The Eirenicon and the ‘Primitive Episcopacy’ of James Ussher: An Irish Panacea For Britannia's Ailment
Abstract James Ussher, Primate of the Church of Ireland (as Archbishop of Armagh), arrived in England in the early 1640s, a time when the country was in political turmoil. Scots and significant sections of English society were campaigning for the abolition of the episcopacy. During this turmoil Ussher proposed a scheme of limited episcopacy that came to be known by the keyword: the Eirenicon. This scheme offered to keep the bishops but in a form that made them answerable to a team of Presbyters. The Eirenicon failed and Ussher embarked on a literary campaign that defended the divine institution of episcopacy. This move has long been regarded as a U-turn. This paper will argue that rather than there being a change of mind, the Eirenicon and the pro-episcopal writings of Ussher should be seen as a whole, offering a compromise form of ‘primitive episcopacy’.
Catholic and reformed. The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant thought, 1600–1640 . By Anthony Milton. (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History.) Pp. xvi + 601. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. £50. 0 521 40141 0
Augustiniana', topped and tailed by an arguably Augustinian picture of human depravity and a distinctively Reformational doctrine of assurance of salvation. Later on (p. 152), the best known exponent of the indirect (as opposed to the direct) temporal power of the papacy, Robert Bellarmine, is somehow misunderstood or mistranslated so as to seem an opponent of that doctrine. But such criticisms must not detract from the author's impressive achievement. Martin Jones has put together not only a wide-ranging and stimulating introduction to the Counter-Reformation but also an excellent advertisement for the series in which it appears.
Hill country sheep production. I. The influence of age, flock, and year on some components of reproduction rate in Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes.
Data from 7,091 straightbred Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes grazed at the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station over the period 1959 to 1967 have been used to obtain estimates of flock and age-of-ewe effects on reproduction rate and its components and of year-to-year variation. The ewes were from six groups: a Romney control (RCR) flock, a Romney flock in which ewes were mated either to Romney (RER) or to Border Leicester rams (REB), and flocks of first-cross (F1), second-cross (F2), and third-cross (F3) Border Leicester × Romney ewes mated to first-cross Border Leicester × Romney rams. The ewes' ages at lambing varied from 2 to 5 years and no selection was practised. The ratio of number of lambs weaned per ewe present at lambing increased from the RCR (0.84) to the F1 (1.07), then declined with interbreeding to the F2 (0.92) and further to the F3 (0.87) ewes. Similar changes were evident for the percentage of ewes lambing, of multiple births, and of lambs surviving to weaning. Over...