clusion of an agreement, than this circumstance that those who have been convened were so restricted and confined to

engaged in serious deliberations about their future course of proceedings, no spectators were admitted without leave personally obtained from the President, who would not concede such a favour to any one that was not acknowledged as one of the Contra-Remonstrant party. About that time, however, (on the 60th session,) Sylius, formerly Remonstrant minister of Utrecht, contrived to gain admittance with the throng; but his person being known to some of the members, he was soon discovered, and ordered to retire: The other spectators were also petulantly required at the same time to absent themselves. Such care did these skilful managers employ, to conceal from the cited persons every deliberation of any importance in relation to their affairs! On some of the sessions which were held on the dark winter evenings, they had a regular search instituted, under the vacant benches and tables, for any intruders that might be there concealed. Dr. Carleton, then Bishop of Landaff, was probably unacquainted with these excluding practices on the part of the President and his inland associates, or he would never have addressed the following sentence to the Archbishop of Canterbury: “In some things they erred greatly, for want of knowledge of what was done in the Synod, which seemed strange that of 400 or 500 persons which are spectators, not one would tell them what was done; seeing that might so easily be done, because they keep in a chamber that is hard by the door of the Synod House."

But these common spectators were not the persons to whom Arminius here refers: His observation applies rather to such men as those whom the President mentioned, as exceptions to the general exclusion when the different collegiate suffrages were to be read and considered: Hales says, the pleasure of the President, "with the advice of his assessors," was, that "the judgments should be read, no auditors being admitted, unless it were some few choice ministers of good worth who did here attend about the Synod." Of such worthy characters great numbers attended the public and private meetings of the Synod, and, though not recognized as members, were the familiars of the President, and rendered themselves useful to him in many secret negociations. Of these choice ministers, who were diligently employed in circulating needful intelligence on behalf of Calvinism, the famous Puritan, William Ames, was one, whose services were in high request. He is frequently mentioned in the English Letters from Dort. Hales, on one occasion, writes thus to his employer: "I suppose Mr. Amyes can better inform your honour of this last night's business: He has been much with the Prases, and, I imagine, understands most of his intent." Only a week before, Ames had been suddenly called to the Hague by the Ambassador, when Hales sent a letter by him, and says, " Mr. Amyes will inform your Lordship more largely, peradventure, in some farther circumstances." From these extracts it is evident, that Ames was more in the confidence of the acting men at Dort, than Hales or any other stranger could hope to be. Though an Englishman by birth, he had quitted his country on account of his Puritanic and levelling principles, and had, long before the convening of the Synod, distinguished himself by his virulent writings against Arminianism. He commenced his polemic career by holding oral disputations with the celebrated Grevinchovius at Rotterdam. Having been interrupted in that occupation, he discharged the remainder of his mental burden, by carrying on the controversy in letters, and by publishing his own objections and the replies of his antagonist. Grevinchovius, however, though then in great trouble, would not confide the statement of bis good cause to the dubious fidelity of such a prejudiced adversary; but published another account of these dispntes at Rotterdam, in 1615. Ames replied to his opponent's statement, in a pamphlet eutitled Rescriptio scholastica et brevis &c. Soon after the Conference at the Hague, in 1611, Ames published a book, with this title, Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem, in

received opinions as to bring from home with them the declation which they were to make on every subject in the Synod;

which he tries to confute the answers which the Arminians gave to the Calvinists: This work is frequently quoted, to very good effect, by that consummate Divine, Bishop Womack, in his unanswerable dialogues, called The Result of False Principles. It was in reference to the confutation of several arguments in this work, that, when the Remonstrants were desired by the Lay Commissioners to be as brief as possible in their remarks on the fourth of the FIVE POINTS, they declared, "that their observations on that Point must appear prolix, on account of the many exceptions and subterfuges which the English Divine, Mr. Ames, had adopted."-To shew the influence and reputation which Ames enjoyed with the Synod, it will only be necessary to quote what is related concerning the 147th session, by Balcanqual, who, himself a high Calvinist, palliated the blasphemous and scandalous expressions of Maccovius. He says, "On the 27th of April, progress was made in requiring the votes and opinions of the members on the cause of Maccovius. Many persons wondered how he could possibly be accused of heresy on account of those theses; especially since one of the members for South Holland declared, that they had formerly been seen by Mr. Ames, and had obtained his approbation; and that he was, even now, prepared to defend them." Because such a sound Calvinist as Mr. Ames could swallow and digest the blasphemies of Maccovius, the majority of the members ultimately agreed to receive the whole on the credit of his taste and digestive powers, and suffered the heretical Maccovius to escape with scarcely the semblance of a reprimand.

