istic and when, in opposition to all existing testimony, he contends that king James, and the English delegates to the synod of Dort, preferred the sentiments of Arminius to those of Calvin: we must profess ourselves unable to frame any probable hypothe sis, which, without derogating from Mr. Daubeny's character for ingenuousness, will account for such errors. We can scarcely suppose them to be merely the result of inadvertence, or of ordinary prejudice, but either of some cause which remains to be explained, or of prejudice the most extraordinary.' P. 129.

With regard to the first paragraph in this extract, we shall only remark that, whereas it is observed that Mr. Daubeny, as has been already shewn, adheres to those views of faith and justification which are to be found in king Henry's book,' that a very singular coincidence is observable between Gardiner's letter, Harding's reply, and Mr. Daubeny's pages,'-the evidence of the truth of these assertions is not so fully laid before us, as to carry any great satisfaction to our minds along with it. It consists of a few short expressions from Gardiner; but there is nothing produced from Harding, nor any thing from Mr. Daubeny, by the comparison of which the resemblance might be ascertained. And yet upon so slender and slovenly a proof Mr. D. is to bear all the prejudice and the odium which may be brought upon him by the charge of symbolizing with papists.

The next paragraph makes us cry out with the poet :

O rus! quando ego te aspiciam ? quandoque licebit
Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis,
Ducere solicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ ?'

Upon summing up the account, we see that there are six principal matters contained in it, and they are all important errors. We do not mean that they are all errors belonging to the Candid Examiner; nor yet, notwithstanding the confident assertions of that writer, are they all errors of Mr. Daubeny. The two gentlemen, we believe, divide the blame pretty equally between them. But what we wish to observe is, that the public is the sufferer; that the six errors, whencesoever they may have come, have been let loose to roam abroad, and to do their work of evil. It is our earnest desire, that if such facts will not make authors more circumspect, they may produce in readers a determination to have nothing to do with such controversialists, to leave them to fight it out by themselves, or at least may generate a salutary distrust and caution in the reception of their authorities and arguments.

The first two errors, we believe, are Mr. Daubeny's; the next, which is much more involved and cumulative, belongs

to the Candid Examiner. To adjust this matter fairly, we must transcribe the whole account which is given of it, in the part of his work to which we are referred:

Mr. D. quotes Strype in support of his opinion of the nonacceptance of Bradford's Treatise on Election, by Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, (P. 412.) On looking into Strype, however, we find his language to be directly contrary to what Mr. D. attributes. to him. We confess ourselves utterly at a loss to account for such a "palpable misrepresentation." It may be worth while to lay before our readers the whole transaction as recorded by Strype in his Life of Cranmer, P. 350.

"One thing there now fell out which caused some disturbance among the prisoners. Many of them that were under restraint for the profession of the gospel were such as held free-will, tending to the derogation of God's grace, and refused the doctrine of absolute predestination and original sin."-" Divers of them were in the King's-bench, where Bradford and many other gospellers were."" Bradford was apprehensive that they might now do great harm in the church, and therefore wrote a letter to Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, the three chief heads of the reformed (though oppressed) church in England, to take some cognizance of this matter, and to consult with them in remedying it. And with him joined bishop Ferrar, Rowland Taylor, and John Philpot. Upon this occasion Ridley wrote a treatise of God's election and predestination. And Bradford wrote another upon the same subject, and sent it to those three fathers, in Oxford, for their approbation; and THEIRS BEING OBTAINED, the rest of the eminent ministers in and about London were ready to sign it also." Strype's Life of Cranmer, P. 350.

Now Mr. D.'s words, in referring to this transaction, are, that Bradford "wrote a treatise on God's election, and sent it to the bishops Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, when confined at Oxford, for their approbation. But the circumstance of this treatise having been entirely suppressed by Bradford, authorizes the conclusion that it did NOT obtain the sanction of the venerable martyrs.'

