ment which we used, that a predestinarian could believe in a subordinate grace of regeneration conferred upon all in baptism, and to the second that even if he rejected that esoterically, he could assert it formally and practically; the third argument, that even if, as a predestinarian he could not hold Baptismal Regeneration at all, he might still hold it, as not a predestinarian, that is to say in accordance with that other side of his theological system which counterbalanced his predestinarianism.

So much for one principal argument which has been used by our opponents in the late controversy. We enter now on the second division of our article, and turn to the authorities amongst our divines, which have been adduced.

With respect, then, to the authorities who have been quoted, the preceding remarks are a reply at once, without any further argument, to one very leading comment which has been made upon them, and its accompanying inferences. Other points noticed in them have to be answered; but one has already been. That predestinarian language which is undoubtedly found in many of them, and which has been adduced for the purpose of resting upon it the inference that such divines could not have held the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, has been proved not to authorize that inference.

We are desirous, however, of saying a little more on the subject of this predestinarian language, which has been held in our Church, because so much use has been made of it, not only in this present controversy, but generally, for throwing our Church's doctrinal system into the possession of a particular school. It has supplied the great material to all who have aimed at representing her doctrines as much as possible in a Genevan aspect. The 17th Article, upon Predestination, has always been pointed to, especially, as appearing to be a formal recognition by the Church herself of the doctrine of that school, and an incorporation of it into her creed. It is sufficient with many that they see a long Article, and see Predestination at the head of it. That word of itself is all-powerful; and the very short argument that the Church of England holds predestination, and that Calvin held predestination, leads immediately to the conclusion that the Church of England holds Calvinism. A more serious part of the community look through the Article itself, and while they recognise a protest at the end of it against an improper and rash use of the doctrine, are still somewhat staggered by the language in the body of the Article, which appears, at first sight, to deny the concurrence of free-will in producing holiness and good works, and to attribute them exclusively to a Divine decree external to the agent. This has produced the great show argument, the popular piece of criticism. It is decided that, while the services

of the Church are Catholic, the articles are Calvinistic. And under the shelter of this criticism, the argument we have been noticing on the baptismal question has been put forward with the greater confidence-the disputant conceiving that he has not only a clear and easily stated argument on his side, but also one supported by a strong background of Calvinistic language in the Articles of the Church herself. The 17th Article, then, upon Predestination, as being the formal profession of our Church on this subject, and therefore the first and highest English authority which can be quoted; as the source, especially, of so much of the popular impression about the Calvinistic character of our Church teaching, deserves some attention, before we go to the language of individual theologians.

With respect to this Article, then, we must in limine confess our total inability to understand the extraordinary difficulty which some persons profess to discover in it, and the scruples of conscience which rise so much in connexion with it. We can understand a theologically uneducated person, who has only heard of predestination as a doctrine of Calvin, and who has a wholesome prejudice against that theologian, feeling some resistance in his mind, chiefly to the heading itself, and secondarily to the body of this Article; but how persons of theological reading and education, and acquainted with the history of theological language, can have entertained such suspicions, and imagined it an expression of puritan and-to use the conversational term'low Church' views, is more difficult of comprehension. This Article is, in real truth and fact, nothing more than a very moderate statement of the Augustinian doctrine on the subject of predestination. It says nothing more than S. Augustine himself, in his ordinary mode of stating the doctrine, says; and indeed is couched in almost the ipsissima verba of that Father. We may add, as a consequence of this, that it simply says what the followers of S. Augustine, S. Bernard, S. Anselm, Peter Lombard, and S. Thomas Aquinas, whom we have quoted, and many others whom we have not, said before it; and that it is couched almost in their ipsissima verba. The reformers undertook to construct a series of Articles on the most important points of Christian theology. The doctrine of predestination was a sufficiently prominent, and sufficiently important doctrine to have an Article devoted to it; they accordingly devoted an Article to it; and worded that Article in the established orthodox language on the subject, as it had come down to them. It is quite certain that the doctrine was held and taught in the Church from S. Augustine's days downwards; that it occupied its regular established place in theological treatises and expositions, and was handed down from divine to divine, as a formal part of the Church's doctrinal system.

In this way it came before the eyes of the bishops and divines in this country who were engaged in the construction of the Articles. They took it as they found it, and expressed it as it had been expressed for them. It gained under them no one new notion, and no one new word. As for the part which Calvin, or Calvin's teaching, is supposed to have had in it-such an explanation is in the first place excluded, for the want of any call for it. There is no room for it, in the first place. The space is already occupied. There is a good, a sufficient, and a natural account of the appearance of the Article in the series, without any recourse to other modes of accounting for it being necessary. But there is another and still weightier reason for excluding it; and that is, that Calvin's name, as a theologian at all, was only just beginning to be known in this country at the very time the Articles were being constructed; and that Calvin's first work on Predestination was certainly posterior to the original construction of the Articles, at least one year. The 'Articles of Religion' came out in 1552, having been in course of construction throughout the preceding year, 1551 and Calvin's tract, De Eterna Dei Predestinatione,' which was his first on that subject, came out in 1552. If it be replied, that though Calvin might not have influenced the construction of this Article, those who held the opinions subsequently called by his name, among the German reformers, may have done so; it is enough to say that Melancthon, the chief referee in this quarter, had, so early as 1529, (as is proved by his letters,') that is to say, twenty years before the construction of this Article, abandoned the Calvinistic ground, and censured those who maintained it; and that in an edition of his 'Loci Theologici,' in 1533, he expunged some passages, which had stood in a former edition, favouring it.

We have already given extracts from the authorities we have mentioned; but to save our readers the trouble of referring back, we will put the language of the Article and the language in these extracts side by side, that they may judge more easily. The case hardly requires this tabular juxtaposition; but if it would assist them at all, they will see one in the next page. The language of the Article, as compared with the language of those writers, has indeed, if anything, rather a more moderate tone than theirs. Some parts of Peter Lombard's language-that where he touches on reprobation, and in what sense it is caused by the deserts of the reprobate, and in what sense not caused at all by their deserts, but by the absolute and irrespective decree of God-though balanced by what he says elsewhere, and on the whole tolerably negatived, still touches on bolder ground than what the Article does, and has more a Calvinistic look about it. The same may be

'Archbishop Lawrence's Bampton Lectures, p. 250.