genuously use ambiguous language, and assert that which cannot cohere with the fundamental point of their theory; for as God's Spirit exclusively strives with the elect to produce that will, those, with whom he strives not, cannot, according to their own principles, by any possibility be endowed with it. Calvin openly and fearlessly affirms, that every ordinance designedly contributes to their eternal ruin; and, however he may disguise the truth from himself, the opinions which the Semi-Calvinist avows naturally lead us back to the same blasphemous doctrine. His association of universal redemption with particular election, which, as a matter of course, must imply particular præterition or reprobation, is likewise a gross mockery, pulling down with one hand that which the other has built up, and retreating to the harsh exclusiveness of the system which it has affected to modify.

On Milner's recommendation of prayer for instruction in those things which do not appear to be clear, Mr. Faber has made some excellent remarks, in which he shows, that the promised illumination by prayer is moral, not intellectual, as supposed by Augustine, Mr. Milner, and many others; for, if it were the latter, it would become nothing more nor less than personal infallibility. Interpretations of Scripture so vouchsafed would necessarily be infallibly accurate, and every sectagogue so imploring and so receiving them, would in his expositions be divinely removed from error; consequently, however different might be the notions of people thus favoured, still, with all their discrepancies and contradictions, they would be infallible. We might thus with equal reason impugn an inspired apostle as a Calvinist in his hermeneutics; nor can it be alleged that this argument is overstrained, for not twenty years ago these pretensions to inspiration and illumination were openly asserted from the pulpits of Calvinistic preachers. Mr. Faber thus supposes two persons-for instance, Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley —to seek intellectual illumination in prayer, the one to arise from his devotions a decided Calvinist, the other a stedfast Arminian; shall we call their different interpretations the genuine dictates of the Spirit? or rather, the effects of a strong imagination?-since Mr. Whitfield "was TAUGHT OF GOD the doctrine "of election, as expounded by Augustine and Calvin, while Mr. "Wesley HAD AN IMMEDIATE CALL FROM GOD to publish to the "whole world, that this identical doctrine of election which they expounded is totally false and highly injurious to Christ." Lord Herbert of Cherbury, when about to publish his infidel work, prayed in the same way for a divine sign, and pretended to receive it; and Socinus himself claimed God's instructions and assistance; therefore, "when these answers are all brought together, the "result will be, that at different times, and through the instru"mentality of different individuals, God has unerringly decided

66

"in favour of Calvinism and of Arminianism, of Calvinism and 66 of Semi-Calvinism, of Socinianism and of Infidelity." The error arises from expecting intellectual instead of moral illumination.

Now, the first Father, in whose writings the doctrines asserted by Calvin are found, is Augustine, and they clearly contain the materials of the five points; but, when Augustine promulgated these speculations, it was not simply objected to them that they were dangerous, but that they were unknown, and contrary to the primitive opinions of the church. To screen himself from the imputation of novelty, he resorted to the authorities of Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Ambrose; but had their testimony been confirmatory of his doctrines, nothing, on account of the ages in which they respectively lived, could thence be proved respecting the rule of faith in the primitive Church. For Cyprian, the eldest of the three, lived no less than a century and half after the death of St. John, and the others flourished in the latter part of the fourth century. But these Fathers maintained not a corresponding doctrine: Cyprian prayed that infidels might be converted, and believers persevere unto the end; Gregory Nazianzen, exhorting his flock to confess the Trinity in unity, prayed, that he, who first gave them to believe the doctrine, would also give them to confess it; Ambrose urged, that when a man became a Christian, he might, without denying the good pleasure of God, allege fairly his own good pleasure in so doing, because the will of man is prepared by God, and Christ calls him whom he pities. Yet on such passages has Augustine appealed to these Fathers for support. Augustine's doctrine was the ABSOLUTE and IRREVOCABLE election of certain individuals to eternal salvation;-that of Ambrose, the CONDITIONAL election of the Gentiles into the pale of the visible Church,-conditional, because out of the great mass of the Gentiles God elected certain individuals into it, FROM FORESEEING the future merits and fitness of those individuals; therefore, his epithets, "an elect race, a "royal priesthood, a holy nation, an adopted people, belong in "common to ALL the members of the visible church catholic." Although nothing can be more distinct than the ideas of Augustine and Ambrose, Calvin continues to cite the latter as an authority, and glances at the others in the indefinite words, "patrum auctoritate;" notwithstanding Hilary, bishop of Arles, avowed to Augustine, that whilst in other matters the church steadily admired him, she disapproved of his novel doctrine of election and reprobation.

