thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

"Furthermore, though the decrees of predestination be unknown to us, yet must we receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God."

Such was the original form of the famous seventeenth Article.

Now, in order to understand its real drift and purport, we must obviously begin with ascertaining the sentiments of the illustrious individual, under whose influence, and in accordance with whose solicited advice, it was composed: and, when we shall thus have obtained the true key to the Article, we may then, with some reasonable prospect of advantage, apply it to the phraseology of the Article itself.

Melancthon, in a letter to Cranmer, strongly reprobated that frequent introduction of new-fangled schemes of doctrine relative to scriptural election, which, in the way of mere unauthorized private exposition, sprang up from a neglect of simple and sincere Christian antiquity.

Hence we may be quite sure, that the mode in which Melancthon theologized was the very reverse of that which he condemned: in other words, we may be quite sure, that Melancthon, when he renounced what he calls the Stoical and Manichèan Insanity of Fatalism, would resort to Christian antiquity, for the purpose of settling the true doctrine of scriptural election and predestination.

:

In this wise and rational plan of theologizing, Cranmer perfectly concurred for, though most happy to solicit and to profit by the advice of such a divine as Melancthon, he did not blindly build upon it; but, on the contrary, in composing the seventeenth Article, he is stated, by his first Protestant successor, Parker, to have been most diligent in reading the oldest fathers, both Greek and Latin, and in examining ecclesiastical antiquity quite up to the time of the apostles.

Now, purely in the way of coming at mere matter of fact, such a process must have convinced both Melancthon and Cranmer, that the doctrine maintained and taught by primitive antiquity was, in point of ideality, the doctrine of ecclesiastical individual election.

Accordingly, Melancthon, in delivering his sentiments on this topic, is full, and express, and ambiguous.

He contended that the Catholic Church collectively is the election or the elect Church of God; because, as a body, it is chosen out of the corrupt mass of the entire human race. And thence he maintained, that all the members of the elect Catholic Church, inasmuch as they are thus component parts of the election, constitute individually the elect people of God.

This being the view taken by Melancthon, he indisputably must have held the true ancient ideality of election to be an election of individuals, out of the great corrupt mass of mankind, into the pale of the visible Church, with God's morally-acting purpose and intention, that the elect, profiting by their privileges of election, should finally attain everlasting felicity.

Such, as stated by himself, was the doctrinal system of Melancthon ; a system professedly adopted from the pure source of primitive Chris

tian antiquity: such, therefore, was the system which Cranmer, acting by the advice of Melancthon, and in consequence of his own diligent researches into the same antiquity, embodied in the seventeenth Article of the Church of England.

To the phraseology, then, of that Article, opened by the key with which we have been furnished by the explicitness of Melancthon, let us now attend; reading the Article under the impression that it was the work of Cranmer, who had consulted Melancthon on the subject treated of in it, and who, like Melancthon, rejecting the various unauthoritative phantasies of mere licentious private judgment, had resorted to venerable antiquity for information and instruction.

Election, whether absolute and unconditional, or previsional and conditional, is equally, both on the Calvinistic scheme and on the Arminian scheme, an election of certain individuals, directly and immediately, to eternal life.

But as this notion agrees not with the ideality of election maintained by the primitive Church to be the true sense of Scripture, so, unless I greatly mistake, it agrees as little with the ideality of election maintained, under the joint influence of Melancthon and Cranmer, by the reformed Church of England.

In respect to the point of ideality, the Anglican Church, when, in the seventeenth Article, she speaks of predestination to life, teaches not an election of certain individuals, either absolute or previsional, directly and immediately to eternal happiness; but she teaches an election of certain individuals into the Church Catholic, in order that there, according to the everlasting purpose and morally-operating intention of God, they may be delivered from curse and damnation, and thus, indirectly and mediately, may be brought, through Christ, to everlasting salvation; agreeably to God's promises, as they are generically, not specifically, set forth to us in holy Scripture.

