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in the most solemn part of all the offices of the Church," Burnet on the Articles. See remark on Eveleigh.

p. 322,

"Our Articles appear liable to some objections; the particulars of them are too numerous, the subjects of some of them of a most obscure and disputable kind, where it may seem unnecessary, and perhaps improper, to go so far in defining. On both these accounts the assent required from our clergy may appear too strict, and other Christians may be discouraged from joining in communion with us. And, notwithstanding all the abilities of the persons who compiled them, they had not formed just notions of religious liberty, and toleration was neither understood or practised. A revision, therefore, of our Articles and forms, undertaken at a proper time, when the public situation of our country will admit of attention to these internal concerns of it, under the authority of the state, by the governors of our Church, the successors of these venerable reformers, and conducted, as it would then be, with sobriety and good sense, would much contribute to her interests and honour: the ease of her ministers would be consulted by it, many objections removed, and the good opinion of reasonable and moderate men of all parties conciliated. And, as the forms of public worship will necessarily contain in them, either expressed or implied, all the doctrines which are meant to be the subjects of public instruction, the confession of faith and the Liturgy of a church should be counterparts to each other: if the former contains less than the latter it is deficient, if more, it is redundant; and it is from this redundancy that reasonable objections are most likely to arise." Sturges's Letters, p. 27, &c..

It may be inferred from this passage that our Articles and Liturgy are at variance, or, at least, that the former want to be much abridged; but see Dr Kipling's Observations, farther on, p. 325.

"The Church of England professeth to found all her doctrines upon the Holy Scriptures alone; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. And as our religious establishment is founded on the right of private judgement, so it freely allows to others that liberty which it hath vindicated to itself: it disclaims all coercive methods, neither forcing others into subjection, nor retaining its own members by violence : it gives all reasonable indulgence to weak and scrupulous consciences, and treats with charity and forbearance those who think themselves obliged to dissent from it." Lowth's Assize Sermon, August 15th, 1764.

"The article of predestination has been vainly enough urged in favour of the Calvinistical tenets; for, not to mention the saving clause in the conclusion, or its saying nothing at all of reprobation, and nothing in favour of absolute predestination to life, there seems to be a plain distinction, (as Plaifere has well observed,) in the article itself, of two kinds of predestination; one of which is recommended to us, the other condemned. Predestination, rightly and piously considered, that is, considered not irrespectively, not absolutely, but with respect to faith in Christ, faith working by Tt love,

love, and persevering: such a predestination is a sweet and comfortable doctrine; but the sentence of God's predestination, (it is not here said in Christ, as before,) that sentence, simply or absolutely considered, is a most dangerous downfall, leading either to security or desperation." Waterland.

"Our Liturgy, Catechism, and Homilies, the treatises drawn up for the instruction of the people, and the reformation of the ecclesiastical laws, under the authority of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. and the private writings of our original reformers themselves, all prove, decisively, that they sided with Erasmus and Melancthon, and not with Luther and Calvin, in the doctrines which relate to the Divine decrees. And, indeed, our Articles, which have not been materially altered in this respect, prove also the same. For, whatever little concession appears to have been made concerning predestination, in the seventeenth Article, it is immediately after withdrawn by the concluding clause of the same Article: a clause which, undoubtedly, is not to be construed in a Calvinistical sense, and which, from the beginning, has been justly deemed to convey the determination of the Church of England on this important doctrine; as, indeed, was declared and admitted in the religious conference held in the first year of the next reign after the final establishment of these Articles. But the Lambeth Articles, which were proposed as an addition to the established Articles of our Church, and the subscription of our delegates to the decisions of the Synod of Dort, prove that Calvin's tenets, concerning the Divine decrees, obtained afterwards, for a time, among some of the rulers of our Church. Our divines were brought back to the opinions of our first reformers on predestination, &c. by Archbishop Laud and Bishop Bull. Waterland ascribes it to the writings of the latter." Eveleigh's Bampton Lectures, Sermon 4th.

But, if the concluding clause of the seventeenth Article is undoubtedly not to be construed in a Calvinistic sense, why should it be supposed that any concession was made in the former part of the Article, with respect to predestination, and not rather be concluded that predestination there was not to be taken in the sense of Calvin, and that this clause was intended to be a bar against it? See Heylin and Kipling, farther on, p. 324, 325, and Daubeny's Appendix, 596.

