The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick--his independence of Rome more especially--was the favorite argument of its defenders. No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.