As early as 1610, Ames had written in favour of Puritanism and against Episcopacy: In the Preface to GREVINCHOVI Dissertatio Theol., to which we have just alluded, that author gives, in Latin, the following account of Ames's production: Speaking of the English Puritans, he says, Hi scilicet soli inter Anglos, &c., "They only, among all the English, are good, simple, and sound men; whom it is easy to know, by their avoiding all evil; and to whom the name of PURITANS has been given, on account of their aversion to theatrical amusements, oaths, balls, games of chance, and sumptuous entertainments. The rest of the nation are famous gamesters, hard drinkers, haters and neglecters of religious duties, experienced customers to the Papists, corrupted with a depraved ambition, profane swearers,-in short, vain, unjust and shameful men, all of them sons of Belial....... ....This false and pretended order of Bishops must therefore be immediately abolished, or we must recall from the bottomless pit the system of the Papists." From this recapitulation it will plainly appear, that Ames was a fit instrument to be engaged in that disgraceful crusade against the gracious doctrines of Arminianism, which were then very imperfectly understood by the foreign Divines, and most grossly misrepresented by those of the United Provinces. To the shame of my native country, it was the order of the day with his Majesty's Ambassador in Holland, that the vilest detractors and the most worthless assailants of these doctrines, whether they happened to be Puritanic or Antinomian levellers, should be enlisted against the Remonstrants and encouraged to demolish their principles. But, like many other forward and busy fellows of his class, Ames sometimes forgot the character of the men in whose company he stood, and indulged his vanity at the expense of modesty and prudence. In one of Hales's letters, it is said: "My Lord Bishop is a little displeased with Mr. Amyes, for putting into his hand Grevinchovius's Book, in the Preface of which there are cited, out of a Writing of Mr. Amyes', certain words very reproachful unto Bishops." Now in the preface to that book which, out of prejudice to Grevinchovius, he so eagerly gave into the hands of the Bishop, are contained the very gross and culpable sentiments which we have just quoted, and which Ames had neither modified nor retracted.

it is therefore necessary that all the members assembled, should, prior to the commencement of any proceedings, take a

