tarians employed John Smethurst of Moreton Hampstead, Devonshire, on a preaching mission in Ulster. Favoured by Rowan (the father) he came to Killeleagh, where Cooke and the younger Rowan confronted him at his lecture in a schoolroom. Wherever Smethurst went Cooke was at hand with a reply, inflicting upon the unitarian mission a series of defeats from which it never recovered. In opposing, later in the same year, the election of an Arian [see Bruce, William, (1790–1868)] to the chair of Hebrew and classics in the Belfast Academical Institution, Cooke was unsuccessful, and he was discouraged by the result of his appeal on the subject to the following synod (at Newry, 1822). He preached in the spring of 1824 as a candidate for First Armagh, but was not chosen.
Cooke was elected moderator of the general synod at Moneymore in June 1824. He gave evidence before the royal commission on education in Ireland in January 1824; and before committees of both houses of parliament in April upon the religious bearings of the Irish education question. He described the Belfast Academical Institution as ‘a seminary of Arianism.’ He maintained that among the protestants of the north there was an increase of feeling opposed to catholic emancipation; it is fair to add that he did not put forward this feeling as his own, but he uttered a warning against undue concessions. The publication of his evidence produced the strongest excitement. He defended himself against bitter attacks with vigour, and rallied the protestant sentiment of Ulster to his call. The resolution of synod (June 1825) in his favour, though cautiously worded, was an omen of triumph for his policy.
The proceedings of the next synod (at Ballymoney, 1826) were not favourable to Cooke. Cooke did not see his way to support a motion for subscription to the Westminster Confession, and his proposal that ‘a condensed view’ of its doctrines should be drawn up as a standard of orthodoxy was negatived. In the three succeeding synods, at Strabane (1827), Cookstown (1828), and Lurgan (1829), Cooke carried all before him. By the successive steps of exacting from all members of synod a declaration of belief in the Trinity, appointing a select committee for the examination of all candidates for the ministry, and instituting an inquiry into the ‘religious tenets’ of a recently appointed professor of moral philosophy in the academical institution, he left the Arians no alternative but that of secession, a course which, after presenting a spirited ‘remonstrance,’ they adopted. Cooke was a strong opponent of the Dissenters' Chapels Act (1844), which secured them in the possession of congregational properties.
At the outset Cooke fought against great odds. He had some able coadjutors, especially Robert Stewart [q. v.] of Broughshane, and the main body of the laity was heartily with him. Among the orthodox ministers an important section, headed by James Carlile (1784–1854) [q. v.], looked with no favour upon Cooke's policy of severance; but the rejection of Carlile as candidate for the moral philosophy chair (though an Arian was not appointed) alienated the moderate party from that of the Arians. The leader of the Arian opposition to Cooke in the synod was Henry Montgomery, an orator of the first rank, and the speeches on both sides may still be read with interest for their ability. Cooke's expulsion of the Arian leaders was followed up by the enactment of unqualified subscription to the Westminster Confession (9 Aug. 1836, extended to elders 8 April 1840), and by the union of the general synod of Ulster with the secession synod, under the name of the ‘General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’ (10 July 1840); the Munster presbytery, formerly nonsubscribing, was incorporated with the assembly in 1854.
On 12 Oct. 1828 a unanimous call had been forwarded to Cooke from the congregation of Mary's Abbey, Dublin. But his place was in Belfast, and thither he removed to a church specially built for him in May Street, and opened 18 Oct. 1829. From this time to the close of his active pastorate in 1867 his fame as a preacher drew crowds to May Street. The calls upon his pulpit services elsewhere were not infrequent; hence the story, told by Classon Porter, that ‘his people once memorialled their presbytery for an occasional hearing of their own minister.’ Established in Belfast, he became not merely the presiding spirit of Irish presbyterianism (he was elected moderator of assembly in 1841 and 1862), but the leader and framer of a protestant party in the politics of Ulster. To this consummation his wishes tended, when he purged the synod. The political principles of the Arian chiefs were as dangerous in his estimation as their lax theological notions. Till the election of 1832 Belfast had been a stronghold of liberalism. Cooke turned the tide. So completely did his work transform the relations of parties that even Montgomery, in later life, dropped his political liberalism.
At the Hillsborough meeting (30 Oct. 1834) Cooke, in the presence of forty thousand people, published the banns of a marriage between the established and presbyterian churches of Ireland. The alliance was to be
