eumcision; and that he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had, yet being uncircumcised. Thirdly, the apostle when asserting justification by faith, without the deeds of the law (Rom. iii.), avowedly comprehends in his reasoning the Gentiles, who had never been subjected to any part of the ceremonial law; and pronounces that, as to justification, there is no difference between them and the Jews. Fourthly, St. Paul, as it were to cut off the very possibility of mistake, produces a specific instance to identify the law of which he is treating. What is the instance? a precept of the moral law: Thou shalt not covet. Rom. vii. 7.

If there be a doubt in the mind of any man, whether the doctrine of our church on this point, be that of the Bishop of Lincoln, or the reverse; it may be removed, by referring to the authoritative/homily concerning justification, (the homily to which the 11th of the 39 articles directs us), as quoted by the bishop himself, p. 150. "This is that justification of righteousness which St. Paul speaketh of, when he saith, No man is justified by the works of the law, but freely by faith in Jesus Christ.-This saying, that we be justified by faith only, freely and without works, is spoken, for to take away clearly all merit of our works." By " our works" the homily necessarily means works of the moral law; it could not intend works of the ceremonial law, which had never pertained to us, and had at that time been abolished 1500 years.

The expression" our own good works" speedily occurs, and with a renewed reference to St. Paul; and the homily proceeds in the same train of argument.

Unhappy as we deem the bishop to be in his reasoning throughout considerable portions of the present chapter, there is yet an intermixture of many useful observations, and he successfully repels the calvinistic tenet, that justification once attained cannot be lost. In the latter part of the chapter he makes vehement and indiscriminate war on a class of men who," as he states, "invidiously arrogate to themselves the exclusive title of Evangelical Clergy," p. 174. They are the persons, as appears from certain retrospective words, whom he had previously characterised, p. 170, as "the enthusiasts of the present day," and concerning whom he intimated, that

"If these preachers do not in so many words tell their hearers, that their moral conduct will have no influence upon the sentence which will be pronounced upon them in the last day; or if they do not entirely pass over in silence the great duties of morality,

yet that

"they dwell so much more earnestly and more frequently upon the

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' In this and many other passages of the New Testament, relating to the motive and design of Christ's Advent, God's love for the world is declared in general terms; and surely these texts are irreconcileable with the idea of God's selecting out of mankind a certain number whom he ordained to save, and of his leaving the rest of mankind to perish everlastingly. How can God be said to love those to whom he denies the means of salvation; whom he destines, by an irrevocable decree, to eternal misery? It might be said, that God loved the individuals whom he delivered from the sentence of punishment; but it seems impossible to say, that he loved those, to whom he would afford no assistance, and who he knew, from want of that assistance, must inevitably suffer all the horrors of guilt and the pain of eternal punishment." (P. 195.)

Surely the mode of interpretation by which Calvinists sometimes endeavour to elude the force of the text, namely, by contending that the world which God so loved is the world of the elect, is below criticism!

It should be observed, that Calvinists frequently describe themselves as holding the doctrine of universal redemption. And it is true that, believing the scriptures, they assent in some measure satisfactorily to themselves to the scriptural declarations, that our Lord died for all men, and to other similar texts. But the sense in which the assent is given proves on examination to be either that all men may be saved, if they will (a sentiment which, as maintained by Calvinists, we have already discussed), or that the atonement of Christ was in value sufficient to be a ransom for the sins of all men; or some other restricted meaning, radically different from the anti-calvinistic, and in our estimation, the genuine import of such passages. To hold those passages in their genuine and universal import, is incompatible with the calvinistic tenets of election and predestination. If without any regard to foreseen faith and obedience, certain individuals are exclusively pre-ordained to salvation; redemption cannot be universal. And we deceive ourselves in affirming it to be universal, while we join with it other tenets which of necessity constitute it particular redemption.

The bishop proceeds to evince from the Old Testament, and from the New, that the terms elect and predestinated are applied in scripture only to collective bodies of men in outward covenant with God, and it might be added, if to an individual, to that person as being one of such a body, (see 2 John x. 13.) without implying any certainty of final salvation; and that the scriptural use of the word reprobate is totally free from the calvinistic signification.

"The election and predestination here spoken of relate to God's eternal purpose to make known to the Ephesians the mystery of his will in the blessings of the gospel, and he calls them saints' and 'faithful,' because of the firmness and constancy with which they hitherto held fast the profession of their faith; but still, instead of representing their salvation as certain, he earnestly exhorts them to 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called;' guards them against those deceits which bring down the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience;' and commands them to put on the whole armour of God, that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil:' it was therefore possible for those, who were saints,' 'faithful,' chosen,' and 'predestinated,' to walk unworthily, to incur the wrath of God by disobedience, and to yield to sinful temptations, and consequently to fail of salvation." (P. 207.) Thus also when that apostle says of himself,

"I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away,' or reprobate, the word in the original being adoxos; he could not mean, lest he should be a person destined by God from all eternity to everlasting punishment. In the preceding verse he says, I so run, not as uncertainly;' and upon other occasions he expresses a confident hope in his own salvation, founded in a consciousness of his exertions and sufferings for the gospel's sake,' and of his sincere obedience to that religion, which he had preached to others.' He was at the same time aware, that if he did not keep under his body, and bring it into subjection,' if he did not resist the evil propensities of his nature, and walk worthy of his holy vocation, his employment as a minister of Christ and apostle of the Gentiles would not prevent his being rejected' at the great day of final retribution. On the other hand, had he conceived himself to be one of the elect, he could not have admitted the possibility of his becoming a reprobate, in the calvinistic sense of those words." (P. 221.)

