so especially in this so beaten subject of Episcopacy; wherein, since I find it impossible for my adversaries to fall upon any but former notions, oft urged, oft answered, "For brevity sake we will content ourselves with what that learned Rivet spake of the two treatises of Scultetus, Hæc omnia jamdudum sunt protrita et profligata,” with this yet for a conclusion, that if, in this their wordy and wearisome volume, they shall meet with any one argument, which they dare avow for new, they shall expect their answer by the next post.

(From An Answer to Smectymnuus's Vindication.)

JAMES USSHER

[James Ussher was born at Dublin on the 4th of January 1581. He was nephew of Henry Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, and of Richard Stanihurst, translator of four books of the Æneid. At the age of thirteen he was admitted as the second on the roll of scholars of the newly-founded Trinity College, Dublin. Subsequently he became Fellow of the same Society. At the death of his father in 1598, he abandoned most of the property that came to him, and devoted himself to study. From 1601 to 1619 he read the fathers daily. He became famous as a theologian and antiquary, and was the friend of Camden, Selden, Cotton, and Evelyn. In 1607 he was made Professor of Divinity at Dublin, in 1620 Bishop of Meath, and in 1625 Archbishop of Armagh. In 1640 he crossed the Channel to live in England, where he died on the 21st of March 1656.

Ussher's magnum opus is his Latin Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti. His principal English works are treatises on The Religion of the Ancient Irish and British; Imperial Laws in Great Britain and Ireland; Corbes, Herenachs, and Termon Lands; Immanuel, or the Mystery of the Incarnation; An Answer to the Challenge of a Jesuit; The Power of the Prince. A complete edition of Ussher's writings, with a Life, was published by Professor Elrington and the Rev. J. Todd, in 17 vols. 1841-64.]

one

THE fame of Archbishop Ussher has long been but a nominis umbra, nor shall anything here be said to recall his ghost from the quiet gardens of oblivion. Seventeen volumes of his treatises gather dust upon the shelves; as one takes them down remembers the disinterment of some buried hero from his burrow among the hills. The very topics are sufficiently alarming-The Chronology of the Old Testament; The Primitive Celtic Church; Corbes, Termons, and Herenachs. Such themes repel the ordinary man, and for the specialist the treatment is out of date. There are qualities of style, indeed, whereby the most abstruse disquisitions, like flies in amber, survive. One reads Burton without regard to his faded theories on the physical basis of love. But to style as an end in itself Ussher paid little heed. Controversy was his business; his interest, antiquities. He used his prose in the spirit of the scholar rather than the artist; as the instrument

of his labours, not their object. And since all mere scholarship must needs be superseded, Ussher's writings have lost their savour; he lingers, if at all, in the popular mind only as the discoverer of two dates-that of 4 B.C. for the birth of Christ; that of 4004 B.C., which figures on the margin of our Bibles for the creation. Nor can there be a better essay in the study of evidence than to consider why the methods which led him to so sound a conclusion in the one case proved so untrustworthy in the other.

Argument means for Ussher the accumulation of authorities; authorities, indeed, weighed with precision, criticised as to their authenticity, but in the last result accepted as authoritative. And with this is connected his renunciation of style; for to style the abundance of quotation must needs be fatal. Fragments pieced together from other men's works, even where translation is freely used, cannot but lack the unity which the impress of a single personality gives. Ussher's writing is always a mosaic of quotations. His learning is immense. At an early age, so his biographers tell us, he sat down and read the fathers straight through. Chroniclers, schoolmen, the writers of Greece and Rome, all are at his fingers' ends. He has wandered in the byeways of Celtic and Scandinavian lore. And in this he was happy, that by his time the sum-total of things knowable had not so swelled as to be beyond the compass of one intellect; so that he does not appear a mere specialist, but a true scholar, with a wide sweep and an adequate survey of knowledge. Moreover, he has at least one gift-an architectonic gift-of style; he marshals his authorities with a due regard to balance and proportion, keeping always in mind the clear design of his argument, and the impression he intends it to produce. Another side of Ussher's disregard of the purely literary element in composition is apparent in his two or three short dogmatic treatises. In these copious citation would have been out of place; but in its stead he adopts the method of question and answer-of catechism, in fact. Where he does write a few pages for himself, his English is at least dignified, if a trifle Ciceronian. It must not be forgotten that more than half his work was composed in Latin, and that the habit of using the dead language naturally affected his mode of expressing himself in the living. Yet now and then he has touches racy with the raciness of a countryman of St. Patrick.

Most of Ussher's treatises, where their interest is not purely