Page:The Irish Church and its Formularies.djvu/8

 to my Irish friends. The members of the Irish Church have undoubtedly the right to claim for themselves that intimate knowledge of their own position and requirements which renders them in the last resort—now that their political connection with the Established Church of England has been rent—sole judges of the wisdom, not less than of the lawfulness of their own proceedings, as far as they affect the internal constitution of their community. This right I am the last man to infringe or call into question. But it is because the members of the Irish Church are the masters of their own actions, that outsiders can, without offence, take upon themselves the responsibility of a friendly criticism, which those to whom it is addressed may, if they please, ignore.

The one object which I have at heart in all that I shall say is the maintenance, unbroken and unweakened, of the strictest alliance between the Irish and the English Churches, convinced as I am that any rupture of the union which has for so long existed between them would be attended with most disastrous consequences to both communities. This union can, I believe, only be insured, as matters at present stand, by the joint acceptance, on both sides of St. George's Channel, of those identical formularies which were, at the moment of Irish disestablishment, a common inheritance. I do not say that these formularies must for all time to come remain the same, for this would be to limit the Christian liberty of Christian Churches. As little do I say that intercommunion, even under existing circumstances, could not be continued with variant formularies, for this would be to overlook, not only Church common law, but the present examples of the Episcopal Churches of Scotland and the United States, about which I shall have something to say further on. But I do assert that, as matters actually stand, and for reasons it may be of a temporary or a secondary