been contemptuously thrust aside, we are summoned to review the merits of the controversy, and to accept substantially the position maintained by Bishop Carlton in 1610, viz.: that "the first government was in a family, and it is absurd to think, and impossible to prove, that the power of government was in the multitude.'

It may appear to some merely a matter of literary curiosity that after one of the opposing theories had triumphed in a century struggle with its antagonist, and after it had moulded or modified political theories and entered into the constitution of states, it should be set aside, and made to give place to that antagonist, on the grounds of truth and historic justice. But does it not also suggest, that in basing our modern popular organizations on a theory only partially or constructively true, we may have been doing some things that need to be undone? Is it not obvious that in framing our scheme of the state on a bold individualism, we have been hurried on to some practical conclusions that must eventuate in mischief? The divine right of kings is by no means logically identified with the patriarchal theory. Nay, Locke and Hoadly have both shown that it is actually inconsistent with it. Does it not then suggest, when vindicated from its abuses, the authority inherent in natural and moral superiority, and does it not rebuke that levelling political philosophy which simply polls heads or wills, however ignorant or perverse, in order to ascertain, in the ascendency of an exclusive majority, wherein the justice or the highest good of all consists?

ART. IV. CALVINISM IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.* By W. M. BLACKBURN, D.D., Prof. in Northwestern Theological Seminary. THERE is a token for good in the popular appreciation of voluminous histories, and especially of extensive monograms upon local subjects and limited periods. The authors of such works have one advantage: they can present a strong array of facts, while they portray the origin and results of great principles. There is range for the graces of scholarship, and the free play of the writer's power to fascinate while he instructs. For illustration, we may refer to the stately histories written by Mr. Froude and Mr. Perry, to which the popular welcome has been deservedly extended. With all this there may be an undue advantage taken of the reader. Space may be given to assumptions and theories on which certain facts are constructed. The partialities and prejudices of the historian may crop out, even when he intends not to be decisive and dogmatic.

The reader of such histories as we have named can scarcely fail to notice the theory, put forth right earnestly, that the "Lutheranism" of the first half of the sixteenth century was a quite pliant and equivocal type of theology, which excluded from its creed and ritual the vital elements of Calvinism; also, that the system of Luther had a normal claim to preeminence in England, as more admirably adapted to promote Christian life and worship without dogma. The Lutheran views are declared to be peculiarly identified with those of the Anglican symbols. To this we might not object, were there not manifest a zeal in denying that the Calvinistic views (such as Luther did not reject) had no part, or a merely doubtful part, in these symbols. We think that early Lutheranism is not correctly represented. It is assumed that such

*History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 12 vols., crown 8vo. New York: C. Scribner & Co. 1866-1870.

The History of the Church of England, from the Death of Elizabeth to the Present Time. By the Rev. GEORGE G. PERRY, M.A. 3 vols., 8vo. London: 1861-1864.

Anglican fathers as Cranmer, Latimer, and Barnes, "all the government reformers of position and authority," were Lutherans, not simply with respect to the sacraments, but to justification and divine decrees; and that they had no very positive system of doctrine. Mr. Froude speaks of "Latimer, the apostle of the English Reformation," and the martyrs of the time, as having no "plans of salvation;' no positive system of theology, which it was held a duty to believe; these things were of a later growth, when it became again necessary to clothe the living spirit in a perishable body." "Protestantism, before it became an establishment, was a refusal to live any longer in a lie. It was a falling back upon the undefined untheoretic rules of truth and piety which lay upon the surface of the Bible, and a determination rather to die than to mock with unreality any longer the Almighty Maker of the world." (vol. ii, pp. 44, 77.) The first reformers, then, were not hypocrites.

