I hope, will not escape your own observation, if you will allow yourselves to be moved only a little from the judgment which you have formed of your own case, and from the degree of feeling with which it is regarded.—I have shewn, that some error lurks in the end which you have in view: Let us now come to the act itself.

"(2.) It is in the act that you commence the clearing of yourselves. Such a privilege is denied to no man, provided a duc regard be observed concerning the cause, the method, the place, and the time. But, brethren, why do you attempt to clear yourselves before me? For I neither hear any of those accusations against you; and if I should hear them, I would not rashly receive them. Why will you do it before the public? For you know it frequently happens, that they who produce apologies for themselves before they have been accused, either betray themselves, or bring down far more suspicions upon themselves, than they can afterwards readily efface. You also know, that the public are seldom just judges; and that they are scarcely ever a legitimate tribunal, because evil prevails so much among them and holds the ascendancy. To these judges, therefore, you now appeal, who are neither accustomed to form a judgment, nor to obtain correct information: Indeed, the public are [in this case] neither judges nor witnesses. But such a course of proceeding is never advantageous to a private cause, and it is generally injurious to a public one, in several respects. You will probably ask, Who then must they be? To whom shall we appeal as judges and as witnesses?" Your own Preface will give you a reply, instead of me. For, when you there announce, • that you have now found a place of tranquillity,' (I think, you will recognize your own expressions,) you plainly testify two things: (i.) If you have found a place of tranquillity, you will act with great prudence by not removing when you can remain at rest.—(ii.) In that place in which you have received the rites of hospitality, and a peaceful station, you ought to obtain a judgment about your doctrine and faith, if you wish it to be legitimately known and approved. You reside in the midst of a church which is well furnished with servants of God, whose piety, erudition, and fraternal regard to the members of Christ, are fully known to good men.* It is indeed an illegitimate course, to neglect those among whom you reside, and to appeal separately or in common

This excellent character of the ministers of Amsterdam, included that of Arminius, who was generally considered the chief of them in every respect: It also proves the high estimation in which Junius held Arminius, even after the papers which had passed between them.

to another church, to the public at large, to this University, or to me who am a feeble member of Christ in them. This order [which I have now pointed out] is one which is pious, just, and legitimate, and pertains to peace and edification: By it, you ought in the first place to have a modest regard to yourselves; and by it, I, an infirm brother, am bound in fraternal duty to recal my erring brethren, but not to act precipitately, or to rush into any cognizance of the cause which may be offered in this way, beyond what is equitable, good, and according to order. Until you shall have adopted that course, I admonish, exhort, request, and intreat you, by the most sacred name of Christ, to appeal neither to me, to any other persons, nor to the public itself. For by this preposterous method, if it may be so styled, you do not, as you suppose, divest yourselves of envy, or crime, if any can attach to you; but, on the contrary, you burden with suspicions and prejudices your cause, to which, I religiously declare before God, I bear no prejudice whatever. Let those persons deliver their judgment, among whom you sojourn, and whom you do not deny to be your brethren: If on this point they do not give you satisfaction, or you do not give them, it will then be competent for you to institute a new mode of proceeding according to legitimate order; and no good man will refuse you the exercise of such privilege. But until you have made this attempt [with those among whom you sojourn], the adoption of any other course will be really useless to yourselves and prejudicial to the church. But neither I, my colleagues, nor other considerate men, will ever arrive at such a height of imprudence, as to remove the cognizance of this affair out of the hands of those to whom in due order it belongs, or to take the precedence of them in hearing the cause. So much in reference to doctrine.

"II. I now come to the accusation, which you employ against the English churches, according to your writing. But, my beloved brethren, I affectionately request you to bear it with an equal mind, if I admonish you of a few things in this your accusation, which I view, I think, in a proper light. First, What necessity is there for you to accuse them? You have departed out of the country, and have passed into another forum, if I may use the expression. The reasons for your departure no one is solicitous to know, or vexes you on that account. If I grant, that injustice has been done to you in England, (it being no part of my business to affirm or deny this circumstance, because I have no knowledge of it,) yet that injustice ceased to follow you as soon as you departed. What is it that compels you to be thus

disquieted, and to take upon yourselves the burden of accusations? Since you are now placed beyond the reach of their darts, why do you not keep at peace? Why do you not rather conceal the past injustice? Why do you not bear it in silence and hope, (if there be any yet to be endured,) rather than arouse one that is at rest? It is evidently the act of a Christian, to endure Of a prudent man, to refrain from disturbing an evil which is quietly deposited,-not to employ a more vulgar phrase: And of an impotent man, to do exactly the contrary. For what purpose, I beseech you, is all this done? Is it to clear yourselves? But, in this country, there is no one to invent these accusations afresh, or again to upbraid you with them : What benefit then is there in clearing yourselves? Is it, that you may give utterance to reports, equal to those of which you complain? This, however, would not be a christian act; and I cannot indulge the supposition, that you would be guilty of it. Is it, that you may effect their reformation? This is indeed a holy desire: Yet, just reflect within yourselves, if you were not able to do this when you were with them, what effect can you produce when absent? But, in the first place, consider the methods by which you enter on this plan,—that is, by repeating accusations before me and others, addressing them to the public, in the theatre of the Church, in the circus of the world. Ah! my beloved brethren! was it ever heard from the mouth of man, that by this mode any private individual, (to say nothing about a great community,) was ever amended? Then observe, I beseech you, the persons before whom these proceedings are instituted. I will now speak of myself, in whose custody it was your wish to deposit one of your pamphlets. I am ignorant of the character in which you appeal to me in this your pamphlet,— whether in that of a Mediator, of a Proctor to receive depositions, or in that of a Judge.-For if you address yourselves to me as a Mediator, ought you not to have poured your complaints [privately] into my bosom, rather than to have exposed them abroad to the public, (a course which seems intended to procure infamy,) and thus [pulsari typis impressionis vestra] to have impressed them, by the types of your edition, on the church of Christ, on innumerable souls, who are ignorant and weak, and not your own countrymen? It is quite evident, that the persons concerning whom you complain, will be still further exasperated by such a stinging production.-If I am addressed as a Proctor to receive depositions, what right should I have to usurp such an office? For I have legitimately no authority, either from God, the Church, the Magistrates, or from both the parties concerned, to