Mr. Milner has, however, in his Ecclesiastical History, claimed for Augustine the sanction of Clemens of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch-the one a fellow-labourer with St. Paul, the other a disciple of St. John. But the passages which he has cited from the first are quite irrelevant, and have no connexion with election

and predestination in their doctrinal development; the object of the first epistle of Clemens to the Corinthians relates not to election, but to the correction of certain disorders in that church; and although the epistle has been divided into sixty sections, the terms elect or election only incidentally occur eight times, if we omit two, which are in the nature of quotations. And it may be added, that Mr. Milner has founded his reasoning on a mistranslation. The superscription of the epistle proves, that Clemens included the WHOLE church of Corinth under the term Elect, and the passage, which Mr. Milner has adduced in a mutilated form, evinces that he considered election to be an adoption of "Christians through Christ to be a peculiar people, as the "Israelites were adopted collectively to be a peculiar people "under the old dispensation."

With respect to Ignatius, he is equally incorrect: the evidence produced from him is selected from the superscription of his epistle to the Ephesians, although that of the epistle to the Trallians might have been advanced with equal cogency. In these the word predestinate only occurs once, and the word elect twice, and nowhere else throughout his seven epistles; and we have abundant proof from his phraseology, that his sentiments about election corresponded to those of Clemens. Here likewise Mr. Milner's translation is very faulty. The substance of this Father's doctrine, as we may collect it from his epistles, was, an election of ALL the individuals, who constituted any par"ticular church, into the pale of Christ's church catholic; with an "intention on God's part, that through a permanence in holiness,

66

66

they might ALL attain to glory; but with a possibility, through "their own perverseness, that some might fall away and perish."

But this theory engendered the difficulty of solving, how these doctrines totally vanished in the second century: this he attempts by the assertion, that with Justin Martyr philosophy crept into the church, and a Pelagianizing scheme of self-determining freewill gradually usurped the place of the ancient system. If then Justin, who only thirty years after the death of St. John was catechetically instructed in the truths of the gospel, never admitted the doctrine of election, as explained by Augustine and Calvin, we may assume, that his ecclesiastical predecessors in like manner did not admit it: for it is inferrible, that his faith must have been derived through his teachers from the inspired and explanatory instructions of the apostles; and we cannot imagine one, who had received his Christianity from the contemporaries and disciples of St. John, to have been ignorant of such an interpretation of the scriptural term, if that interpretation had prevailed in the church. But Justin did own and assert the doctrine in the sense in which it was owned and asserted by Clemens and Ignatius; maintaining, that God had elected us, that he has called ALL of us (μãç dè ãñavτaç) by that voice, with

which he called Abraham, out of every nation through Christ, 66 as the Israelites had been called and chosen out of all nations "to be God's elect and peculiar and privileged people."

