if your reprehension be turned upon a favourite vice, or you set up a virtue that interferes with it, he must be a man of more than ordinary candour who will hear with patience and impartiality. All who are not thorough paced and hardened sinners find out ways to reconcile their principles to their practice, till they come to be easy in their own minds, and to look upon those things as very toler. able wherein they indulge themselves. Let these alone, and you shall say what you please, without contradiction; but such and such doctrines are not to be digested; they bear too hard, and do not make, as they think, reasonable allowances; and if you will not forbear to insist upon them, you provoke their spleen. Is there not,' says Jehosaphat, a prophet of the Lord, besides these that stand before us, of whom we may enquire?" Yes,' says Ahab, but I hate him.' Why so?' Because he does not prophecy good concerning me.' A covetous man is as ready as any body to applaud the preacher upon the subject of frugality, if he will but leave his hearers to adjust the measures of it. But if he takes upon him to define the virtue, and expose the sordid vice it may degenerate into, he thwarts the man's inclination, and loses his esteem. On the other hand, a luxurious man is so far from being shocked, when you tell of the blessings that attend a liberal hand, that he fancies himself well entitled to them. He does not with the miser keep all to himself, but calls his neighbours and friends to share in his plenty. But when you come to shew in what degree and in what manner hospitality must be exercised to make it commendable; when you talk of limits and restrictions, of proper objects and justifiable ends, you spoil all, and his complacency forsakes him.

The

"Thus it is obvious we might make ourselves acceptable enough, by prophesying only smooth things;' but the direct contrary is our duty, and will be, till the world comes into a better state. Sometimes the instruction is ill entertained, because not delivered gracefully and with a becoming air. The preacher's figure, or his mien, or his elocution does not please, and then the substance of what he says shall be little regarded. A foolish prejudice, and justly to be despised; but yet we find the great St. Paul laboured under it. Corinthians could not but confess that his letters were weighty and powerful: the strength of reason and the truth of his doctrine were undeniable; but his bodily presence, it seems, was weak in their eyes, and the manner of expressing himself not tuneable to their ears. He did not appear great and awful, like one who ought to be revered; he spoke very good sense, that they allowed him, but he set it off poorly; and these trifling considerations, added to their vi cious dispositions, made them bold to demur to his authority.

"The third, and of all others the most obstinate enemy we have to encounter is prepossession; for it sticks at nothing. Where education and interest have settled falsehood, neither shame nor remorse can touch it. How imperiously and how impudently does it maintain the ground! Dressed out in the most specious colours that can be invented, she insults the plainness and simplicity of

VOL. III. NO. V.

truth, yet (fearing her innate strength, and knowing she will at last prevail) she calls in the succours of a furious zeal, a zeal that admits of all arts, and refuses no means conducing to its end; a zeal that makes use of the most barbarous cruelty, under pretence of good nature, and breaks faith with men for the glory of God. An honest, well-meaning stranger may be apt to say, this is a heavy charge, can it possibly be made out? We will allow a stranger in christendom to doubt; for human nature cannot think it casily credible. But you, my brethren, who are exercised in the defence of truth, are able to convince him; you who are not ignorant with what weapons she is attacked, and how treacherously she is assaulted. Many of you have had experience, and are able to testify, that if the Lord himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us, they' (the great and most insolent assertors of falsehood) had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us.'".

There is a curious and interesting fac simile of a letter, written by this amiable prelate a few months before his death, when in his ninety-second year. Its style is excellent, and we cannot help wishing that the hand-writing of our beaux and belles were as legible as that of the good bishop at his advanced age: for this letter we must refer our readers to the book.

We have thus given a short account of this pleasing work. It exhibits a specimen of that combination of public spirit with private urbanity, of vigour in the great with suavity in the little concerns of life, which softens admiration into affection, and mellows the hero into the friend and companion. The general execution of the book by Mr. Wilmot is such as we might naturally expect from the literary leisure of a gentleman and a scholar.

225

ART. XV. A Refutation of Calvinism; in which, the Doctrines of Original Sin, Grace, Regeneration, Justification, and Universal Redemption are explained, and the peculiar Tenets maintained by Calvin upon those Points are proved to be contrary to Scripture, to the Writings of the ancient Fathers of the Christian Church, and to the Public Formularies of the Church of England. By George Tomline, D. D. F. R. S. Lord Bishop of Lincoln, and Dean of St. Paul's. London, 1811. Cadell and Davies.

WHEN England and Scotland were as yet separate kingdoms, a narrow tract on the boundary of the two realms, denominated the debatable land, was the scene of the most bitter hostility, the object of the most vehement contention. Though this unfortunate stripe of territory along the Sark and the Tweed had been so frequently ravaged and peeled by alternate inroads from the north and from the south, that the fee-simple of the soil was scarcely worth the expence of a single predatory excursion, it was there that the rival nations were constantly wasting the courage, and lavishing the blood, by which the power of France might have been broken. Even when treaties had suspended public war, well might the litigated confines deplore their lot,

as

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell,

Garrison frowned upon garrison, camp lowered against camp on the border. Insult and invasion, fire and sword, still characterized this region of discord and devastation.

