is to be found in that most noble attribute of human nature—the sense of duty, which ceases to operate the moment we lose the consciousness of freedom, believing that our thoughts, our actions, ourselves, are but necessary links in an eternal chain of causes and effects.

Such a theory of religion renders it absurd to admonish mankind of their duty, whether to obey the law of God, or to believe the Gospel of Christ.

To this reasoning the Calvinist replies: “I acknowledge that men are morally, spiritually dead. But at the command of God I would preach to the dead: at his word the dead shall hear and live.” But this reply is irrelevant to the great points of the argument. It remains to be proved, that God would be just in punishing as a crime that spiritual death, of which, on the Calvinistic theory, He is the author;—that it is possible for infinite goodness to subject created beings to an inevitable necessity of breaking his laws, and then hand them over to perdition. This is the point which cannot be evaded; and it is fatal to the predestinarian theology. Doubtless God can raise the dead, literally or spiritually; but that does not touch the question.

III.—CALVINISM IS OPPOSED TO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE PURPOSES OF A VISIBLE CHURCH.

By the visible Church is meant the great body of persons who are baptized into the faith of Christ, and openly profess his religion; and the term is used in contradistinction to the invisible Church, which consists of real, sincere, and spiritual disciples of our Lord. These may be said to be invisible, since to search the heart and penetrate its secrets, is the prerogative of God alone. The truly faithful, as distinguished from the mere professors of Christianity, will not be seen in their distinct character until the hour when the final judgment shall separate the righteous from the wicked. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

The visible Church, with her apostolic ministry, her worship, her sacraments, and her various provisions for the edification of the body of Christ, is instituted and constructed on the manifest principle that the present is a probationary state, and that those who by her ministrations are brought under the obligations of the Christian covenant, are not thereby absolutely but conditionally sealed to eternal life, which is suspended on their faithful adhesion to Christ, and final perseverance in his holy ways.

In exact accordance with this statement, our Lord describes the kingdom of heaven, or the Christian Church, as a field in which the wheat and the tares grow up together until the harvest; and as a net cast into the sea and gathering of all kinds of fishes, bad and good, which are afterwards to be separated.

Not a syllable occurs in the New Testament, not a single fact transpires in the history of the apostolical Churches, to justify the persuasion, that such only as were decreed to eventual salvation, were received as members of the Christian community. Such an order of fellowship, had it really existed, would have amounted to a pre-judgment of characters, anticipating and superseding the judicial sentence of the last day. In that case, to obtain an entrance into the communion of the Church was virtually to be proclaimed a member, not only of the visible, but also of the invisible society of the redeemed, rendering needless all exhortations to perseverance, and impossible all danger of apostasy. But such an exclusive and select and judicial order of fellowship never did and never can exist under the present dispensation, which is essentially a mixed state, and one of probation, supplying the means of working out our own salvation, and of making our calling and election sure, but not requiring evidence of our effectual calling and of our certain election to life previous to our introduction to the worship and sacraments of the Church.

From the earliest records we have of the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, as well as from all later history, we may learn that the Catholic Church never aimed at the senseless project of a pure communion, which, by excluding all but the finally elect, should rival in sanctity the fellowship of the saints above.

The worship of the Christian Church has always been open, unrestricted, unconfined by classical distinctions, such as those of the elect and the reprobate. The gates of the temple are closed against none who would join in the celebration of its holy rites. God is the Father of all; Christ the Saviour of all; the manifestation of the Spirit was given for the profit of all; the Gospel is to be preached to all. “And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

The same free and charitable principle has directed the administration of the sacraments, a circumstance the more remarkable, since, in the judgment of the most eminent Fathers of the Church, these are the channels by which spiritual grace is actually communicated to all who are rightfully baptized, and religiously partake of the Lord’s supper. The formularies of our own branch of Christ’s Catholic Church are so clear and definite on this point, that every effort of ingenious casuistry to give them another meaning, or to reconcile their use with the Calvinistic theology, has ended in discomfiture. The sacraments are “outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.” This grace is imparted, not as to the elect and to them exclusively, but as to beings who are free and responsible, who have to account for their use of this sacred and inestimable gift, and who may forfeit its blessings by subsequent guilt and final impenitence. The present state of our knowledge, or rather ignorance of the philosophy of the human mind, may not supply us with a satisfactory answer for those, who, in a cavilling or sceptical spirit, ask, “How can these things be?” But it is the doctrine of the Scriptures and of the Church, and it is perplexed with fewer difficulties than will be found to press upon every other hypothesis.

Supposing the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination to be founded in truth, the very existence of the visible Church in its present form is a mystery which requires to be solved. No part of its constitution or order harmonises with a scheme based on fatalism, and limiting the grace of Heaven to a narrow section of the human family.

The Sabbath bell, joyously or solemnly, invites all who hear to come to the house of God; and in the name of the “great congregation” the minister of Christ addresses the Deity, saying, “Our Father which art in heaven!”

But Calvinism pronounces that God is not “the lovely Father of all mankind;” and, that while He has instituted the rites of religious worship, and invites all to mingle in its sacred duties, He regards the greater number as “cursed children,” marked out for perdition, “before the morning stars sang together, or ever the sons of God shouted for joy.”

The ministers of the Church administer to all adult converts from paganism, Judaism, or Mahometanism, who make a credible profession, and to all infants, whose sureties engage for their Christian education, the rite of baptism, signifying the remission of past sin, original or actual, and pledging the communication of whatever grace is needful to remedy or assist the weakness of nature in the moral warfare with temptation.

But Calvinism not only abjures this