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RELIGION IN IRELAND PREVIOUS TO EMIGRATION.

CHAPTER VI.
STATE OF RELIGION IN IRELAND FROM THE TIME OF THE EMIGRATION FROM SCOTLAND, TO THE FIRST EFFORT TO EMIGRATE TO AMERICA IN 1631.

THE state of Religion among the emigrants was peculiar, though not strange or unexpected, in the circumstances. Many of the large landholders, and also the proprietors of smaller sections, were gentlemen in the Scotch acceptation of the word, men of good birth, of good manners, of some education and property. Some of them appear to have been truly religious. Among the tenantry and sub-tenantry, were also many of sound principles and correct lives,—and some were truly pious. But the circumstances of the emigration were such as to hold out greater inducements to the restless than to the sedate, to those who were more anxious about temporal, than to those who were most engaged about spiritual concerns; and consequently the province was occupied by settlers, who were willing enough to receive and respect ministers, who were sent to them, but were not characterized by any great desire to obtain either faithful ministers, who would warn them of their sins, or careless ones who would be content with their tithes. Of the latter class they had enough in Ireland, as the whole country had been divided into parishes, which were expected to support a minister of the Established Church of England. The former class were a terror unto them, as they always are to those not fully intent upon their own salvation. Stewart draws a dark picture of the people soon after their emigration; it is probably over colored, as the author was not conversant with the settling of colonies; the only other one of which he had much knowledge, the Puritans that removed first to Holland, and then to New England, being a solitary example of excellence. "Most of the people were all void of godliness, who seemed rather to flee from God in their enterprise, than to follow their own mercy. Yet God followed them when they fled from him. Albeit, at first, it must be remembered, that, as they cared little for any church, so God seemed to care as little for them. For these strangers were no better entertained (i.e., by the clergy they found in Ireland, or that part of it where they were)