That such is the real doctrine of the Church of England; in other words, that she teaches a predestination to life, not direct and immediate, but indirect and mediate; inevitably follows from the circumstance, that, while in her sixteenth Article she hints at the possibility of the elect individually departing from grace given, in her homilies and in her burial service she distinctly states, that the elect, in her sense of the word, may, in their individual capacity, fall away utterly, and thus perish finally. Now this statement is palpably incompatible with the tenet of a direct and immediate predestination of individuals to eternal life; for individuals so predestinated could not, by the very terms of their predestination, fall away utterly and irrecoverably. Therefore the predestination to life, mentioned in the seventeenth Article, can only mean an indirect and mediate predestination of individuals; or, in other words, it can only mean a predestination of individuals to eternal life, through the medium of election into the Catholic Church, in God's everlasting purpose and intention indeed: but still, since God, in executing his purpose and intention, operates upon the minds of his intelligent creatures not physically but morally, with a possibility of their defeating that merciful purpose and intention, and thence of their finally falling away to everlasting destruction. As the Article, in connection with the other documents of the An

glican Church, must, unless we place them in irreconcilable collision with each other, be understood to propound the doctrine of predestination after the manner and in the sense which has been specified; so it distinctly enjoins us to receive God's promises as they are generally set forth to us in holy Scripture.

The import of the word generally is, I suspect, very often and very widely misapprehended by the readers of the seventeenth Article, as it occurs in the English form. The term is thought to be equivalent to usually or for the most part; and thence the clause is supposed to teach, that, in the matter of election, God's promises must be received as they are most usually set forth in Scripture; so that, in the interpretation of Holy Writ, we must not set one text in opposition to another text.

But this is in no wise either the meaning of the term, or the drift of the clause.

From its ambiguity, the word generally has, no doubt, been infelicitously selected: but a moment's inspection of the Article in its Latin form will shew us the import of the term. Its sense is, not generally as opposed to unusually, but generally as opposed to particularly. Had the word generically been used in the English form of the Article, instead of the word generally, all ambiguity would have been avoided; and thus the real drift of the clause would have stood out plain and distinct.

The latter part of the Article is an explanation of its former part. We must embrace the doctrine of predestination to life: but then, as that predestination, through the medium of election into the Church Catholic, is, so far as respects particulars or individuals, only according to God's everlasting moral purpose and intention; the promises of God, in regard to predestination and election, must be received generically, not specifically. That is to say, the promises of God must be received generically, with a reference to the whole collective Church of the election, which Christ has founded upon a rock, and which (agreeably to his express prophecy) can never be finally overturned: not received specifically, with a reference to a certain number of individuals of that Church, whose particular predestination to life might thence be erroneously pronounced absolute and irreversible.

In this explanation, furnished by the Article itself, we may plainly, in its very phraseology, detect the assisting hand of Melancthon: and, where his hand is detected, we can never doubt the real meaning.

"Great is the comfort (says he) that we assuredly know from the word of God, that, in his immense mercy, on account of his Son, God is always collecting the Church among mankind, and that he does it by the voice of the Gospel. But you will say: This comfort avails, so far as my knowing that the Church is securely preserved for the benefit of others; but perhaps that will not at all profit myself: for how shall I know who are the elect? I answer: To thee also this generic comfort is profitable, because thou oughtest to believe that the Church is securely preserved for thy benefit also: and the commandment of God is eternal and immovable, that thou also shouldst hear the Son, shouldst repent, and shouldst believe that thou wilt be

received by God for the sake of the Mediator. Being such as thou art, it is certain, when thou departest from this life, that thou art in the number of the elect."-Faber on Election, pp. 369-381.