P. 109.

By his italics and uncials (which are favourite figures of speech in the Calvinistical controversy), and by his affirming that the language of Strype is directly contrary to what Mr. D. attributes to him,' it is plain in what way the Candid Examiner has misinterpreted the honest historian. The misinterpretation is far from being new; it has been often. already before the public: it lies now before us, in another pamphlet, in more authoritative uncials even than those of Mr. Gosnell; and the Candid Examiner, we doubt not, has fallen into the pit by following his predecessors. The clause in Strype, which is clearly conditional, these writers are determined to understand as affirmative. The testimony means no more than that, if the approbation or signatures of Cran

mer, Ridley, and Latimer, were first obtained, the rest were ready to sign it also. Turn to the letter itself in Strype's appendix (P. 195), and it is plain that we have stated the true meaning: Al the prisoners here about in maner have seen it, and read it and as therein they aggre with me, nay rather with the truth, so they are ready and wil be, to signify it, as, they shal se you give them example.' There is exceedingly strong evidence to prove that Bradford's treatise did not obtain the desired sanction of Cranmer, &c. Our readers may find a taste of it in Dr. Ridley's life of his great namesake, (P. 549, &c.); and it has been very well enlarged upon by Dr. Winchester, in his Dissertation on the Seventeenth Article (P. 67-77, new edit.) We have investigated the subject ourselves, independently of either of these authorities, and our conclusions are correspondent with theirs. We prefer, however, the rather to refer to them, that our readers may know, that, not only, as we have observed, is the Examiner's interpretation an old one, but that this is by no means the first occasion on which a much correcter estimate of this subject than that in the Candid Examination has been delivered to the public.

Whether the Candid Examiner had indeed the identical treatise which was transmitted to bishop Ridley, before his eyes, at the moment when he was writing,' we shall not presume either to affirm or to deny. Dr. Winchester tells us,

that after the most diligent search, he never could learn that it was in print, or preserved in manuscript.' (Dissertat. P. 68.) The doctor was not a novice in these inquiries; we are inclined therefore to think it possible, that he was of opinion that this treatise was a different one from that gathered out of the first chapter to the Ephesians, and from the other two on the same argument, in the volume which lay so opportunely before the eyes of the Candid Examiner. For otherwise we can hardly explain how, after the most diligent search,' an inquirer like Dr. Winchester should never have heard of the volume of Bradford's Meditations. It is by no means a very scarce book. The Candid Examiner tells us of his edition of 1614. Before our eyes' there is at this moment an edition of the year 1604: and we perused some time ago the ancient original edition, but its date we are unable to communicate. It may be worth while to mention, that, if we remember aright, the author of the Life of Bradford in the Biographia Britannica affirms that a manuscript of this treatise is still extant in the Bodleian library. If this information be correct, perhaps something might be collected from that MS. which it would be a service to communicate to the public.

It is certainly true that Cranmer did, and that Strype tells us that Cranmer did, apply to Calvin for counsel. In this parti cular, therefore, we have nothing to say in behalf of Mr. Daubeny. We shall remark further, and by the way, that we assent to the interpretation which this writer has given in another part of his book, of the tolerabiles ineptine' of Calvin when speaking of the English liturgy. But if the Examiner means to go further, and to infer that Calvin's authority with Cranmer was equal to that of Melancthon, or that his influence was powerful in the conduct of the English Reformation, or that the observations of those writers are to be despised who deny this to have been the case, we then beg leave to quit the Examiner, and to pass over to the other side.