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take cognizance of this matter. Nor would I easily be induced to accept of such authority, were it offered to me ;—so conscious am I of my own insignificance! For, who or what am I? Or by what means shall I obtain information, respecting each of those things which are necessary for forming a just knowledge about you or them? Yet a just method of taking cognizance requires such correct information. If I were to do otherwise, I should incur the censure of the prudent Seneca, who says, "The 'man that passes judgment when only one of the parties has been heard, though the judgment which he forms may be perfectly right, is yet an unjust person.' You are not a little deceived, beloved brethren, in this the judgment which you have formed; for you, in some measure, inflict an injury on me, upon me as a busy-body in other men's matters, or when you when you call think I would become one, after taking upon myself the province of Proctor, or that of Judge, which is still more invidious and disagreeable. Reflect, therefore, brethren, that the same answer which I give, concerning myself, will be returned by the other brethren belonging to the different Churches and Universities in every part of the world. No wise man will rashly descend into that arena, or will ascend into that tribunal. Something indeed might be said concerning your Faith or Doctrine, if you disclosed it, and the matter were conducted in an orderly method: But no man in his senses, I can assure you, will on this condition take upon himself the burden of forming a judgment about the accusations which you prefer against your countrymen, and about the transactions which have taken place on one side or the other. Weigh well, by the Immortal God, the consequences of such a procedure on my part. For what benefit would accrue, if it were commenced according to your wishes? It would undoubtedly neither be advantageous to you, to those whom you accuse, to the people among whom you now sojourn, nor to the church of God. But, on the contrary, what persons are there to whose injury it would not operate ?-Such a course would more highly inflame yourselves; because contentions usually become hotter the more they are moved.—It would alienate still further those who, you pretend, are already too unjustly alienated from you: For that is not the way to communicate instruction and information, or to conciliate.-The good people, whose hospitality you now so advantageously enjoy,* would by this means be either

* Every benevolent mind must sympathize with those who were compelled, for conscience sake, to leave their native country and all its delights. Those Puritans, however, who afterwards became the founders of Independency, probably suffered less than any of the parties that successively became the objects of persecution in Eng

separated from you, or would be divided among themselves into various parties. And their kind entertainment of you has not merited at your hands this unfriendly office.-It would bring into the whole Church still more grievous incendiary matter, and would disperse it through all the joints and members-which may God avert !-But it would render the imprudent man, who had usurped these parts of authority, the butt of slanderers, while all good men would unite to pity his attempts and your expectations. I add this, in the last place, (and by this you may perceive in how sincere and fraternal a manner I act towards you,) though I might be both able and willing to give sentence legitimately concerning your Faith which you disclose, and concerning the fact of Accusation which you direct against your own

land. They received secret, and some of them avowed, support from those noblemen, and men in official stations, who afterwards, in their own persons or in those of their successors, joined the party of the Parliament against the Monarch, to their subsequent great injury. No man of generous feelings will stop to enquire what opinions, religious or political, these banished men professed; but he will rejoice, that, as they held them conscientiously, they obtained patronage for themselves in quarters in which it was frequently least to be expected. How extensive and efficient this patronage was, we have since learned, and are still learning, from the numerous and instructive pieces of auto-biography which have been published from the family-papers of various eminent individuals. This fact, and others of a similar kind, have taught politicians at length, that when they employ persecution in the suppression of religious sentiments, they excite such powerful sympathies, for the oppressed maintainers of those sentiments, as would otherwise in many cases have remained latent.

Had the following paragraph been written by an Arminian, I should have been ashamed for him; But it is the warm effusion of a Presbyterian Calvinist, disclosing some unpleasant secrets concerning his brethren of the Independent persuasion, who, in their celebrated “APOLOGETICAL NARRATION, humbly submitted to the Honourable House of Parliament," in 1643, had given a piteous description of the sufferings of their members for righteousness sake: To this account a reply was published in 1644, by the notorious Thomas EDWARDS, entitled, "ANTAPOLOGIA, or a full Answer to the Apologetical Narration," &c., who says: "How dare you affirm, that for your consciences you were deprived at once of whatever was dear to you? Were not your wives, children, estates, friends, and lives dear to you? Had you not all these with you, and did you not in the Netherlands live in the best places, in much plenty, ease and pomp? What great deprivation is this of whatever is dear, for men to take their own times, and to go in summer, with knights, ladies, and gentlewomen, with all necessaries, into Holland, and there to take choice of all the land, and with wives, children, friends, and acquaintance, free from the fears and possibilities of vexation from the spiritual courts and prisons, to enjoy all plenty and freedom as you did? Many would have been glad, and still would be, to be so exiled into Holland, and to be able to spend there two or three hundred pounds per annum."

This was very different treatment to that which the English Arminians afterwards received, though on the point of persecution even Laud himself was the least culpable of all his predecessors, and exercised it the shortest time; while the other Arminians, his celebrated contemporaries, among whom Hales and Chillingworth hold high rank, were decidedly opposed to restrictions on conscience, long before their own was rudely invaded by their usurping Calvinistic countrymen.