6

The examination is satisfactorily pursued through other texts, which, though not specifically naming election or reprobation, have been thought favourable to the calvinistic system. If in any point our private interpretation of any of these texts differ from that of the bishop, it is still an interpretation equally disjoined from Calvinism.

On the subject of the divine foreknowledge, and the freedom of the human will, the bishop justly observes,

"I do not attempt to explain, or pretend to understand, how the free-agency of man is reconcileable with the prescience of God, I cannot comprehend how those future contingencies, which depend upon the determination of the human will, should be so certainly and infallibly foreseen, as to be the objects of the sure word of pro

phecy; still, however, I believe both in the prescience of God and free-agency of man, for the reasons already stated; and I see in them no contradiction to each other, or to any acknowledged truth. Here is a just exercise of my faith, upon a subject which exceeds the limits of my understanding; it is above, but not contrary to, reason." (P.250.)

Surely there is no room to doubt whether an omnipotent God can leave foreknown things contingent. That he does leave foreknown things contingent is manifest; for otherwise you represent him as necessitating every sin that is committed. The mode in which the foreknowledge and the contingency are harmonized is undisclosed to us, and is of no concern to us. The fact that they are harmonized is sufficient.

Towards the conclusion of the chapter, ample proof is given from the articles, offices, and homilies, that our church inculcates the doctrine of universal redemption, and considers all Christians as the elect people of God, and capable of attaining salvation. With respect to the 17th article, we unwillingly feel ourselves compelled in one point to stop short of the bishop's conclusion. We agree with him "that the calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation are not maintained in this article," but we are not convinced, that " they are disclaimed and condemned in the strongest terms," p. 269. Neither the phraseology of the article, nor the history of the period when the articles were compiled, seems to bear out such a conviction. We apprehend, that although Cranmer and some of his coadjutors were not Calvinists, calvinistic opinions were adopted by so many persons at that time, and were deemed of such moment by their adherents, that the framers of the articles did not judge it expedient either to pass over the subject in silence, or to weaken the national church, by excluding from it a large division of English protestants: but purposely couched the article in broad and indefinite terms, in the hope that it might be fairly capable of being understood by both parties, as not contradictory to their respective tenets, and thus might obtain the conscientious subscription of both. Hence we infer, that the church intended to leave its door open to the Calvinist; and we therefore allow that a Calvinist may be a true churchman. When we turn our eyes on Hopkins, on the judicious Hooker, on the many other splendid luminaries of our church, who have been Calvinists, are we to reject and disclaim them? Can we think of such men, and in the bigoted fury of modern controversy (we deny any supposeable allusion to the Bishop of Lincoln) talk of the calvinistic heresy?

The succeeding chapter, though highly creditable to the industry of the learned prelate, and very powerful in its bearing on

his subject, does not easily admit of being abstracted. It contains 220 pages of quotations from the fathers commencing with Ignatius, a contemporary with the aposties, and terminating with Theodoret, who flourished about A. D. 423, forming a collective body of evidence adverse to the tenets of Calvinism; and elucidating the primeval opinion of the Christian church. Of such authentic testimony the cogency mainly results from the length and the continuity of the chain. Some few extracts 'would but state the sentiments of some few individuals. And the extent to which the review of the work before us is already carried, admonishes us to draw our observations to a close.

In the sixth chapter the bishop strengthens his general argument by shewing that some among the early heretics maintained opinions resembling tenets of Calvinism, and were on that account censured by nearly contemporary fathers.

Although we think some of his evidence rather equivocal, yet as we do not conceive the object of this chapter to be of much importance, we forbear making any extracts from it, our article having already made a large demand upon the patience of our readers.

The seventh chapter contains ample quotations from the writings of Calvin; from which we have produced sufficient extracts in our preliminary statement of the calvinistic system. Those which we have not cited are in unison with the passages which we have laid before our readers. The bishop subjoins the Lambeth articles proposed by Archbishop Whitgift and others, on the part of the calvinistic clergy, A. D. 1595, aud speedily suppressed by the command of queen Elizabeth, and again rejected by James I. at his accession, when they were again demanded in the conference at Hampton Court; and also adds the five articles decreed at the synod of Dort, which synod was a representative of all the calvinistic churches of Europe, those of France excepted; and was attended by some divines from England. The bishop desires, and with entire tranquillity as to the result may desire his readers to judge," whether any thing like these doctrines be contained in the articles, liturgy, or homilies, of our church." (P. 560.)

In a short concluding chapter, an historical sketch is given of the origin and the progress of the doctrines now termed calvinistic. The bishop, though he mentions traces of them among the Basilidians, Valentinians, and other early heretical sects, observes that,

"The peace of the church seems to have been very little disturbed by any dissension upon these points during the first four centuries; and as a proof oft his, it may be observed, that there is

VOL. III. NO. V.

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