ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to address three facets of the questions, which for convenience one might call the importance of ecclesiology, the issue of ecology, and the problem of ethnicity. It seeks to assess what it meant to have a Presbyterian presence in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ireland, not least in terms of the overall balance among competing religious groups. The term "Presbyterian" refers to a system of church government and the thinking behind it (ecclesiology). Presbyterianism in seventeenth-century Ireland never lost its sense of itself as driven to advance true religion against those who would obstruct its progress. Two contrasting examples of the internalizing of faith open out the question of the "ecology" surrounding Presbyterianism in Ulster. Even in Ulster, the question of the Scottishness of Presbyterianism was more nuanced than might be supposed. Presbyterian plans to produce a history of their tradition have been mentioned several times in the chapter.
