[4] In 1601 he published an 800-page commentary on Ramus's 95-page Dialecticae,[5] the eloquence of Downame so opening the "clenched fist" of the subject matter as to "smooth and stroke one with the palm thereof".
[6] By 1593, he was divinity lecturer at St Paul's Cathedral, where he held the prebend of Caddington Major, and on appointment to the vicarage of Sandbach in the following year he also became a prebendary of Chester.
[7] Among his parishioners at Lothbury was the diplomat Sir Henry Killigrew, to whom Downame dedicated the printed text of his Easter Sermon of 1602, declaring that "to your Worship, your loving brother and the virtuous Lady your wife I am for great benefits exceedingly bound".
[15] Downame's appointment to the See of Derry was a fitting sequel to the Church of Ireland's adoption of its own confession of faith (the "Irish Articles") in the previous year.
Although he had embraced the episcopalian tradition, his theology chimed with the Calvinist tone of the Irish Articles and he brought to Ireland a deep-seated antipathy and hostility to the Church of Rome, which he declared had been controlled by Antichrist since the accession of Boniface III as Pope in 607.
He spoke the Irish Bishops' declaration of opposition when preaching before Lord Deputy Falkland in April 1627, saying toleration made one "an accessory to superstition and idolatry and to the perdition of a seduced people".
[18] Catholic priests had a strong hold over the native population in Downame's diocese[19] and, in despair at the civil and military authorities' acquiescence in this, he obtained from Dublin a special commission allowing him to arrest and detain all within his jurisdiction who refused obedience to him on spiritual matters.
[22] In 1631, Downame published, at Dublin, The Covenant of Grace in which, observed Archbishop James Ussher, he "handleth at full the Controversy on Perseverence [sic] and the Certainty of Salvation".
[27] His most enduring work was his Commentary on Ramus's Dialecticae which, in original or digest form, was standard reading for students at both English and American universities in the late seventeenth century.
She died on 18 March 1616, and on 20 April 1617 he married, at St Margaret's, Lothbury, Jaell (née de Peigne), the widow of Sir Henry Killigrew, being the "Virtuous Lady" whose benevolence Downame had acknowledged fifteen years earlier; the marriage, which was solemnised by his brother John, had been expected since the previous December.