One argument of Dr. Todd was based on the silence of Muirchu Maccu Mactheni in the Book of Armagh; but Dr. Moran answers this fully by showing that part of that early writer's work is missing; and that, as the Life of Saint Probus follows, word for word, the parts extant, we may assume that Saint Probus followed him in other parts; and in regard to Saint Patrick's mission, Saint Probus is clear and plain.
The church in Ireland, then, was the spiritual child of Rome and Gaul. Her great missionary, a Breton, came from the schools of Gaul, with authority from Rome, and the church which he founded was in harmony with the church in Britain, Gaul, and Italy. What the faith of the church in those countries was, admits of no doubt; and were there no monuments extant to give explicit evidence of the faith of the Irish Church, this would give us implicit evidence sufficient, in the absence of any contradictory authority, to decide what its faith, doctrines, and liturgy were.
The vice-rector of the Irish College marshals his authorities again and shows that the church founded by an envoy from Rome retained its connection with the holy see and its reverence for the See of Peter. He adduces hymns of the Irish Church, various writings of successive ages, express canonical enactments regarding Rome, and finally the pilgrimages to the holy city, in itself an irrefragable proof of the veneration entertained for Rome; but he crowns all this by adducing the many extant cases in which Irish bishops and clergy appealed to Rome.
But it may be thought that the terrible changes caused by the invasion of the barbarians which in a manner isolated Ireland may have led insensibly to differences of faith or practice in that island, cut off from the centre of unity by the pagan England that had succeeded Christian Britain, and the pagan France that replaced Christian Gaul.
Have we aught to prove what the Irish Church believed and taught; at what worship the faithful knelt; how they were received into the body of believers; what rites consoled them in death? Fortunately there is much to console us here, as well as to convince us. One of the most important parts of the work we are discussing is the clear and distinct manner in which he proves the Irish character of the missal found at Bobbio, and reproduced by Mabillon in his Iter Italicum. Having, by what light we possessed, come to the conclusion that it was in no sense Irish, we examined this portion with interest, and must admit that the proof is clear. Bobbio was a monastery founded by St. Columbanus, and its rich library gave much to the early printers, and yet much still remains in the Ambrosian library at Milan. This missal has no distinctive Irish offices, and its containing an office of St. Sigebert, King of Burgundy, seemed to refute any idea of its being Irish. Yet we know that St. Columbanus founded a monastery at Luxeu before proceeding to Bobbio, and in both places retained his Irish office. The adding of a local Mass would not be strange. In itself this missal corresponds with that Irish missal preserved at Stowe in many essential points, and with no other known missal; the orthography and writing are undoubtedly Irish; the liturgy in itself is not that of Gaul; it resembles it in many respects, but the canon is that of Rome. This striking feature appears in the Stowe missal. Mabillon, from its antiquity, himself infers that Saint Columbanus brought it from Luxeu, and it is as probable that he brought it from Ireland.
It gives us the Mass of the ancient Irish Church, and Curry gives in his lectures a translation of an "Exposition of the Ceremonies of the Mass" from the Irish in the Leabhar Breac. The Mass and the exposition place beyond a doubt the belief of the Irish Church in the Real Presence. The exposition is as distinct as if written to meet any opposition. "Another division of that pledge, which has been left with the church to comfort her, is the body of Christ and his blood, which are offered upon the altars of the Christians; the body even which was born of Mary the Immaculate Virgin, without destruction of her virginity, without opening of the womb, without the presence of man; and which was crucified by the unbelieving Jews out of spite and envy; and which arose after three days from death, and sits upon the right hand of God the Father in heaven." (Curry's Lectures, p. 307.)
The words of the Mass are no less explicit, and the Bobbio missal contains these words: "Cujus carne a te ipso sanctificata, dum pascimur, roboramur, et sanguine dum potamur, abluimur." The whole early literature, the lives of the saints, and other monuments teem with allusions to the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood, and the saying of Mass is not unfrequently expressed by the term "conficere Corpus Domini."
The proofs adduced by Dr. Moran on this point extend to sixty pages, showing the most exact research and learning, and accumulating evidence on evidence, meeting and refuting objections of every kind.
The sacrament of penance and its use is no less apparent; nor is the devotion to the blessed Virgin and the saints a point on which the slightest doubt is left.
Dr. Moran's work is certainly, since the appearance of Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History, (4 vols. Dublin, 1822,) the most valuable treatise on the early Irish Church, and completely sets at rest the theories set up by W. G. Todd, in A History of the Ancient Church in Ireland, London, 1845; and with great learning and skill by James H. Todd, in his Saint Patrick, Apostle of Ireland: A Memoir of his Life and Mission, Dublin, 1864.