the name of Doctrinal Calvinifm*; he may, when his hand is in, call Baronius a Proteftant, or affirm Calvin himfelf to have been an Arminian. It was chiefly from this book of Luther's, on the Servitude of the Will, that thofe fix pofitions against freeagency were picked out, which twenty years afterwards, made fuch a bustle in the council of Trent, and were agitated with fo much heat and divifion by the infallible Church: fome fiding with Luther, and declaring that he had afferted no more than Auftin had done before him; others anathematifing the pofitions, as the very quinteffence of herefy, and of moft dangerous confequence to the Catholic faith. The latter party carried their point: and accordingly the fourth, fifth, and fixth canons, paffed in the fixth feffion of that infamous council, are directly pointed against the decifions of Luther respecting the inability of man's will.

The followers of Luther and Calvin, fince the deaths of thofe great reformers (for I cannot find that they did it before), have, if you please, not only differed, but fallen out, with relation to fome (and only fome) of the points you fpeak of: but not those reformers themselves. Had they agreed as well about the nature of the Lord's Supper, as they did about predeftination, juftification, and perfeverance; the two denominations of Lutherans and Calvinifts, had been, in fact, one and the fame; fo far, at least, as matters of doctrine are concerned.

Page 70, you put this question to the author of Pietas; "What pretence have you to call your own notions the principles of the reformation?" Because they are fo. Open the liturgy where you will, Cal

*See Hevlin's Life of Laud, p. 32.

+ Of forty-two propofitions of Luther, condemned by the Pope, A. D. 1521, this is the 37th," Free-will, after fin, is a thing De Solo Titulo: and while it doth what in it is, it finneth mortally." Strype's Eccl. Mem. v. i. 39.

See Tindal, v. 15. 273.

vinilm

vinifm ftares you in the face. And can the doctrines of grace enter into the very bafis of a reformed Church, yet not be principles of the reformation? You afk likewife, why he calls "the contrary opinions, the avowed tenets of the Church of Rome?" Because the very letter of Scripture bids us render to all their dues. The Arminian tenets belong to the Church of Rome. Her's they are, and to her they fhould be returned. From her they came, and to her they lead. It matters not, that there were a few fuch perfons, as Marinier, De Vega, and Catanea, in the council of Trent; nor that there are ftill fome individuals within the Romih pale (the Janfenifts, for inftance), who believed the doctrines of predeftination and invincible grace, as taught by St. Paul and St. Austin; and, from thefe, by Calvin and the reformed Churches.

Quid te exempta juvat fpinis de pluribus una?

The point is, how goes the ftream? quite in the contrary channel. Witnefs the Tridentine decifions, and the more recent conftitution Unigenitus. Let a man perufe thefe, and then doubt, if he can, whether Arminianifm does not cordially coincide with Popery.

But you urge, that the Arminian doctrines "have been maintained by many of the brighteft ornaments of our Church: fuch as Laud, Hammond, Bull, &c." I except against Laud. I cannot allow him, up on the whole, to have been any ornament to us at all: much lefs can I put him at the head of our brightest ornaments. If he had any brightnefs belonging to him, it was the brightnefs of a fire-brand, which at the long run, fet both Church and ftate in a flame. Learned as he was (or, rather, an encourager of learning in others, fo they were not Calvinifts,) he was, at beft, but a mongrel Proteftant; and would have but acted confiftently with himfelf, had he accepted the cardinal's hat, which was offered him from Rome.

So

So declared an enemy was your bright ornament, to all liberty, both civil and religious, that I make no fcru, le to call him a difgrace to his order, to his country, and to human nature. Illegal and unwarrantable, in itself, as his execution was; yet his life, written by his creature Heylin, on purpose to exculpate this cyprianus anglicanus; proves, to a demonftration, that this hot-headed prelate, was not slandered, in being charged with a defign to carry over the Church of England to that of Rome: or, as Heylin himself expreffes it, "to make an atonement between the two churches," i. e. to fet them at one again: atonement being a word ufed at that time, to fignify a reconciliation and re-union. For which reafon, among a thousand others, I must beg leave to ftrike out Laud from the lift of our brightest ecclefiaftical ornaments; and difmifs him with that just observation of bishop Burnet, who remarks, that while Laud's enemies "did really magnify him by their inhuman profecution; his friends, Heylin and Wharton, have as much leffened him: the one, by writing his life; and the other, by publishing his vindication of himself." [Summary of Aff. before the Reftor. p. 68. 8vo. edit.]