"It has been often shewn, that the Creed, Homilies, Liturgy, Articles, and Catechism, of our Church, do not, in their general construction, support the Calvinian rigours, whatever ambiguous expressions some of them may contain. They admit the redemption of the whole world by Christ, the freedom of the human will, the acceptable nature of good works, and the possibility of a fall. from grace. They decide not, with St Austin, on the fate of infants unbaptized; but it is stated in the Rubric, that those who are baptized, and die before actual sin, are undoubtedly saved. There is, therefore, at least reason to doubt, whether those, who framed the seventeenth Article, designed, as Bishop Burnet deems probable, to assert the doctrine of absolute decrees; and it is a plausible opinion, at least, that "by those whom he hath chosen in Christ," from Eph. c. i. 4, may be meant only those whose obedience in Christ God foresaw, "elect according to the foreknowledge of God." 1 Pet. c. i. 2. The words admit of a construction consistent with the doctrine of conditional decrees, and the annexed cautions require that they should be so interpreted. It is certain

that the reformers were fully impressed with the necessity of moral righteousness, and inculcate its precepts with unwearied diligence; and, if the Articles are Calvinistical, it may be inquired why the Calvinists petitioned against the literal and grammatical sense, on the appearance of Charles's declaration, and have so often wished to alter them." Gray's Sermons on the Reformation, p. 247, &c.

To suppose that any of the Articles maintain the doctrine of absolute predestination, is to make the compilers of them to have acted with the utmost inconsistency, and to have asserted in one what they deny in another. See p. 326.

"Ex Articulo 17mo de prædestinatione liquido constat clerum Anglicanum id maxime sibi cavere voluisse, ne doctrinam illam Calzini credendam urgerent, scilicet Deum posse ita eligere aliquos ex mero arbitrio, ut eos in vitæ sanctitatem restitueret, qui non secundum illud S. Pauli Phil. ii. 12, cum metu et tremore suam salutem operantur: id quod vetat etiam nos credere ordo verborum in Epist ad Romanos, viii. 29, 30 : ους προέγνω, προώρισε, δὺς προώρισε, ἐκάλεσε, quos præscivit, et prædestinavit, quos prædestinavit, hos et vocavit." Episc. Cestri. in Nowelli Catechis. p. 98, vid. etiam Ambos. in Vossii Hist. Pelag. p. 738.

"Every regularly-established Church must, to be consistent, maintain a uniformity in doctrine. It has been before proved, that the composers of our Articles and Liturgy were not Calvinists, (Cranmer, Ridiey, Latimer, Hooper, &c.) ergo, the Calvinistic sense of the Articles is not the true sense. The seventeenth Article, in the Calvinistic sense of it, teaches the doctrine of partial redemption and absolute unconditional election to eternal life. The Liturgy of the Church teaches, in every part of it, universal redemption and conditional salvation. But the Articles and Liturgy of the same church cannot be in contradiction to each other. This consideration makes it appear more than probable, that, at the time of framing the article, though the Calvinistic doctrine might have got some footing in England, before it had been opposed by Van Armin, yet the English Church, so justly esteemed the bulwark of the reformation, had not been thoroughly infected with it; and, if at all inclined to the Calvinistic view, had chosen to present to her children only the sweet and comfortable side of it, as more reconcileable to the general tenor of Scripture, and more consonont to the humane feelings of the Christian heart, which, in imitation of the Divine pattern, can have no pleasure in the death and destruction of a sinner." Daubeny's Appendix to the Guide to the Church, p. 212, 213, 215. See p. 327.

"It must be acknowledged that original guilt is a difficult and abstruse subject; and, as the Scriptures do not inform us what were the full and precise effects of Adam's disobedience upon his posterity, it is, perhaps, scarcely to be expected that there should be a uniformity of opinion among divines upon that point; we may, however, observe, that the difference between those who confine original guilt to a mere liability to death and sin, and those who extend it to a liability of punishment also, is not very material, since both sides admit that Christ died as a propitiation for Tt 2

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the sins of the whole world, whatever were the nature and character of those sins. In either case the effects of Christ's obedience are commensurate with those of Adam's disobedience. Thus, the case of infants and ideots, who are incapable of actual sins, of individual guilt, is clearly consistent with the justice and goodness of God, though considered, as by nature, liable to punishment.” Bishop Pretyman on the Articles.

"It is sufficiently evident that the doctrines contained in the 17th Article are by no means conformable to the principles of Calvin, who contended for absolute unconditional decrees of God and irresistible grace, and asserted that God, in predestinating, from all eternity, one part of mankind to everlasting happiness and another to endless misery, was led to make this distinction solely by his own good pleasure and free will." Idem on the Articles.