To explain more clearly what we have to say upon the next particular, we must once more transcribe from the Examiner the passage to which he has referred us:

• Mr. D. considers a similar extract from archbishop Parker's preface to the Bible, and which stands precisely on the same footing, to be declarative of a design on the part of the governors of our church to exclude the Calvinistic doctrine of election (P. 420). But how, we would ask, will Mr. Daubeny reconcile this deduction with the fact that in the same volume was inserted, under the same authority, viz. that of the archbishops and bishops of the church of England, the well-known Calvinistie catechism, entitled, "Certain Questions and Answers touching the Doctrine of Predestination, the Use of God's Word and Sacraments?" In this catechism Mr. Daubeny must know, that not only the doctrine of -election, but that of reprobation also, is plainly and explicitly affirmed and defended. Or how will Mr. Daubeny reconcile the above reasoning with the Calvinistic language contained in the notes to the same Bible, and which, we are told by Strype, were done by the bishops, but chiefly by the archbishops? (Life of Parker, P. 400.) Let the reader only turn to the notes on Ezek. xviii. 23. Rom. ix. 11. and xi. 35. 1 Pet. i. 2. z Pet. i. 10. Matt. xi. 26. and xxv. 34. John, xvii. 12. cum multis aliis; and he will see the force of this question. And yet from some general expressions in the preface to this very work, expressions to which no sublapsarian Calvinist has ever objected, Mr. Daubeny argues in favour of the designed exclusion of Calvinism from the church of England. Or how will he reconcile with his statement the following words in the preface to the New Testament, written by the archbishop himself? (See App. to Strype's Parker, No. 84.) "By him hath he decreed to give to his elect the life everlasting; and to the repbate, who hath contemned his life and doctrine, death everlasting." These words may, no doubt, be interpreted in an Anti-calvinistic sense: but are they such as an Arminian would have chosen?' P. 113.

But, what now if this well-known Calvinistic catechism'

to which we are so triumphantly referred, had never any existence in the Bible of the archbishops and bishops? If it was ever at any moment before the eyes of the Candid Examiner, he must have been poring in the Genevan, and not in the episcopal Bible. We have looked into a good many Bishops' Bibles, but we never saw any Calvinistic catechism there. But that we may characterize more completely the want of care, the want of learning, the want of circumspection, the blind traditional reception and propagation of errors, of which we have so much reason to complain, we choose to derive the detection of these errors from materials which are already before the public, rather than to acquiesce in our own investigations, or to take to ourselves the credit of their exposure.

In Mr. Churton's biographical preface to the second edition of Dr. Winchester's Dissertation on the Seventeenth Article, it is said:

The rude attack made upon the church of England by the author of the Confessional, and, about the same time, by the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, could not be disregarded by one so steadily attached to that church as Dr. Winchester; and his remarks on those productions, though he did not publish any thing on the occasion in his own name, were serviceable to his friends, and to the cause of truth. In Dr. Nowell's answer to Pietas Oxoniensis, second edition, 1769, Dr. Winchester is the "very judicious friend" mentioned in the note, page 106, as "well acquainted with the several editions of the Bible, and the occasions of them;" and he there shews that "the questions and answers concerning predestination," which are inserted in some editions of the Geneva Bible,* and were said by the author of Pietas Oxoniensis + to have been "always printed at the end of the Old Testament, and bound up with this authorized translation of the Bible (meaning the Bishops' Bible), till about the year 1615," were probably never bound up with that Bible: nor indeed could they with any consistency appear there; for archbishop Parker, the great promoter of this translation, in his preface

By a paper of Dr. Winchester's, now in my hands, on this subject, he appears to have examined fourteen editions of the Geneva Bible, from 1560 to 1616; of which not more than three or four (one of them being imperfect) had these questions and answers; and four editions of the Bishops' Bible, none of which had them; and he observes in Nowell (loc. citat.) that Lewis (Hist. of Transl. of Bible, P. 235-264) mentions eight editions of the Bishops' Bible, and takes no netice of these questions being printed with them, though he is very particular in giving the contents of them, and takes particular notice when they were inserted (1583) in the Geneva Bible.'

Here then is one predecessor of the Candid Examiner. If our readers refer to about page 490 of Mr. Toplady's Historic Proof, if we mistake not they will find another. Rev.