manly integrity above the mean suggestions of temporizing policy, and look only to the substantial and permanent interests of the Church, which are those of truth and charity, of freedom in alliance with order, of Christianity in its most ennobling form, and of the public welfare of the British Empire.

If the spirit of rigid Calvinism, under any plausible disguise, should be widely diffused through the Anglican Church, we need no prophetic mind to announce, that it will lead to consequences fatal to her peace and liberty, introducing a spiritual despotism whose power will be felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, overawing, as in the days of John Knox, the majesty of princes, and spreading its morbid gloom to the sequestered cottage of the peasant, in the remotest regions and most unfrequented provinces.

History proves, that the men who are deeply imbued with this spirit, merge all other interests in their devoted zeal to its propagation.

Those of that party who, like Mr. Noel, think “our venerable Church” means no more than “our venerable selves,” will be ready to betray her into the hands of her adversaries, whensoever they may be deemed strong enough to carry her outworks, and to supplant the orthodox clergyman by the Calvinistic minister;—while those who reverence the Apostolical succession, or the general order of the Church, will form within our pale an intolerant party, intriguing for dominion, restless and oppressive, never to be satisfied until they have crushed or excluded all who have dared to profess their rejection of the Calvinistic theology.

In the spirit already exemplified by the Pastoral Aid Society, for the detection of whose sectarian principles we are indebted to the Christian courage of Dr. Molesworth, they will throw obstacles in the way of candidates for ordination or parochial cures, if they come not up to the doctrinal standard of their triers: the episcopal functions will be usurped or controlled by the ruthless zeal of an ecclesiastical faction; the Church societies for the extension of Christian knowledge and piety will lose their catholic character, dwindling into ignoble channels for spreading abroad the bigotry of an exclusive school; and gone for ever will be those beautiful charities, and that liberal regard to the just exercise of Christian and clerical freedom, which have been recently elicited, and expressed with deliberate solemnity, in the correspondence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, with the reverend Canon Wodehouse, on the subject of subscription.

The author of this tract has aimed at conciseness, so far as the nature of the argument would allow, not employing “those arts by which a big book is made.” But if the smallness of the work does not seem to accord with the magnitude of the subject, it is not to be inferred that the sentiments have been hastily formed or rashly vindicated. For many years they have been taking deep root in the mind of the writer; nor would he have engaged in the ministry of the Church, but on the conviction, after serious inquiry, that her faith was primitive and not Calvinistic.

He has spared no “plainness of speech,” in his exposure of dangerous error, but from principle and feeling he has abstained from the malice of personal vituperation. His warfare is with pernicious opinions, not with those who hold them, many of whom are impressed with the religious persuasion, that what they have believed they have received from divine teaching, and that in upholding their creed they glorify God.

Such divine teaching as the Calvinist claims, and which, if it means any thing, amounts to plenary inspiration, the writer does not suppose to have superintended his own thoughts while engaged in the composition of these pages. He would deem it unwarrantable presumption to look for such miraculous effusion of the Spirit in the ordinary condition of the Church. But he confidently believes, that, to those who seek it in humble faith, such grace is given as may purify the dispositions of the heart, and thus guard it from all predilection for error and all prejudice against the truth. Entertaining these views of the office of the Holy Spirit under the evangelical dispensation, the writer humbly commits this work, not executed without dependence on his preventing grace, to Him who is the eternal source and the faithful patron of truth; uniting in the prayer of this beautiful collect, with all those, who, whatsoever their doctrinal views of religion, seek for truth as the richest of treasures.

“O Lord, from whom all good things do come; grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration, we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same, through our Lord Jesus Christ.   Amen.”

CONTENTS.

General remarks

Particular objections

I. Calvinism impugns the moral character of the Deity

II. Calvinism is not to be reconciled with the moral responsibility of man

III. Calvinism is opposed to the constitution and the purposes of a visible Church

IV. Calvinism is productive of positively injurious effects, on individual character and on social happiness

V. Calvinism is not the doctrine of Scripture, nor of the Anglican Church

VI. Calvinism has led to the corruption of Christian doctrine, that the Scriptures may be accommodated to extreme views of the divine decrees

Appendix

ON CALVINISM.

PART I.

GENERAL REMARKS.

To St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Africa, belongs the equivocal distinction of having originated in the Christian Church a controversy respecting the Divine decrees, a controversy which dates its origin from the fifth century, and which, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years, exhibits no symptoms of approaching to its end. In the Roman Communion, it was the source of those bitter animosities, which reciprocally exasperated the Jesuits and Jansenists. The Protestant Churches, in the early days of the Reformation, were disturbed by the agitation of this perplexed and perilous subject. And when Calvin appeared as the vindicator of the Divine sovereignty in predetermining the fates of men, he only introduced to the Churches of the Reformation a doctrine which had been transmitted from earlier