Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/120

 Romans display concerning Ireland and everything Irish, shows that whatever theory may have been held in papal circles as to the subjection of all other Churches, as a matter of fact Ireland had been left to go its own way without any assertion of authority on the part of the Pope. Augustine and they who were with him never knew until they were in Britain that the British Church was different from their own; and when they were made painfully conscious of this fact, they still thought that the Irish must be like themselves. Finally, the fact that they denied the validity of the Irish ordinations is the clearest possible proof that in their eyes at all events the Church of Ireland was not in communion with Rome.

It is of no avail to bring forward, as is often done, the many points of agreement between Rome and Ireland. That the two Churches did agree in many, nay, in most points, is historically certain, and it would be a mistake to represent the Irish Church as being in all respects like the Protestants of to-day. But, just as the Churches of the East and West at the time when they were not only independent, but hostile, were yet in agreement on every fundamental doctrine, so the Irish Church, though it differed from the Church of Rome only on those points in which Rome of the seventh century differed from Rome of the fifth, yet owed no allegiance to the papal see, and does not seem to have been conscious of the fact that Rome had already made a universal demand for such allegiance.

A less important, but more striking difference between the two Churches, was the method of computing the time for holding the festival of Easter. Easter is always held on the first Sunday after the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month. As the