The free-will, which Justin and the early Fathers admitted into their theology, in no way militated against the other doctrines which they proposed in their writings. Justin taught, that Christians are not impelled by a fatal necessity, which exempts them from all moral responsibility, but are endowed with a "self-determining power of free-will, so that no irresist"ible, and therefore morally exonerating, constraint is laid upon "their choice of this action or of that action; for if all things "happened according to fate, our freedom of action would forth"with be destroyed. Thus, if it were fated that this man should "be good and that man bad, there would be no room either for "approbation or censure: 'but we see' the same individual passing "from one set of actions to their contraries. Now, if it were "fated that he should be, irrecoverably and constrainedly, either "bad or good, he would plainly be incapable of these frequent "transitions. Consequently, we must either say, that fate, as the cause of bad, acts contrary to itself, or we must adopt the opinion, that there are no such things as virtue and vice ;-an opinion, which, as the true word shows, is the height of impiety." Such is Justin's philosophy, of which Milner complains. The great work of Irenæus also was directed against the various descriptions of Gnostics, who believed a sort of fatalism, which exonerated even the most depraved from all moral and religious responsibility: it is therefore scarcely likely that he could have been an abettor of the doctrine of necessity. Accordingly, his reasoning exactly concurs with that of Justin, and the words which he employs are very nearly the same. He argues, that man being endowed with reason, and of course with free-will, is himself the cause to himself of what he becomes; that therefore he will be justly condemned, if, having been created with the faculty of reason, by living unreasonably he has opposed the justice of God;-that having his own power of self-determination, he may submit to God's behests voluntarily, and not on the part of God constrainedly;-that the light, with a mighty necessity, will subject no one to itself; nor does God compel him who is unwilling to abide in holiness: therefore, that those who have departed from this paternal light, and transgressed the law of liberty, have departed by their own fault. On this point Augustine himself is equally strong, because in his work against Pelagius, it was necessary that he should avoid the Manichæan error of fatalism; but to reconcile this with his scheme of predestination is an impossibility. Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Cyprian, Tertullian, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and others, severally add their testimonies to the same effect.

From these facts it is clear, that nothing parallel to Arminian

66

ism, to Nationalism, or to Calvinism, "was known to the earliest "church catholic, which conversed either with the apostles or "with the disciples of the apostles, and which by them personally "was instructed in the real articles of the christian faith." It also follows, that a doctrine so novel with respect to the early christian times, and so repugnant to the whole scope of the christian system, must be the mere unauthorized opinion of a certain individual or individuals. For, whether we examine Irenæus in Gaul, Justin in Asia, Athenagoras in Athens, Tatian in Assyria, Theophilus in Antioch, Clemens in Alexandria, or Tertullian in África, we shall observe, that the christian world at these periods knew nothing at all of Augustinian or Calvinistic election; whereas, had it existed in the earliest church on the avowed, "and then altogether undeniable, inculcation of the "inspired apostles, it never could have so strangely expired, in "the course of the second century, without a vestige of controversy, without a shadow of animadversion." As Mr. Faber well remarks, such a departure from the primitive faith would have been emblazoned in the catalogue of ancient heresies. Thus, when a difference of opinion arose in the Protestant Belgic churches, which were most strictly Calvinistic, it appeared in the writings of the remonstrants, who have since been called Arminians, and a controversy ensued, which occasioned the Synod of Dort; and when, under the auspices of Archbishop Laud, an opposition arose to the peculiarities of the school of Geneva, Calvinism did not expire without a struggle, and that struggle has continued to the present day. Can it then be supposed, that the case would have been different, if these tenets had existed and decayed in the primitive church till their revival by Augustine? Can we imagine, that the Synod, which Augustine's promulgation of them caused, would not have had a counterpart at the time, when they are hypothetically said to have begun to become dormant? The nature of the human mind leads us to expect such an analogy, and common sense teaches us to argue from the nonexistence of it to the nonexistence of the fact. These arguments apply with equal force to Arminianism and Nationalism. Nor is there the slightest account of a controversy on the subject of their rival claims, which might have been expected, had they existed.

These matters being settled, an important inquiry suggests itself: "whether the primitive opinion will naturally and easily "accord with the language of Scripture, both under the law and "under the gospel?" which obviously gives rise to another; "whether the doctrine of the reformed church of England be the "doctrine of the primitive church, and of holy Scripture." On the mathematical plan of allowing the theorem to precede the demonstration for the benefit of the reader, Mr. Faber defines the doctrine of election among the primitive Christians, anterior to