With us the system of Calvin for so long a period superseded every other, and even still retains so many zealous advocates, that to a modern ear the very term Predestination seems to convey a meaning only conformable with his particular system. It should, however, be observed, that the word was in familiar use for centuries before the Reformation, in a sense very different from what he imputed to it; not as preceding the divine prescience, but as resulting from it, much in the same sense as that in which it has since been supported by the Arminians. Yet, obvious as this appears, writers of respectability strangely persuade themselves, that immediately prior to the Reformation the doctrines of the Church of Rome were completely Calvinistical-a conclusion to which certainly none can subscribe who are sufficiently conversant with the favourite productions of the time, who possess enough of fortitude to encounter the barbarisms of scholastical argument, and of patience to investigate its real object. So far, indeed, was this from being the fact, that Calvin peculiarly prided himself in departing from the common definition of the term, which had long been adopted by the adherents of the schools, and retained with a scrupulous precision. For while they held that the expression prædestinati is exclusively applicable to the elect, whom God, foreknowing as meritorious objects of his mercy, predestinates to life; and appropriated that of præsciti to the non-elect, whose perseverance in transgression is simply foreknown; he, on the other side, treating the distinction as a frivolous subterfuge, contended, that God, decreeing the final doom of the elect and non-elect irrespectively, predestinates both, not subsequently, but previously to all foreknowledge of their individual dispositions, especially devotes the latter to destruction through the medium of crime, and creates them by a fatal destiny to perish. Whatsoever, therefore, modern conjecture may have attributed to the scholastics, it is certain that, abhorring every speculation which tends in the remotest degree to make God the author of sin, they believed that only salutary good is predestinated; grace to those who deserve it congruously, and glory to those who deserve it condignly.-Laurence's Bampton Lectures, serm. vii.

To the enquiry, why some are unendowed with grace? their answer was, because some are not willing to receive it, and not because God is unwilling to give it: he, they said, offers his light to all; he is absent from none; but man absents himself from the present Deity, like one who shuts his eyes against the noon-day blaze.—Ibid.

On the whole, it is evident that they considered the dignity of the individual as the meritorious basis of predestination; merit of congruity as the basis of a preordination to grace; and merit of condignity as that of a preordination to glory. Thus, not more fastidious in the choice of their terms than accurate in the use of them, while they denied that the prescience of human virtue, correctly speaking, could be the primary cause of the divine will, because nothing in time can properly give birth to that which has existed from eternity, they

strenuously maintained it to be a secondary cause, the ratio or rule in the mind of the Deity, which regulated his will in the formation of its ultimate decisions.

To enter more minutely into the detail of scholastical disquisition upon this topic, appears unnecessary-at least, to the illustration of any opinions entertained by the Lutherans, whose peculiar tenets I proceed in the next place to consider.

It should previously, however, be observed, that, although in the established confession of their faith all allusion to the subject was avoided, it was nevertheless introduced into another work of importance, and of considerable public authority-the "Loci Theologici," of Melancthon, a production which, at the period under review, was everywhere received as the standard of Lutheran divinity. Both Luther and Melancthon, after their creed became permanently settled at the diet of Augsburg, kept one object constantly in view-to incul-cate only what was plain and practical, and never to attempt philosophizing. They perceived that before the Reformation the doctrine of divine foreknowledge had been grossly misconceived and abused, although guarded by all the logic of the schools; and they felt that, after it, they had themselves at first contributed to increase the evil, by grounding upon the same high argument, although for a very different purpose, the position of an infallible necessity; and thenceforward, therefore, they only taught a predestination which the Christian religion explains, and the Christian life exemplifies.

But to what, it may be said, did the Lutherans object in the theory of their opponents, when they abandoned the tenet of necessity? Certainly not to the sobriety and moderation of that part of it which vindicated the justice, and displayed the benevolence, of the Almighty; but generally to the principles upon which it proceeded; to its presumption in overleaping the boundary which Heaven has prescribed to our limited faculties, and which we cannot pass without plunging into darkness and error; and to its impiety in disregarding, if not despising, the most important truths of Christianity. A system of such a nature they hesitated not to reject, anxious to conduct themselves by the light of Scripture alone, nor presuming to be wise above what God had been pleased to discover. Thus, while their adversaries philosophized upon a predestination of individuals, preferred one before another by divine regard, because worthy of such a preference, they taught only that which has been revealed with certainty-the predestination of a peculiar description of persons, "of a people zealous of good works," of the Christian Church contemplated as an aggregate, not on account of its own dignity, but on account of Christ, its supreme Head, and the Author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Maintaining, not a particular election of personal favourites, either by an absolute will, or by a conditional one, dependent upon the ratio of merit, but a general election of all, who by baptism in their infancy, or by faith and obedience in maturer years, become the adopted heirs of heaven; they conceived this to be the only election to which the Gospel alludes, and consequently the only one upon which we can speak with confidence, or reason without presumption.-Ibid.