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If, then, Cranmer equally believed with Melancthon, that election and justification have each the same CAUSE, it will be clear, that when the 17th Article pronounces the elect to be justified FREELY, it at the same pronounces them to be elected FREELY. If so, it rejects the CAUSATION of human merit, and asserts THAT of free and sovereign grace. The notion of man's foreseen merit being the moving CAUSE of his election "is incompatible with the IDEALITY of election, which exhibits it as being an election of certain individuals out of the great mass of mankind into the pale of the invisible church catholic."

The rationale, or principle of this election of certain individuals, was 66 THE PRESERVATION OF SOUND RELIGION AND ITS WIDEST POSSIBLE DIFFUSION ΤΟ THE VERY ENDS OF THE EARTH." At first, the earliest church and all mankind were commensurate; but after the murderous apostasy of Cain, a church, not intended to exclude others from salvation, but to preserve the knowledge and worship of the true God, through Christ the promised Mediator, was for the first time elected in the person of Seth and his posterity, and eight individuals constituted it at the Flood; but lest, after the dispersion from Babel, all definite knowledge of God and the promised Saviour should be lost, first Abraham and his family, next Isaac and his family, and lastly Jacob and his family, were elected into a new church, ALL the members of which, whether personally benefited by this election, whether personally they abused it, were collectively described, as a people by God's sovereign pleasure, not for their own merits, chosen out of the great mass of corrupt mankind. Their privileges were intended for the advantage of ALL mankind, and from time to time they shed a dim and imperfect light into the gloomy adyta of Paganism. At the advent of the Messiah, a better and a more efficient church was elected, which election is the subject of the Apostle's phraseology, as the parallel election of the Levitical church had been of Israelitic. Its object was not exclusion, but universal inclusion; yet, in actuality, though many were called, but few were chosen; for, first, individuals only out of various nations were elected, although at length individual election swelled out into national election.

Mankind (as the Apostle says) having corrupted themselves, they would not retain God in their knowledge: hence, nothing was morally left, but the choice of a succession of individuals and communities, who should hold up the beacon of divine truth to THE ENTIRE WORLD, out of which they had been elected, that the boundaries of the Church might be perpetually enlarged. Accordingly, they were a chosen generation-a royal priesthood to the entire unbelieving world, whose duty it was to let their light so shine before men, that they, seeing their good works, might glorify their Father, which is in heaven.

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This view of the rationale of election we discover in the venerable Irenæus, in Justin Martyr, in Cyril of Alexandria, in Athanasius, and in Theodoret; some more in outline than others. We may, therefore, reasonably suppose it to have been the received doctrine of the primitive church catholic.

Here we close Mr. Faber's volume; a volume enriched with important materials, breathing that pure spirit of Christianity and moral learning, which enlarges each view of our holy faith, and carries conviction along with it of the truth of each research. It contains not one point undertaken to be proved which is not brought to a satisfactory demonstration; it has submitted the particulars of our belief to the test of the primitive church, nor has one been found wanting; and though the inquiry has been but sparingly conducted on philological grounds, still the apostolic language has been so acutely and critically explained, as to give inspired authority to our received opinions.

From the strongest persuasion of the mischief, the gloom, and even occasionally the infidelity, which have arisen from the comfortless doctrines of rigid Calvinism, and the perplexity and inconsistencies to which semi-Calvinism has given occasion, as well as of the fanaticism which has been engendered by Arminianism, we recommend this work, not only as a masterly production, but as a sure directory to that undefiled faith, which was once delivered to the saints. To the members of our pure national Church it is an invaluable treasure: to those who dissent from it, it is a reprover; by the evidence, which it affords, of the identity in principle and in doctrine of the primitive and Anglican churches. For no allegation has ever been more falsely made, than that, which imputes to us the dark and misguided reveries of the school of Geneva, than that, which inconsequentially claims our 17th article, as a corrobation of the

* St. Paul's language was necessarily peculiar, because the Pharisees, to whose sect he had belonged, to a certain extent admitted the crudities of fatalism, and many converted Jews and Judaising Christians endeavoured to accommodate ancient opinions to the new. Accordingly, it was often requisite that he should use the terms which they employed, for the purpose of exposing the fallacy of their tenets, and confuting their errors; but modern expositors, regardless or ignorant of the history of his phraseology, have deduced from it their own distorted doctrines of election and predestination, which are incompatible with the glory and mercy of God. Thus, from their sectarian title came the ἀφωρισμένοι, from D'or the τελειοὶφωτιζόμενοι, and μεμνημενοι, with many more common to the Pagan mysteries, which occur in the New Testament, or the pages of the Fathers. Of the same nature are ἐκλογὴ and προορισμος, already discussed, which they concealed under 4 cloud of traditions and speculations from their scriptural import,

assertion. For the doctrine of præterition or reprobation is so derogatory and so revolting from every lofty notion, which we should entertain of the pure and beneficent nature of God, and is so intrinsically horrible, that we can even scarcely conceive any but those darker ages, in which the Deity was comprehended through his terrors, rather than through his acts of grace, to have indulged it. Nor are the correlative doctrines of election and predestination, propounded by Augustine and Calvin, less subversive of active virtue, less fraught with harm in their structure, in their tendency, and in their most presumptuous restrictions. In fact, we can scarcely perceive any essential difference between them and the fatalism of the heathen porch :-the doctrine is virtually the same ;-for the only difference consists in its accommodation to different religions. That such a daring system should ever have been advocated by men, in other points, rightly comprehending the sacred page, by men capable of critical research and biblical collations, is one of those extraordinary problems, which the human mind in its waywardness sometimes propounds, but which the human mind itself cannot solve.

