as to allow both the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of justice the place which is assigned them in the word of God: it is so to preach holy free grace, and rectified, assisted free will, as equally to grind Pharisaism and Antinomianism (the graceless and the lawless gospel) between these two evangelical mill stones. And thus the Gospel was, in general, preached by good men for above three hundred years after Christ's ascension. If ever the tempter put successfully in practice his two capital maxims, "Confound and destroy,-Divide and conquer," it was in the fourth century, when he helped Pelagius and Augustine, two warm disputants, openly to confound what should have been properly distinguished, and systematically to divide what should have been religiously joined; by which means they broke the balance of the doctrines of grace and justice. Nor did they do it out of malice; but through an immoderate regard for one part of the Gospel; an injudicious regard this, which was naturally productive of a proportionable disregard for the other part of God's word.

Pelagius (we are told by Augustine) preached free will; but, confounding natural free will with free will rectified and assisted by grace, he made too much of natural free will, and too little of God's free grace. The left leg of his Gospel system grew gigantic, while the right leg shrunk almost to nothing. And, commencing a rigid free willer, he insisted upon the sufficiency of our natural powers, and dwelt on the second Gospel axiom, and the doctrines of justice in so partial a manner, that he almost eclipsed the first Gospel axiom and the doctrines of grace.

Augustine, his cotemporary, under pretence of mending the matter, was guilty of an error exactly contrary. He so puffed up the right leg of his Gospel system, as to make it monstrous; while the left grew as slender and insignificant as a rotten stick. To bring this unhappy change about, in his controversial heats he confounded lawful, righteous free grace, with lawless, unscriptural, overbearing free grace; and, to make room for this latter, imaginary sort of grace, he sometimes turned free will out of its place, to give that place to necessity. Thus he commenced a rigid bound willer. The irresistible free grace, which he preached, bound the elect by the chains of an unconditional election to life, absolutely necessitating them to repent, believe, and be eternally saved: while the irresistible free wrath, which secretly advanced behind that overbearing grace, bound the non-elect in chains of absolute reprobation, and necessitated them to continue in sin, and be unavoidably damned. By these means, new, unholy doctrines of grace and wrath jostled the holy, ancient doctrines of grace and justice out of their place. The two Gospel axioms did no longer agree; but the first axiom, becoming like Leviathan, swallowed up the second. For the moment irresistible, lawless free grace, and despotic, cruel free wrath, mount the throne, what room is there for holy, righteous free grace? What room for free will? What room for the doctrines of justice? What room for the primitive Gospel? Absolutely none; unless it be a narrow room indeed, artfully contrived under a heap of Augustinian contradictions, and Calvinian inconsistencies.

From this short account of Pelagianism and Augustinianism, it is evident that heated Pelagius (if the account given us be true) gave a desperate thrust to the right side of primitive Christianity; and that

heated Augustine, in his hurry to defend her, aimed a well-meant blow at Pelagius, but by overdoing it, and missing his mark, wounded the left side of the heavenly woman, who from that time has lain bleeding between these two rash antagonists. "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water," says the wise man. These "waters of strife," which Pelagius and Augustine let in upon the Church, by breaking the flood gates of Gospel truth, soon overflowed the Christian world, and at times, like the waters of the overflowing Nile, have almost beenturned into blood. When streams of self-justifying, rigid, Pelagian free will, have met with streams of self-electing, lawless, Augustinian free grace, the strife has been loud and terrible. They have foamed out their own shame, and frighted thousands of persons, travelling to Sion, out of the noisy ways of a corrupted gospel, into the more quiet paths of infidelity.

For above a thousand years these "waters of strife" have spread devastation through the Christian world; I had almost said also through the Mohammedan world: for Mohammed, who collected the filth of corrupt Christianity, derived these errors into his system of religion: Omar and Hali, at least, two of his relations and successors, became the leaders of two sects, which divide the Mohammedan world. Omar, whom the Turks follow, stood up for bound will, necessity, and a species of absolute Augustinian predestination. And Hali, whom the Persians revere, embraced rigid free will and Pelagian free agency. But the worst is, that these muddy waters have flowed through the dirty channel of the Romish Church, into all the Protestant Churches, and have at times deluged them; turning, wherever they came, brotherly love into fierce contention. For, breaking the evangelical balance of the Gospel axioms is as naturally productive of polemical debates in the Church, as breaking the parliamentary balance between the king and the people is of contention and civil wars in the state. How the plague first infected Protestantism will be seen in the next section.

SECTION IV.

Luther and Calvin do not restore the balance of the Gospel axioms→→ That honour was reserved for Cranmer, the English reformer, who modelled the Church of England very nearly according to the primitive Gospel-How soon the Augustinian doctrines of lawless grace preponderated-How the Pelagian doctrine of unassisted free will now preponderates.

WHEN the first reformers shook off the yoke of Papistical trumperies, they fought gallantly for many glorious truths. But it is to be wished, that while they warmly contended for the simple, Scriptural dress of the primitive Gospel, they had not forgotten to fight for some of its very vitals, I mean the doctrines of holy free grace, and rectified, assisted free will. They did much good in many respects; so much indeed, that no grateful Protestant can find fault with them without reluctance. But, after all, they did not restore the balance of the doctrines of grace and justice. Luther, the German reformer, being a monk of the order of VOL. II.