As for Hammond, Bull, Tillotfon, Sharp, and Stillingfleet, they are names not to be mentioned without honour. Yet it does not follow that Arminianism is either right in itself, or the doctrine of our Church, because adopted by these otherwife eminent and worthy perfons. Nor do the greatness of their names, and the brightness of their talents, fanctify the errors they might happen to patronize, or one jot mitigate the crime of fubfcribing to articles they did not believe. Let them have been ever fo great ornaments to our Church in other refpects: this, furely, is no ornamental part of their characters. Drofs does not ceafe to be drofs, because fome gold may chance to be blended with it: nor error cease to be fuch, because adopted by men of merit.However,

However, I think, when your hand had been in, you might have reminded us of fome more persons, who were, in every refpect, ornamental to our Church; and true, confiftent fons of it, by believing and maintaining her fundamental doctrines: fuch as Abbot, Grindal, Ufher, Williams, Davenant, Downham, Carlton, Hall, Barlow (of Lincoln), Beveridge, Hopkins, &c. &c. all of whom were bifhops, and (for which reafon you threw them into fhades) Predeftinarians. After all, truth does not depend on names. The doctrines of the Church are to be learned from the articles and homilies of the Church herfelf; not from the private opinions of fome individuals who lay hold on the fkirt of her garment, call themfelves by her name, and live by her revenues.

You proceed. "Our articles have been vindicated from the charge of Calvinifi, by bishop Bull, Dr. Waterland, and feveral other religious and learned men." You fhould rather have faid, "They have laboured hard to do it, but were not able." Like fome difciples of old, they toiled all the day, but could take nothing. When Dr. Bull was strongly preffed with his fubfcription, by the famous Dr. Tully (who was then principal of that very hall from whence the fix religious ftudents were lately expelled; and afterwards dean and chancellor of Carlisle ;) Bull, in his anfwer, only huddles the matter up, and flides over it, as well as he can, in this flight equivocating manner: "Que deinceps, in boc capite, fequuntur, à D. Tullio, declamatorio more effufa, de regia declaratione articulis noftris præfixd; de canone ecclefia; de fubfcriptionibus & juramentis noftris toties repetitis; ea tum demùm ad nos pertinere fatebimur, cum evicerit ille, quicquam nos docuiffe unquam, quod clare alicui ecclefiæ noftræ definitioni adverfetur:" i. e. "I shall then acknowledge myself to be affected by what

Apol. pro Harm, inter Opera, p. 660. Sect. 12.

Dr.

Dr. Tully fubjoins, in his declamatory way, concerning the king's declaration prefixed to our articles; the canon he refers to; and my fo often repeated oaths and fubfcriptions; when he fhall have demonftrated that I ever affirmed any thing contrary to any clear determination of our Church." But the misfortune was, this had actually been demonftrated before whence Dr. Tully took occafion to prefs the matter home to Bull's confcience; juftly upbraiding him, not for efpoufing thofe doctrines which he took for true, but for fwearing and fetting his hand to articles which, if his own fyftem was right, were and must be erroneous and falfe. This home thruft the Arminian doctor endeavoured to parry off, by infinuating, that the determinations of the Church, in behalf of the Calviniftic principles, are not fufficiently clear, but dark and ambiguous. As if the had not clearly determined that "predeftination is the everlasting purpose of God," and that we are "juftified by faith only !" After this rate, any unbelieving fubfcriber whatever, when taxed with dif honefty and prevarication, need only cry out, with bishop Bull, The determinations of our Church are not clear:" and he flips his neck out of the collar very cleverly. But, a determination, which is not clear, is in reality no determination at all: and either the Church has abfolutely determined nothing, and is a Church without any fixed principles; or her determinations are clear and peremptory: and, of couffe, the integrity of fuch perfons as fubfcribe to those determinations, without believing them, is not very confpicuous.

One of the moft furious Arminians now living (the John Goodwin of the prefent age) seems to have refined upon bishop Bull in this particular. This Arminian is Mr. John Wesley: who, like many others, endeavouring to leap over the 17th article of the Church of England, very gravely tells us, that that article, which treats of predeftination, "only VOL. V. (22.)

C

defines