from him. This vice of our origin free-will; and Melancthon, the great (vitium originis) is truly a damning friend of Luther, and the support of sin, and causing eternal death to all his cause, being convinced by the reawho are not born again by baptism and the spirit." We find, however, some expressions rather stronger than even these in the Gallic Confession: "We believe that this vice," (vitium,) meaning original sin, "is truly a sin, which makes all and every man, not even excepting infants in the womb, liable, in the sight of God, to eternal death."2 any doctrine can make a man shudder, it must be this. Believing this, could any man (unless he had a firmer persuasion than most men can, by the force of any imagination, attain to, of himself being among the number of the elect) bless God that he is a descendant of Adam?

If

Calvin held these doctrines with no less rigour; and as the Lutherans afterwards abandoned them, they are now generally known by the name of Calvinistic doctrines. As to "the most ancient Helvetic Doctors," says Mosheim, "their sentiments seemed to differ but very little from those of the Pelagians; nor did they hesitate in declaring, after the example of Zuingle, that the kingdom of heaven was open to all who lived according to the dictates of right reason;" but Calvin, when he came among them, maintained that the everlasting condition of mankind in a future world was determined, from all eternity, by the unchangeable order of the Deity," arising from "no other motive than his own good pleasure and free will."

993

Luther's rigid doctrine of election was opposed by Erasmus, who wished well to the Reformation, but was concerned as well for the violence with which it was carried on, as for the unjustifiable length to which Luther carried his opposition, especially with respect to the doctrine of predestination. Luther never answered the last piece of Erasmus on the subject of 1 Eccl. Hist. IV. p. 9. (P.)

2 Ibid. p. 80. (P.)

3 Ibid. pp. 72, 73, 80. (P.) Cent, xvi. Sect, iii. Pt. ii. C, ii, vii, xii,

soning of Erasmus, came over to his opinion on that subject. And it is very remarkable, that by degrees, and indeed pretty soon afterwards, the Lutherans in general changed also; and some time after the death of Luther and Melancthon, the divines who were deputed by the elector of Saxony, to compose the famous book entitled The Concord, abandoned the doctrine of their master, and taught that the decree of election was not absolute, that God saves all who will believe, that he gives all men sufficient means of salvation, and that grace may be resisted.*

The principles of all the other reformed churches are, however, still Calvinistic, and among them those of the Churches of England and of Scotland, notwithstanding the generality of divines of the former establishment are acknowledged to be no great admirers of that system.

In Holland, there was no obligation on the ministers to maintain what are called the Calvinistic doctrines, till the synod of Dort; when, by the help of faction in the state, the Calvinistic party in that country prevailed, and those who opposed them, and in consequence of remonstrating against their proceedings, got the name of Remonstrants, were cruelly persecuted and banished. It is remarkable, however, as Mosheim observes, that since the time of that synod, "the doctrine of absolute decrees lost ground from day to day."5

With respect to the Church of Rome, it cannot be denied, that the cause of sound morality had suffered much by means of many sophistical distinctions, introduced by their divines and casuists about the time of the Reformation, as by the distinction of sins into venial and mortal; the latter of which only, they say, deserve the pains of hell, whereas the former may be atoned for

4 Basnage, Histoire, II. p. 265. (P.) See Toplady, Hist. Proof, I. p. 318.

5 Eccl. Hist. IV. p. 499. (P.) Cent, xvii. Sect. ii, Pt. ii. Ch, ii, xii,

doctrines of Austin,) has been as vehement as any controversy among Protestants on the same subject. And though besides the Council of Trent, whose decrees are copious enough, appeals were frequently made to the Popes, and their decisious were also procured, the controversy still continues. Of so little effect is the authority of men to prevent different opinions in articles of faith. Different Popes have themselves been differently disposed with respect to these doctrines; and on some occasions a respect for the Jesuits, who were peculiarly devoted to the Popes, was the means of procuring more favour to the tenets which they espoused, than they would otherwise have met with.

revised, the articles in favour of those doctrines would, no doubt, be omitted. But while they continue there, and while the spirit of them is diffused through all the public offices of religion, the belief of them will be kept up among the vulgar, and there will always be men enow ready to accept of church preferment on the condition of subscribing to what they do not believe, and of reciting day after day such offices as they totally disapprove.