"Archbishop Whitgift, with some of the bishops, having been hastily led to subscribe to the Lambeth Articles, which were designed to bind the University of Cambridge to the rigours of Calvism, was compelled, by Elizabeth's orders, to suppress them. Dr Reynolds proposed them at Hampton-Court, but was as unsuccessful as in many other points." Gray's Bampton Sermon, p. 264, note.

"As both the Arminian and Calvinistical parties claim the Articles on these doubtful points, (of free will, prescience, &c.) we must admit, at least, that they are framed with comprehensive latitude. It is remarkable that the church of Rome did not decide on the fire points canvassed at the Synod of Dort." Id. p. 265, note.

"But the composers of the Articles of the Church of England had not so little in them of the dove, nor so much of the serpent, as to make the Articles of the Church like an upright shoe, which may be worn on either foot; and therefore we may say of our first reformers, in reference to the present book of Articles, as was affirmed of them by Dr Bancroft, then Bishop of London, (in 1603,) in relation to the Rubric, in private baptism; that is to say, that those reverend and learned men intended not to deceive any by ambiguous terms, and that they did not so compose the Articles as to leave any liberty to dissenting judgements; they had not otherwise attained to the end they aimed at, which was ad tollendam opinionum dissensionem et consensum in vera religione firmandum. Which end could never be effected if men were left to the liberty of dissenting, or might have leave to put their own sense on the Articles, as they list themselves." Heylin's Historia Quinqu' Articularis, part ii. c. viii. sect. 12.

"If it should be asked on whom, or on whose judgement, the first reformers most relied in the weighty business, (of framing the Articles,) I answer negatively, first, that they had no respect to Calvin, no more than to the judgement of Wickliffe, Tyndall, Barnes, or Frith, whose offered assistance they refused when they went about it; of which he sensibly complained to some of his friends, as appears by one of his epistles. I answer next affirmatively, in the words of an act of parliament,

parliament, second and third of Edward VI. " that they had an eye, in the first place, to the pure and sincere Christian religion taught in the Scriptures, and, in the next place, to the usage of the primitive church." Being satisfied in both these ways, they had, thirdly, a more particular respect to the Lutheran platforms, the English confession, or book of Articles, being taken in many places, word for word, out of that of Augsburg. Fourthly, in reference to the points disputed, they ascribed much to the authority of Melancthon, and made use of his writings for their direction in such points of doctrine, in which they thought it necessary for the Church to declare her judgement." Id. p. 2, chap. viii. sect. ii.

"The doctrines which the words of the Articles of the Church of England naturally import are clearly Calvinistic. The Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy, of the Church are three distinct species of writing. They were composed at different times, and in some respects for different purposes. And yet, in point of doctrine, they uniformly breathe the same spirit, and express themselves with the same degree of force. The doctrines of the Articles are woven with much industry into the Church's forms of public worship, and this circumstance must materially assist us in discovering the original sense and intention of the whole." Overton's True Churchman ascertained, 8vo, 1801. See, also, the Church of England vindicated, 8vo, 1801.

"Of all those writers, who have lately taken up their pens, as they pretend, to demonstrate that the Liturgy and Articles of the Church of England are Calvinistic, though they have quoted and referred to nearly fifty different authors, no one has even once quoted Calvin for this purpose. This silence is the effect not of ignorance but of design. Those writers are well aware that the tenets peculiar to Calvinism are both hideous in themselves and diametrically opposite to the doctrines of the Church of England. In the 10th Article it is said, "we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will." No words can be more pointedly directed against Calvin's system than these are. What he positively denied, that this grace, in any stage of it, co-operates only with man, this Article positively affirms. — The Article immediately following this (of the justification of man) has been dragged into the present controversy, as a Calvinistic Article, without rhyme or reason. It is neither Calvinistic nor anti-Calvinistic, but anti-papal. As the 10th Article was intended to prevent every Calvinist, so was this 11th designed to prevent every Papist, from becoming a minister of the Church of England. In the 12th Article it is expressly said, that good works are the fruits of faith; but Calvin says expressly, Instit. lib. ii. c. iii. sect. 13, that good works are the fruits of grace. In this article, therefore, the founders of our Church have flatly contradicted Calvin; which is a plain proof that they were anti-Calvinists, and that this is an anti-Calvinistic Article. A Church-of-England man's faith is productive, a Calvinist's is barren. In the 16th Article it is said, that, "after we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin; and that, by the grace of God, we may rise again." Calvin, on the contrary, maintains that this is impossible, "eternal life is certain to all the elect: - no one can fall from it: - their salvation depends upon

the

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