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Tolerant bishops in an intolerant Church: the Puseyite threat in Ulster
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
It is surely ironic that while the ‘spoiliation’ of the Irish Church in 1833 provided the initial rallying cry for the Oxford Movement, neither Tractarian spirituality, theology nor its later liturgical innovations ever really took any serious hold on that Church. It is perhaps even more paradoxical to note that though Alexander Knox, one of the forerunners of the movement was a lay member of the Church of Ireland, other sons of that Church, notably Robert Dolling, the notorious ritualist slum-priest; Dowden, the high-church bishop of Edinburgh; and Tyrell, the Catholic modernist, all made their careers outside Ireland. As Bishop Alexander was to comment, perhaps with the more colourful ritualists like Dolling in mind, the Church of Ireland had never to bear the cost of discovering that the liturgy had ‘lips of fire’; though perhaps that is not quite accurate, for, as I hope to show, fear of the heat from those ‘lips of fire’ was to be a major disruptive influence in the life of the Established, and disestablished Church in Ulster.
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References
1 Newman, J. H., Apologia pro sua vita 1864 (Everyman edn) p 105 Google Scholar. The question of the dependence of the Oxford Movement on Knox is discussed by Y. Brillioth in his Anglican Revival (London 1933) Appendix 1.
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44 The Rev’d Thomas Drew and the Rev’d William Mcllwaine were particularly singled out for the part they played in inciting Protestants to riot. Commission of Enquiry.
45 Alexander of Derry wrote of the passing of the bill for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church: ‘I can never forget the summer night just after the decision when I reeled out into the cool air almost hearing the crash of a great building’, E. Alexander, Primate p 173.