This circumstance, as well as many others, must have been very mortifying to the Bishop of Landaff, and to the rest of the English dignitaries. They were compelled to associate with a company of pastors, who, from their received notions of the entire equality of their order, had never been accustomed to manifest the least portion of that laudable courtesy, deference and christian respect to any spiritual superiors, which are among the many beneficial fruits of an episcopal regimen. The British divines must have felt themselves degraded by the unceremonious treatment, which, on more occasions than one, they received from the Presbyterian leaders of the Calvinistic party. But they had been expressly selected for this arduous service, by a man, whose greatest failings were his evident bias towards such pragmatical fellows as Ames and other theological innovators, and his strong attachment to the doctrines of Calvin. This was no less a personage than Dr. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury; concerning whom the author of the Worthies of England long ago remarked, that if Laud had occupied the archi-episcopal chair at the time when Abbot had the supremacy, the lamentable schism which was subsequently effected, would never have occurred. For, the talents and the firmness of Laud, with the sound and holy materials which were then within the church itself, would have been more than equal to the suppression of the evil in its origin; and Abbot might afterwards, in the times of the First Charles, have indulged his native supineness by reclining on a bed of roses unmolested by a single thorn. In that case, the refined, dry and unedifying disquisitions which the Calvinistic clergy under Abbot's rule delivered from the pulpit, would not have paralyzed the salutary and mellowing influences of the Reformation from Popery ;-to his successor would have been bequeathed something more substantial than “a church of shadowy forms," which, as a natural consequence of the unchecked prevalence of Calvinism, actually fell to the lot of Laud, and which he certainly endeavoured according to the best of his judgment to restore to its pristine elevation and purity, though the doctrines recommended by him for that laudable purpose were not of such an evangelical and hallowing character as those of the renowned Arminius ;-and Abbot himself would towards the close of life have been relieved from the trouble of writing in favour of the king's desire that none should preach but in a religious form, while no necessity would have existed for his good brother, the Bishop of Salisbury, to write Animadversions on Thomson's Diatribe concerning the loss of justification and grace, or the Saints' Apostacy. This brother was understood to possess great influence over the Archbishop: Balcanqual, who by degrees acquired the style of a real courtier, says, in a letter to the Ambassador, "This is like to be the difference, not in our college, but in the Synod about the second Article, [the extent of Christ's redemption,] and therefore desire his Grace to send us some good counsel for our carriage in it; for certainly most voices in the Synod will follow the received exposition of the reformed Doctors, confirmed much by my late Lord of Sarisbury his Grace's brother, who was thought to understand the meaning of our confession as well as any man." It is much to be regretted, that King James did not possess a more prudent adviser than Abbot in that great crisis of ecclesiastical affairs. The foolishness of the knighterrantry which sought adventures with theological adversaries in foreign countries, when such achievements tended only to aggrandize a greater enemy at home,-was made very apparent at this Synod. Had the elevated and scriptural doctrines of Arminianism, as taught by the great founder of that system, been allowed only to be placed in fair and honourable competition with the opposite doctrines, the Church of England would neither have had reason to lament that general inattention to christian duties, and that gradual decay of evangelical piety, which were induced by the lukewarm and Calvinistic principles industriously propagated from the pulpit and the press,

solemn oath, not to indulge in prevarication or calumny. By this oath they ought to promise that every thing shall be under Abbot's administration, nor that foolish, and, unhappily too natural recurrence (under such circumstances) to principles as directly contrary as the opposite party could discover.

King James himself might have also derived much personal benefit from this grateful substitution: He would not then have become such an unjust and bigotted partizan as he shewed himself to be in 1611, when he addressed a theological manifesto to the States General, from which the following are extracts: "In the first place, therefore, we are persuaded, that you cannot possibly entertain a suspicion of our being induced by any worldly motives whatever to trouble you, especially with an affair of this description, unless we had been impelled to this service by a zeal for the glory of God, and by the warm desire which we feel, maturely to provide against and to cut off all matter of scandal which hangs over the Reformed Church. We wish you, then, to understand that we cannot sufficiently wonder that you have not only thought fit to call Vorstius (that frightful pestilence in a human form!) to such an elevated station, [as that of Professor of Divinity,] but have also permitted him to dedicate to you an apologetical pamphlet and to publish it under your auspices. This pamphlet undoubtedly contains nothing but an impudent defence of the disgusting and execrable blasphemies which he had vomited forth in his former book. These assertions we are now enabled to make from our individual knowledge: For, since we addressed our last letter to our ambassador, we have with our own eyes, more than once, perused both his publications, although not without the greatest grief and astonishment,-one of them being addressed to Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse, the other to yourselves. You might indeed have been abundantly warned to be in future on your guard against pests of this kind, when the same corrupting seed had been sown among you, some years ago, by ArmiNIUS, that enemy to God, whose disciples and followers within your dominions have already become much too numerous and daring. At the instigation of these men, your subjects have now for some time been divided into parties and factions." But the most amusing part of this communication is thus delivered: "True indeed it is, that we never heard a word about Arminius till after his death, and till all the Reformed Churches in Germany began unanimously to complain of him. But no sooner were we made acquainted with the dissension between the minds of men, which, when Arminius died, he bequeathed to your Republic, than we immediately embraced the opportunity afforded to us by the presence of your Ambassadors extraordinary who were then at our Court,-and at that very instant we declared what appeared to us most conducive to the welfare and safety of your Republic, which, we have no doubt, they faithfully related. What reason is there, we beseech you, for doubting any more about the arrogance of the heretical or rather the atheistical sectaries who reside in your city of Leyden,-when one of them [Bertius] has not only dared lately to publish a blasphemous book on the Apostacy of the Saints, but has also proceeded to such a length of impudence, as to make a present of a copy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by a letter, in which as well as in his book he is not ashamed of lying so roundly, as to affirm that the heresies expressed in his book do not differ from the profession of this our Church of England! What, if Vorstius, that miserable being, choose to deny the blasphemous heresies and proofs of Atheism which he has hitherto published, or to employ equivocations in softening them down! such a course will perhaps have the effect of prolonging his life, and prevent him from being burnt: On this subject I appeal to your christian prudence, and ask, Did there ever exist a heretic more deserving of this species of punishment?" From these extracts it appears, that two years after the death of Arminius, his Majesty had scarcely heard of the Professor's name; and he certainly had not seen one of his noble productions, or we