It is assumed that it was the design and glory of the Anglican Church to occupy a middle place between the mediæval and merely Protestant systems, and carry with her an ambiguous creed; that it is preeminently wise and blissful for a church to have symbols which are capable of two interpretations, and opposite constructions. Mr. Froude asserts that the theory of the Church of England was so to frame its constitution, "that disloyalty alone should exclude a single English subject from its communion who in any true sense could be called a Christian; so to frame its formulas that they might be patient of a Catholic or Protestant interpretation, according to the views of this or that sect of the people; that the Church should profess and teach a uniform doctrine in essentials- as the word was understood by the latitudinarians of the age: while in non-essentials it should contain ambiguous phrases, resembling the many watchwords which divided the world; and thus enable Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Zwinglian, to insist each that the Church of England was theirs." (vii, 81, 82.) "The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together without

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shedding each other's blood." (x, 108, 109.) Mr. Perry congratulates his Church upon its "conservative character," one impressed both on theology and ritual." This, which has been denied to the Presbyterian Reformed Churches, was happily permitted to the Church of England. Reforming slowly and calmly under the shadow of power; not driven in a moment of excitement to cast off everything, and to rush wildly into the extreme most opposite to the old tainted superstition, the divines of the [English] Reformation were able to conserve with a moderation which we can not too much admire." (i, 3, 4.) Perhaps as much calmness and conservatism in the matter of ritual, during the constructive and Puritan times, as are now claimed in the matter of theology, would have been still more admirable to those who grievously suffered on account of rites and robes. The "moderation" was hardly so cool as this assertion of it, and as the assumption that the alleged conservatism was chiefly due to the Anglican temper, and influence of Wittemberg. It is just to say that there may be some ambiguity in these quotations from writers, who plainly hold that the Anglican theology was ambiguously expressed in so happy a way, even in the "articles" of the Church.

The class of such writers is quite large, from the days of Heylin down through the days of Waterland, Kipling, Lawrence, Tomline and Tucker, to our own time; all laboring to prove that the Thirty-nine Articles are not Calvinistic; and all refuted by the historical facts presented in the various special treatises of Hickman, Toplady, Overton, Goode, and Cunningham. But what of it? Why is the matter of much interest to us, on whose consciences the said articles need not press? Because the unity of the Anglican division of the Church with our own in essential doctrine is important and delightful to us, who believe in the communion of saints. Because the true view of any great symbol of faith, which a large and living body of Christians holds in sacred esteem, is of account in history. Because of our interest in the "fathers and founders of the Church of England," from whom we have received a considerable inheritance in doctrine. We readthe mass of our people read-the history and writings of the

early English Reformers and martyrs, and regard ourselves as allied to them in the cause of that One Master who is Christ. And when we are first told that they were Augustinian only in the loosest way of believing, and that they differed essentially from the "fathers" of the Reformed churches of the continent, and yet played with phrases which seemed to indicate an agreement, it appears to us as news quite astounding. They had their errors, and they were growing out of them, but surely they did not study to deceive, professing one thing and meaning another. Their great truths were those which, not only Luther, but also Calvin proclaimed. Neither Calvin, nor Luther, are to us of so much account as are the truth and He in whom it all centres and abides.

By the first named class of writers one is led to suppose that Calvinism was intrusive, and was admitted to a debatable footing in England, at rather a late stage of the Reformation, by means of foreigners, with "the obtrusive letters of Calvin," and the pertinacity of the Marian exiles, who had grown somewhat radical in the bracing air of the Alps. "The Genevan refugees clamored that they had not been consulted," says Mr. Froude, referring to the Elizabethan Liturgy, and quoting from a private and not very clamorous letter of John Jewell, afterwards the good bishop. They "clamored" also "that fooleries were made of consequence,' and that 'truth was sacrificed to leaden mediocrity!' At the heart of the matter it was they who were giving importance to what was of no importance; it was they who considered exactness of opinion a necessary condition of Christianity. They would have erected with all their hearts a despotism as hard, as remorseless, as blighting as the Romanist."-(vii. 82.)*

*This is overstraining the point, for Jewell wrote not about opinions, but ceremonies, and he was a fair representative of the returned exiles. He wrote of matters which he deemed of very small importance, and which the ritualists greatly magnified. What he really wrote was this: "The scenic apparatus of divine worship is now under agitation; and those very things which you [Peter Martyr] and I have so often laughed at are now seriously and solemnly entertained by certain persons, (for we are not consulted.) as if the Christian religion could not exist without something tawdry. Our minds indeed are not sufficiently disengaged to make these fooleries of much importance. Others are seeking after a golden, or, as it rather seems to me, a leaden mediocrity, and are crying out that the half