Things have been so long in this situation, especially in England, where the minds of the clergy are more enlightened, and where few of them, in comparison, will even pretend that they really believe the articles of faith to which they have subscribed, accordAmong Protestants, there are great ing to the plain and obvious sense of numbers who still hold the doctrines them; and the legislature has been which are termed Calvinistic in their so often applied to in vain to relieve greatest rigour; and sometime ago they them in this matter, by removing those were usually distinguished into two subscriptions, that we cannot now kinds, viz. the Supralapsarians, who maintained that God had originally and expressly decreed the fall of Adam, as a foundation for the display of his justice and mercy; while those who maintained that God only permitted the fall of Adam, were called Sublap sarians, their system of decrees concerning election and reprobation being, as it were, subsequent to that event. But if we admit the divine prescience, there is not, in fact, any difference between the two schemes; and accordingly that distinction is now seldom mentioned.

It is evident that, at present, the advocates for the doctrine of absolute and unconditional election, with the rest that are called Calvinistic, consist chiefly of persons of little learning or education; and were the creeds of the established Protestant churches to be

Pelagianos et Massilienses tribus tomis comprensa;" first printed at Louvain in 1640. On this work, which Leibnitz extolled as un ouvrage profond, the author was employed twenty years, during which he had read Augustin throughout, ten times, and thirty times, that father's treatise against the Pelagians. See Nouv. Dict. Hist. III. pp. 432, 433.

reasonably expect any reformation of this great evil, till it shall please Divine Providence to overturn all these corrupt establishments of what is called Christianity, but which have long been the secure retreat of doctrines disgraceful to Christianity. For they only serve to make hypocrites of those who live by them, and infidels of those who, without looking farther, either mistake these corruptions of Christianity for the genuine doctrines of it, or, being apprized of the insincerity of the clergy in subscribing them, think that all religion is a farce, and has no hold on the consciences of those who make the greatest profession of it. With all this within ourselves, how unfavourable is the aspect that these doctrines exhibit to the world at large, and what an obstruction must they be to the general propagation of Christianity in the world!

I cannot help making this general

1 Dr. Paley, who was generally better employed, has provided for these unbelieving subscribers some convenient excuses. See what Mr. Wakefield justly called "a shuffling chapter on subscription to articles of religion" in Paley's Moral Philosophy.

reflection at the close of these three parts of my works, which relate to those gross corruptions of Christianity, which exist in their full force in all established Protestant churches. In what follows, the Catholics, as they

are called, are more particularly concerned; though, it will be seen, that, even with respect to them, Protestant churches are far from being blameless.

many

PART IV.

THE HISTORY OF OPINIONS RELATING TO SAINTS AND

THE INTRODUCTION.

ANGELS.

ple that could lead to it, in the Scriptures; but it may be useful to trace THE idolatry of the Christian church the causes and the progress of it, from began with the deification and proper the earliest ages of the Christian worship of Jesus Christ, but it was far church to the present time. And in from ending with it. For, from similar order to do it as distinctly as possible, causes, Christians were soon led to pay I shall divide the history of all the an undue respect to men of eminent time preceding the Reformation into worth and sanctity, which at length two periods; the former extending to terminated in as proper a worship of the fall of the Western empire, or a them, as that which the heathens had little beyond the time of Austin, and paid to their heroes and demigods, the latter to the Reformation itself; addressing prayer to them, in the same and I shall also consider separately as to the Supreme Being what relates to saints in general, to himself. The same undue veneration the Virgin Mary in particular, to led them also to a superstitious re- relics, and to images.

manner

SECTION I.

PART I.

spect for their relics, the places where
they had lived, their pictures and
images, and indeed everything that
had borne a near relation to them; so
that at length, not only were those
persons whom they termed saints, the
objects of their worship, but also their OF THE RESPECT PAID
THE
GENERAL, TILL
relics and images; and neither with
WESTERN EMPIRE.
respect to the external forms, nor, as
far as we can perceive, their internal
sentiments, were Christians to be at
all distinguished from those who bowed
down to wood and stone, in the times
of Paganism.

TO SAINTS IN
FALL OF THE

THE foundation of all the superstitious respect that was paid to dead men by Christians, is to be looked for in the principles of the heathen philosophy, and the customs of the pagan religion. That this is a most horrid corrup- It was from the principles of philotion of genuine Christianity I shall sophy, and especially that of Plato, take for granted, there being no trace that Christians learned that the soul of any such practice, or of any princi- was a thing distinct from the body,

and capable of existing in a separate the philosophical opinions above menconscious state when the body was tioned, which were brought into Chrislaid in the grave. They also thought tianity by those who before held them that it frequently hovered about the as philosophers, and which gradually place where the body had been interred, insinuated themselves into the body of and was sensible of any attention that, Christians in general, it might have was paid to it. continued not only a harmless, but an useful custom.