transacted in the fear of the Lord, and according to a good conscience; the latter of which consists,-in not asserting that should have been favoured with some of his erudite remarks upon it. But he had recently seen two publications by men whom some people classed among the Arminians, but who did not belong to that body; and, from some of the ill understood or disagreeable expressions in these two books, he is induced to pronounce a royal Philippic against them, and against the manes of ARMINIUS THE UNKNOWN! Grotius had been in England the preceding year respecting some affairs of the Dutch East India Company, and had on that occasion fully satisfied his Majesty's mind concerning the good intentions of the States of Holland in regard to the ecclesiastical differences which subsisted in their province, and had given him accurate information about the real situation of all their affairs. He had also several interviews with Bishop Overal, Isaac Casaubon, and other eminent and learned men of the Church of England; all of whom declared, that they would not themselves move one step beyond the bounds, which, in those controversies, the Remonstrants had wisely prescribed to themselves; and that the greatest men of their country held the same opinions as the Remonstrants. Grotius also at that period discovered, that Sir Ralph Winwood, the English Ambassador at the Hague, was in the habit of occasionally transmitting to the Archbishop of Canterbury such exparte accounts of ecclesiastical matters, as were highly prejudicial to the cause of the Remonstrants and favourable to the Calvinists, whose party was warmly patronized by his Grace. When the King had received ample information from Grotius, he was much exasperated at the erroneous statements which had been previously made to him and he was in that state of mind for some time afterwards. But (alas!) this learned monarch was never at one stay with himself; and soon after Grotius had left England, Abbot, who had manifested his personal antipathy to that great nian both before he came and during his abode in this country, persuaded his Majesty to buckle on his theological armour, and presented to him an enemy, worthy of a King, in the person of Vorstius, who was miscalled "a Remonstrant." An occupation more delightful to the mind of James could not have been devised; and he accordingly selected with critical exactitude all the objectionable positions contained in Vorstius's treatise on the Deity, and was much offended with the Dutch government for not instantly complying with his unchristian wishes respecting the punishment of the man who was then reputed an arch-beretic. But their affairs were at that time managed by men of integrity and prudence. Foiled in his attempt to have Vorstius brought to the stake, he was resolved that his kingly pains should not appear to be so trifling as to deserve no reward: And, since he could obtain nothing better, he accounted the heretical book a proper substitute for its author, and was content to have it ignominiously burnt in St. Paul's Church Yard, and at both the Universities. It will however, be seen, in another part of this narrative, that the Synod of Dort gratified his Majesty's desires nearly to the full and not a shadow of doubt is now entertained by any one, that the petty gratification of this monarch's insuperable vanity, in the stipulated condemnation and banishment of Vorstius, was one of the chief inducements held out to him, both by Abbot and the Contra-Remonstrants, to engage in the Synodical business, in opposition to the suggestions of his better understanding. Such petty enterprizes as these, in which James was artfully enlisted, were degrading to the royal character; and the impetuosity with which he prosecuted them, tended greatly, in that new age of thought, to alienate men's minds from the regal dignity and the established institutions, which have their best security in the manifestations of affection and respect on the part of those for whose benefit they are sustained and administered. Flattered as the great pacificator of nations by those that needed his aid, and boasting in private of his successful cunning and policy, which he was pleased to call "king-craft," his majesty imbibed very false ideas both of his own capabilities and of his royal power and prero