morals, by selecting his own examples. But the Arminian. may, perhaps, in reply make also his selections. Scottish Calvinism has an unquestioned severity of morals, but are Scotch character and history, as a whole, even ethically superior to the English? Is the morality of Presbyterianism, in its entire aspect, superior to that of Moravianism, Quakerism, or Wesleyan Methodism? Are our American Calvinistic Baptists more Christian in morals than the Free-will Baptists? Is there any umpire qualified to decide that the devout Presbyterian is superior to the devout Episcopalian? Did Jonathan Edwards present a type of piety superior to that of Fletcher of Madeley? or John Calvin to that of James Arminius? Can Calvinism show a grander type of an evangelist than was John Wesley in England or Francis Asbury in America? Has she produced, in all her history, a system of evangelism as earnest, as selfsacrificing, as aggressive, as the itinerant ministry of English and American Methodism? Taking the entire body of Calvinism since the Reformation, does it excel in purity, martyrdom, doctrine, and missionary enterprise the (Arminian) Church of the first centuries? If it comes to counting persons, has any section of the Church nobler names than Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Irenæus, Origen, Athanasius, Tertullian, Jerome, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, Hincmar of Rheims, Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Sir Thomas More, Calixtus, Savonarola, Arminius, Grotius, Episcopius, Limborch, Curcellæus, John Milton, John Goodwin, Jeremy Taylor, Cudworth, Bishop Butler, Bishop Bull, Bengel, Wetstein, Wesley, Fletcher, and Richard Watson?

Comparative Republicanism.-Nor did, nor does, Predestination, as compared with Arminianism, possess any peculiar affinity with republicanism against monarchy. By its very nature Calvinism establishes an infinite and eternal distinction between different parts of mankind made by divine prerogative, by which one is born in a divine aristocracy, and the other in an eternal helpless and hopeless pariahism; while Arminianism, holding every man equal before God, proclaims an equal yet resistible grace for all, a universal atonement and Saviour alike to all, an equal power of acceptance in all, a free, unpredestined chance for every man to be the artificer of his own eternal, as well as temporal, fortunes. Caste, partialism,

are the characteristics of the former; equality, universality, republicanism, of the latter. It is as plain as consciousness can make any fact that it is the latter that is the natural ally, not of monarchies, aristocracies, or hierarchies, but of regulated freedom. Hence, neither Luther nor Calvin was any more a republican than Eck or Erasmus. Augustine and Gottschalk were good papists, and Augustinianism was as entirely at home under the tiara of Gregory the Great as under the cap of Bogerman-in the court of Charlemagne as in the camp of the Covenanter. Irrespective of their Calvinism, the Reformers every-where acted according to conditions. Where kings and nobles favored them, they favored kings and nobles; where (as was generally the case) they were rejected by rank and power, and had nothing to make royalty and aristocracy out of, they fashioned a theocratic Commune, out of which modern political experience has picked some aids and methods for voluntary government. Modern experience has eliminated the theocracy, the intolerance, and the predestinarianism, and added the elements to make republicanism. For all this it duly thanks the Reformers, but does not thank their Calvinism.

HISTORY OF ARMINIANISM.-The theology of freedom, essentially Arminianism, in opposition to predestination, necessitated volitions, and imputation of guilt to the innocent, is universally acknowledged to have been the doctrine of the entire Christian Church through its most glorious period, the martyr age of the first three centuries. The Calvinistic historian of theology, Hagenbach, says, (vol. i, p. 155 :) "All the Greek Fathers, as well as the apologists Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and the Latin author Minucius Felix, exalt the autonomy or self-determination of the human soul. They know nothing of any imputation of sin, except as a voluntary and moral self-determination is presupposed. Even Irenæus and Tertullian strongly insist upon this self-determination in the use of freedom of the will." Again, (157:) "Even the opponents of human liberty, as Calvin, are compelled to acknowledge this remarkable unanimity of the Fathers, and in order to account for it they are obliged to suppose a general illusion about this doctrine !”

Arminians contend that we know as well when predestination was introduced into the Church-namely, by Augustine