It is with religious associations as it is with empires. The jarring parties in matters of faith are often observed to be exercising their strength, expending their zeal, and we fear it may be added, indulging their resentment, not mainly, nor with the firmest pertinacity in exertions against their common enemies, nor in efforts to fortify themselves in those positions which the combatants ought respectively to consider as the most essential to the interests of piety and holiness; but in contests about some debatable corner, which, though not without its value, cannot reasonably be deemed of higher than secondary importance. In the days of Elizabeth, and of her immediate successors, it was the cross in baptism, or the surplice, or the episcopal vesture, or the station of the communion table, which called forth into action the energies of religious party. At present the debatable corner is Calvinism. If we attend to a charge delivered at a visitation, it is against tenets regarded as calvinistic, that we expect the maximum of vigour to be dis

played. On other topics advice is gently intimated; on Calvinism the thunders roll. If we open a visitation sermon, it is the tremendous poison of Calvinism which rouses the voice of alarm and abhorrence. It is on the luckless Calvinist, real or supposed, that the young theologian fleshes his maiden steel. It is for his gallantry against this selected adversary, that he exults by anticipation in the dreams of self complacency, and receives almost before he has struck a blow, the gratulatory acclamations of his brethren.

Let us not be misunderstood. We know that it is at all times the indispensable duty of Christians, earnestly to contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints: (Jude 3.) to maintain publicly and privately the truth as it is in Jesus, (Ephes. 4. 21.) not only in its general form, but in every one of its discriminating features. We are not of the opinion of those who pronounce that minor errors in religion are of trifling consequence, provided that the great fundamentals are held. judge, that error in doctrine is naturally followed by serious effects in practice, and that error of every description is to be combated with assiduity and zeal, proportioned to its magnitude, and to the mischief of its tendencies.

We

Our complaint is not that Calvinism is combated, but that it is often combated ignorantly and unfairly; that the opinions and proceedings of modern Calvinists are in part misconceived; that truths of the first moment, truths essentially belonging to the gospel and the church of England, truths in which Calvinists and anti-calvinists agree, are occasionally hunted down as dogmas of Geneva; that men do not generally discern, that the existing evils of lukewarmness and indifference as to religion, are far, very far more prevalent and more pernicious than the existing evils of Calvinism.-We now proceed to the bishop's work.

An inquiry into the import of those passages in the Old and in the New Testament, on which the calvinistic system is rested; a detailed statement of the sentiments of all the ancient fathers, from the apostolic age down to Theodoret, who flourished A. D. 423; a series of quotations from the writings of Calvin; and an exposition of the tenets of the established church, as developed in our public formularies; these combined form the groundwork on which the bishop avowedly builds his superstructure. To these previous recommendatory circumstances is to be added the name of the author; a prelate highly respectable in character, understanding, and attainments; followed by the mathematical reputation that he deservedly acquired at the University of Cambridge; and sincerely desirous, as we are satisfied, actively to watch over his diocese, and

according to his views of the tenor of scriptural doctrine, and of the nature of scriptural holiness, to lead forward his clergy, and through the medium of the clergy, the flocks committed to them, in soundness of faith, and in excellence of conduct.

We have repeatedly heard the observation made, and we think with justice, by persons each differing from the other in sentiments concerning the work before us, that the bishop ought graphically to have delineated in the outset the enemy with whom he intended to engage in battle: that in professing to refute Calvinism, it behoved him at once to put the public in possession of the tenets which he designed to refute. But this is but one instance, among many which might be named, of what appears to us to be the characteristic defect of the bishop's work; we mean great want of clearness in his lordship's views, and of unity in his plan and the execution of it. That the tenets of Calvinism, as existing among us, are frequently misconceived, partly as to their nature, and partly as to their practical results; and misconceived by persons from whom a description more accurate might reasonably be expected, we have already intimated. We shall therefore endeavour to furnish a general view of those tenets; and at the same time shall add some observations, which, as we trust, may have their use in clearing the subject, and in assisting our readers to form a just judgment on the Bishop of Lincoln's book. It is our purpose to investigate in an intelligible and simple manner the several topics to which we shall advert; and carefully to shun the thorny intricacies, and the bewildering twilight of metaphysics.

Of the system of Calvin, the following passages which we give from his institutes, in the words of the bishop's translation (p. 538, &c.), may be regarded as containing the sum.

"Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which He has determined with Himself, what He willed to be done concerning every man. For all men are not created in an equal condition (pari conditione): but eternal life is preordained to some, eternal damnation to others. Therefore as every one was formed for the one or the other end, so we say that he was predestinated either to life or death." Inst. lib. 3. cap. 21. sect. 5.

"We assert that this counsel, with respect to the elect, was founded in his gratuitous mercy, without any regard to human worth: but that the approach to life is precluded to those whom he assigns to damnation, by His just indeed and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible judgment." Ib. sect. 7.

"Therefore, if we cannot assign a reason why He (God), thinks his own worthy of mercy, except because it so pleases Him; neither shall we have any other ground for His reprobating others, except His will." Ib. cap. 22. sect. 7.