Still more extraordinary is the not uncommon attempt, which we have noticed, to append these hariolations (if we may so call them) to our Church, the very genius of whose liturgical services breathes indefectible mercy and universal redemption. Hallowed and sanctioned by remote antiquity, they retrace through the changes of worldly events, and the persecutions of Christianity, their unsullied origin to that primitive church, founded by apostles, of which Christ is the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building groweth together into a temple of the Father. Having such a foundation, their tenets are those of the first churches; like them, they believe in the words of Cyril of Jerusalem, and indeed of our Saviour himself; -the elect to be the called out of an ungodly world, the predestinated to be those thus made capable, by the mediation of Christ and his ordinances in the visible church of eternal salvation; --but they nowhere assert that these elect, these predestinated, cannot lapse from the grace given; and it is in this definition that they include the WHOLE bulk of mankind, who are willing to accept the proffered redemption. Knowing God's mercy to be over all his works, they reject the notion of an irreversible decree, which would degrade the Omnipotent to mere Fate, and involve the uniform and beautiful system, which they support and advocate, in a labyrinth of senseless contradictions. Shutting this door of self-confident Pharisaism, which stultifies every idea of making our calling and election sure, and depicts the creature (whether he be one of the segregated few, or whether he be a vessel of wrath, doomed to destruction,) as the mere puppet of a blind necessity, the Church of England vindicates the ways of God to man, and

declares that, by watchful mercy, his providential guardianship and invitations to mankind never slumber nor sleep.

Such are the opinions, which Mr. Faber verifies by demonstration; to whose work we cannot pay higher respect than by recommending it to all; to every member of our church, that he may perceive the stability of the hope that is within him, and the authenticity of his church, to others, that they may amend their errors of judgment, that they may at least cease from misrepresenting and impugning our articles of faith, even if they refuse with us to become one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ the righteous.

ART. VII.-1. An Epitome of the History of the American Episcopal Church. By the Rev. HENRY CASWALL. Lexington, Kentucky, 1836. 12mo.

2. Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States of America. By FRANCIS L. HAWKS, D.D. Rector of St. Thomas's Church, New York. Vol. I. New York, 1836. 8vo.

3. Journal of the Proceedings of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in a general Convention held in the city of Philadelphia, from August 18th, to September the 1st inclusive, 1835. New York, 1835. 8vo.

4. Journal of the Fifty-third Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the state of New Jersey, held May 25th and 26th, 1836. Burlington, 1836. 8vo.

5. An Apology for conforming to the Protestant Episcopal Church, contained in a series of Letters, addressed to the Right Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, D.D. Bishop of the diocese of New York. By THOMAS S. BRITTAN. Second Edition. New York, 1833. 12mo.

6. Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country; with Reasons for preferring Episcopacy. By the Rev. CALVIN COLTON. New York, 1836. 12mo.

THE Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is a daughter (if we may be permitted to use the term) of the church of England. The late justly revered Bishop White, of Philadelphia, was consecrated by Archbishop Moore, at Lambeth, in the year 1787, and all the succeeding bishops have been consecrated by him, so that he may be truly considered as the father of the Anglo-American Episcopate. As much attention has been directed towards this interesting portion of the church, from the recent visits of some of her bishops and clergy to this country, chiefly for the purpose of recovering

their health, which had been impaired by labours 'most abundant;' it will not, we trust, be deemed foreign from the plan of our periodical if we devote a few pages to a sketch of the history and prospects of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. We have received many recommendations, from those who have hailed the announcement of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND QUARTERLY, to prosecute an inquiry into the state of religion in America. To these recommendations we reply, that we hope to be able to do so, if not very frequently, at least sufficiently often to satisfy the wishes thus expressed. We now proceed to give a concise history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, which is at present so little known in this country.

For the materials of this sketch we are principally indebted to the publication of the Rev. Henry Caswall, (nephew of the late Bishop of Salisbury,) who is at this time discharging the important duties of professor of Hebrew literature in the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, at Lexington, Kentucky.

No settlement was permanently established in those parts of America, which had been visited by Englishmen, previously to the reign of James I. On the 26th of April, 1607, two years before the settlement of Canada by the French, seven years before the founding of New York by the Dutch, and thirteen years before the landing of the Puritans at Plymouth, a small band of colonists disembarked on the coast denominated, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, Virginia. They brought with them the refined habits of the higher orders of English society; they were members of the church established in the mother country, and they were accompanied in their adventurous enterprise by an exemplary clergyman, (the Rev. Mr. Hunt,) whom they venerated as a father, and loved as a friend. Religious considerations had, in a great measure, conduced to their voluntary expatriation. They had been required by their sovereign to provide for the preaching of the gospel among themselves and the neighbouring Indians; and they had been taught to regard their undertaking as a work, which, by the providence of God, might tend 'to the glory of his divine majesty,' and 'the propagating of the christian religion.' The piety of the emigrants, stimulated by the exhortations of their pastor, led to the almost immediate erection of an humble building, dedicated to the service of the Almighty. On the 14th of May, within three weeks after their arrival, the colonists partook of the Lord's Supper and Virginia commenced its career of civilisation with the most impressive solemnity of the christian church. Upon a peninsula which projects from the northern shore of James river, may still be seen the ruins of the first Episcopal place of worship in North America; and this, with its surrounding burial ground, is now almost the only memorial of Jamestown.

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