as we do when transubstantiation and image-worship were introduced; that it was in the fourth century, when Pelagius upon one extreme made free-will dispense with divine grace, Angustine on the other extreme made divine grace irresistibly nullify free-will, and thus both lost their balance; that both invented dogmas never before recognized in the Church; that, tried by the previous mind of the Church, both were equally heretical; that the heresy of one, pushed to extreme, becomes rationalism and pure deism—the heresy of the other, pushed to extreme, becomes presumptuous antinomianism. They assert that the Eastern Church maintained her primitive position, neither Pelagian on one side nor Augustinian on the other, essentially in the position of modern Arminianism; that hence Arminianism is not a compromise, but the primitive historical position, the permanent center, rejecting innovations and extremes on either side; that the Western Church, in spite of the great name of Augustine, never became Augustinian. It is, indeed, customarily said by anti-Arminian writers that this was because the "age of systematic theology" had not then arrived. Arminians reply that a theology not only unrecognized during that best period of the Church, but, still more, a theology unanimously condemned as heretical by that period, has little right now to lay claim to pre-eminent Christian orthodoxy. The Eastern Church—namely, the Churches of Asia, with whom the language of our Lord and his apostles was essentially vernacular; the Greek Church, to whom the language of the New Testament was vernacular; and the Russian Church, embracing many millions-all inherited and retain, firmly and unanimously, the theology of freedom, essential Arminianisın. The learned Calvinistic scholar, Dr. Shedd, in his "History of Doctrines," (vol. ii, p. 198,) says: "The Augustinian anthropology was rejected in the East, and, though at first triumphant in the West, was gradually displaced by the semi-Pelagian theory, or the theory of inherited evil [instead of inherited guilt] and synergistic [or co-operative] regeneration. This theory was finally stated for the papal Church in exact form by the Council of Trent. The Augustinian anthropology, though advocated in the Middle Ages by a few individuals like Gottschalk, Bede, Anselm, slumbered until the Reformation, when it was revived by Luther and Calvin, and

opposed by the papists." It will thus be seen, on a review of the universal Church in all ages, how small though respectable a minority Augustinianism, before the Reformation, ever was. With minor exceptions, Arminianism was the doctrine of the universal Church.

The accuracy of Dr. Shedd's statement of the general nonexistence of Augustinianism during the Middle Ages is not invalidated by the fact of the great authority of Augustine's name, arising from the powerful genius and voluminous writings of the man. It was no proof that a man was truly Augustinian because he belonged to the "Augustinian order," or quoted Augustine's authority. Such Schoolmen as Bernard, Anselm, and Peter Lombard modified Augustine's doctrine materially; Bonaventura and Duns Scotus were essentially Arminians, and Hincmar, of Rheims, and Savonarola literally so. Gottschalk, the high predestinarian, was condemned for heresy, and Thomas Bradwardine, the "second Gottschalk," made complaints, doubtless overstrained, that in his day "almost the whole world had become Pelagian."

At the Reformation, however, we encounter the phenomenon that all the eminent leaders at first not only adopted, but even exaggerated, the absolutism of Augustine. This might seem strange, for it was apparently natural that the absolute papacy should identify itself with the absolute, and that asserters of freedom would have stood on the free-will theology. The twin doctrines of the supremacy of Scripture and of justification by faith were amply sufficient, without predestination, for their purpose to abolish the whole system of popish corruption. The former dethroned alike the authority of tradition and the popedom; the latter swept away alike the mediations of Mary, saints, and priests. But the first heroic impulse of reform tends to magnify the issues to their utmost dimensions. The old free-will theology belonged universally to the old historic Church, and was identified by the first Reformers with its corruptions. Luther at first, in his reply to Erasmus "On the Bondage of the Will," uttered fatalisms that probably had hardly ever before been heard in the Christian Church, and perhaps it would be hard to find a Calvinist at the present day who would adopt the trenchant predestinarian utterances of Calvin. Under the indoctrinations of these leaders, especially

of Calvin at Geneva, the absolute doctrines were diffused and formed into the creeds of Germany, the Netherlands, France, England, and Switzerland. But in Germany the "second sober thought " of Melanchthon, who at first coincided with Luther, receded from predestination, and Melanchthon himself intimates that Luther receded with him; so that the Lutherans are now essentially Arminian. In the Netherlands the same "second thought," led by Arminius himself, was suppressed by State power. In France, Protestantism, which was Calvinistic, was overwhelmed in blood. In England the Calvinism was generally of a gentle type, and the same "second thought" was awakened by the Arminian writings of Grotius and Episcopius diffused through Europe. And as the English Church gradually inclined to the ancient high episcopacy of the old Church, so it adopted the ancient Arminianism. Calvinism, persecuted and oppressed, overthrew monarchy and Church, and for a brief period ruled with hardly less intolerance, until, overthrown in turn, Calvinism took refuge in America, and laid foundations here. Even here past sufferings did not teach tolerance, and that doctrine had to be learned from checks and lessons adininistered by surrounding sources. Calvinisin has, nevertheless, here acted a noble part in our Christian civilization. It, perhaps, about equally divides the evangelie Church with Arminianism.

Arminianism, proper and Protestant, came into existence under the severe persecution by Dutch Calvinism, in which the great and good Arminius himself was a virtual martyr. The Synod of Dort, the standard council of the Calvinistic faith, made itself subservient to the unprincipled and sanguinary usurper Maurice; and even during its sessions the judicial murder of the great Arminian and republican statesman Olden Barnevelt was triumphantly announced at Dort, to overawe the Arminians at the synod, who were bravely maintaining their cause under the leadership of the eloquent Episcopius. Then followed the banishment of Episcopius, the imprisonment of Grotius, the ejection of hundreds of Arminian ministers from their pulpits, and the firing of soldiers upon the religious assemblies of Arminian worshipers. The great Arminian writers of Holland, Episcopius, Grotius, and Limborch, are claimed by Arminian writers to be the first public proclaimers FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-28