CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION.
Little more remains to be said. We have seen that the two parties continued for a time to exist side by side. Envy, bitterness and bigotry remained long after every other distinction had passed away. Strange as it may seem, the enmity between Protestants and Roman Catholics, which is still characteristic of some parts of the country, is historically connected with this bitterness of feeling which once existed between the Irish and the Romish Church.
If we are to pay attention to the foreign sources of information which have come down to us, we must believe that the Irish Church had sunk so low that there was nothing to regret in its final extinction. Immorality and incest are said to have been openly practised in the land; and it must be admitted that several authorities bear the same testimony. Nothing in the native sources of information, however, would lead us to conclude that there was the least truth in the charge. It is admitted, too, on all hands that it was a question of morality which first gave the Anglo-Normans a footing in Ireland, and that it was they who supported the adulterer, and not the Irish. There is also reason to suspect that all the authorities who charge the Irish with immoral practices derived their information from the same source, and that they represent, fore, not many testimonies, but only one, and that one most unfriendly and unjust to the Irish. Surely, then, we may allow that the charge labours under considerable doubt, and is certainly very much exaggerated.
A further charge has also been made that the Irish had become uncivilized and barbarous. With regard to this, it is no doubt true that in backward places there were then, as now, some who were not abreast with the progress of the age. But that the charge is otherwise without foundation is shown by the clearest of all arguments. A few of the works of that age have escaped the destroyer, and remain to the present. In buildings, there are the round towers and the stone-roofed oratories; in stonework, there are the sculptured crosses; in metal, there are the various shrines, book-covers and croziers. These all display an originality and ability far removed from barbarism. The next age swept most of such things away, and brought in nothing to take their place. There is not one ancient Irish work of illuminating, sculpture, or metal-working which does not date from before the time when the Church of Ireland was made subject to the Church of Rome.
One cannot help regretting that no reformer was raised up by God to bring into order those things which had become disordered, at the same time retaining the independence of the Church. But God's ways with communities, as with individuals, are past finding out. Perhaps there is still some work reserved for the Irish Church. Once she held aloft the lamp of truth, and was a shining light to all Western Europe. The Lord may again choose her for the accomplishment of His high and holy purposes. When that call comes, God grant that she may be ready!