ing from you; but no complaint can be more reasonable than that which arises from finding an opponent boldly disputing on the most difficult points, while he is utterly ignorant what has been said or done on the point before his own time, what maintained by the most illustrious men, what taught by the Universal Church. Yet in these days, when every man is, or believes that he is, fully competent to decide all the great questions of philosophy and religion for himself, this one essential element towards forming a right decision, is, with the singular hardihood of entire ignorance, in nine cases out of ten, wholly forgotten.

It would be impossible to adduce many instances but one or two will sufficiently illustrate my meaning. We have had the pain of witnessing, within the last twenty years, in our own Church, the repetition of one of those fruitless contests as to certain matters touching Justification, and the other points connected more or less with man's Free Agency, which have occasionally arisen to injure and disturb the peace of every Church in Christendom. Very much was written with respect to the opinions of the Church as delivered in the Articles and the Liturgy. Some contended that the Church was clearly

Others

Calvinistic, while others as strenuously maintained that it was directly the reverse. again (indeed this, painful as the supposition is, has been but too common an opinion) have been pleased to make an attempt to reconcile the two adverse parties, at the expense of the character, both of those who drew up the Articles, and of the Church itself, by supposing that such ambiguous and indecisive language was purposely adopted, that they who held the doctrine of Arbitrary Decrees, and they who rejected it, might alike subscribe the Articles. When we call on Church History to give its simple aid, what do we find to be the real state of the question? The plain truth is, that when the Articles were drawn, the doctrines of Calvin were little or not at all known, his first work advocating them having been published only the year before our Articles'. His opinions had to struggle through a very long contest even in Switzerland, before their assertor, even by that violence and persecution to which

1 It is much to be regretted, that Archbishop Laurence's very valuable Bampton Lectures, so fully establishing this point, have not been more extensively read. Their title probably induced many persons to think the work controversial, and not historical.

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he was not slow to resort, could establish them at home, far less propagate them abroad. Articles, therefore, relating to the matters in question, are neither for nor against Calvin, in the common sense of the words; i. e. they who drew them had not Calvin in their mind, and meant, consequently, neither to oppose nor to support his opinions. The subjects of these Articles are, indeed, those by which Calvin has since become known; but they had engaged the attention of the Church for ages before Luther or Calvin were born. If the writers on these points would take the trouble to examine the works of those extraordinary persons the Schoolmen, they would find book upon book, discussing, with all the marvellous subtilty of those authors, all these very questions. But even farther than this, the doctrines treated of in these articles are those which must first and most deeply engage the thoughts of all who are considering the scheme of Redemption. must make up our minds, for example, either to adopt one side or other on the great question of Arbitrary Decrees, or we must come to the conclusion that we will take the word of God as it stands, on this subject, not venturing to put any interpretation on matters beyond our

We

powers to discern and decide; and that we will only decide what is to be done by man, and what God expects from him in practice, whatever may be the system on which that practice is demanded. Now the schoolmen had come to certain distinct and definite conclusions on these very points, which were taught in their schools and which entirely coloured the whole Theological System of Europe. It is not my business to canvass here the merits or demerits of their views; but simply to state that if any one will take the trouble of reading such parts of their works as relate to the subjects treated in the Articles now under consideration, he will find at once that, instead of being directed against Calvin or for him, these Articles are directed entirely against the views of the Schoolmen. This is a very signal, and, to us, a very important instance of the use of dates and of historical knowledge in preventing or in settling controversies. Because the miserable disputes on these mysterious subjects grew hot among the German and Foreign Protestants soon after the time that these Articles were composed, and have occupied and embittered the minds of men ever since, men have ignorantly asserted that the Articles had relation to these disputes, which in

reality did not exist at the moment, and have thus forced and tortured the words of the Articles into accordance with their own views. By these sad devices, they who are more ignorant still, have, I am persuaded, been taught to undervalue and neglect the articles, and to look at them as either unintelligible, or intentionally evasive, as something which is either too obscure for common minds from the difficulty of the subject, or which was meant to be so. Whereas, in truth, nothing can, by possibility, be clearer (I do not mean than the subjects, but) than the doctrine of the Articles, if we possess the necessary key to them; i. e. a knowledge of the doctrine prevailing in the general body of the Church at the time, of the language in which it was couched, and of the fact that the Reformers meant to deny that doctrine. It has been ingeniously said on a very recent occasion that if we found a watch on a sun-dial without having known any thing of either before, their singular coincidence and agreement would sufficiently show that the one was made to suit the other. And in the same way, if we take the Schoolmen in one

'By Mr. Whewell, in his admirable Bridgewater Treatise.