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Augustine, entered upon the reformation full of prejudices in favour of Augustine's Solifidian mistakes. And he was so busy in opposing the pope of Rome, his indulgences, Latin masses, and other monastic fooleries, that he did not find time to oppose the Augustinian fooleries of fatalism, Manichean necessity, lawless grace, and free wrath. On the contrary, in one of his heats, he broke the left scale of the Gospel balances, denied there was any such thing as free will, and by that means gave a most destructive blow to the doctrines of justice: a rash deed, for which Erasmus, the Dutch reformer, openly reproved him, but with too much of the Pelagian spirit.

Calvin, the French reformer, who, after he had left his native country, taught divinity in the academy of Geneva, far from getting light, and learning moderation by the controversy of Luther and Erasmus, rushed with all the impetuosity of his ardent spirit into the error of heated Augustine, and so zealously maintained it, that, from that time, it has been called Calvinism.

If Calvin did not grow wiser by the dispute of Luther and Erasmus, Melancthon, another German reformer, did; and our great English reformer, Cranmer, who in wisdom, candour, and moderation, far exceeded the generality of the reformers on the continent, closely imitated his excellent example. Nay, to the honour of this favoured island, and of perfect Protestantism, in a happy moment he found the exact balance of the Gospel axioms. Read, adinire, and obey his anti-Augustinian, anti-Pelagian, and apostolic proclamation. "All men be also to be monished, and chiefly preachers, that, in this high matter, they, looking on both sides, [i. e. looking both to the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of justice] so attemper and moderate themselves, that neither they so preach the grace of God, [with heated Augustine] that they take away thereby free will, nor on the other side so extol free will, [with heated Pelagius,] that injury be done to the grace of God." (Erud. of a Christian Man, sec. on free will, which was added by Cranmer.) Here you see the balance of the doctrines of grace and justice, which Augustine and Pelagius had broken, and which Luther and Calvin had ground to dust in some of their overdoing moments,—you see, I say, that important balance perfectly restored by the English reformer. With this short valuable quotation, as with a shield of impenetrable brass, all men, and chiefly preachers, may quench all the fiery darts cast at the primitive Gospel by the preachers of the partial gospels of the day; I mean the abettors of the Augustinian or of the Pelagian error.

Mankind are prone to run into extremes. The world is full of men who always overdo or underdo. Few people ever find the line of moderation, the golden mean; and of those who do, few stay long upon it. One blast or another of vain doctrine soon drives them east or west from the meridian of pure truth. How happy would it have been for the Church of England if her first members had steadily followed the light which our great reformers carried before them. But alas, not a few of them had more zeal than moderation. Cranmer could not make all his fellow reformers to see with his eyes. In the time of their popish superstition many of them had deeply imbibed the errors of St Augustine, whom the Church of Rome reveres as the greatest of the fathers, and the holiest of the ancient saints. These good men, finding that his doctrine was

countenanced by Luther, Calvin, Peter Martyr, Bucer, and others, whom they look upon as oracles, soon relapsed into the Augustinian doctrines of lawless grace, from which some of them had never been quite disentangled. Even during Cranmer's confinement (but much more after his martyrdom) they began to renounce the doctrines of justice, which were only indirectly secured in the seventeenth article of our Church; warmly contending for the doctrines of necessitating grace, which are always destructive of the doctrines of justice. Thus, while some of them erected the canopy of a lawless, Solifidian free grace over some men, elected according to Calvin's notion of an absolute election to eternal life; others cast the sable net of free wrath over the rest of mankind; imagining that from all eternity most men were absolutely predestinated to eternal death, according to the Calvinian doctrine of absolute, unconditional reprobation. Thus the balance of the Gospel axioms, which Cranmer (considering the times) had maintained to admiration, was again broken. Rigid Calvinism got the ascendancy; the doctrines of justice were publicly decried as popery and heresy, almost all England over. All the reprobates were exculpated. By the doctrine of necessity, their unavoidable continuance in sin, and their damnation, were openly charged upon God and Adam. Decrees of absolute predestination to necessary holiness and eternal salvation, and statutes of absolute appointment to necessary sin and eternal damnation began currently to pass for Gospel. And the doctrines of justice were swept away, as if they had been poisonous cobwebs spun by popish spiders. Hence it is that the Rev. Mr. Toplady, describing the triumphs of rigid Calvinism in the days of Queen Elizabeth, says, in his letter to Dr. Nowell, p. 45, that "those who held this opinion of God's not being any cause of sin and damnation, were at that time mightily cried out against by the main body of our Reformed Church, as fautors of false religion," and "that to be called a free-will man, was looked upon as a shameful reproach, and opprobrious infamy; yea, and that a person so termed was deemed heretical." A proof this, that Dr. Peter Heylin speaks the truth when he says, “It was safer for any man in those times to have been looked upon as a hea then or publican, than an anti-Calvinist."

Should the judicious reader ask how it happened that the doctrines of unscriptural grace, free wrath, and necessity were so soon substituted for the doctrines of genuine free grace, and rectified, assisted free will, which Cranmer had so evangelically maintained; I answer, that although Thomas Aquinas and Scotus, the leading divines of the Church of Rome, through their great veneration for Augustine, leaned too much toward the lawless, wrathful doctrines of grace; yet Luther, Calvin, and Zuinglius leaned still more toward that extreme. This was soon observed by some of the popish doctors; and as they knew not how to make a proper stand against the genuine doctrines of the reformation, they were glad to find a good opportunity of opposing the reformers, by opposing the Augustinian mistakes which Luther and Calvin carried to the height. Accord ingly, leaving the extreme of Augustine, to which they had chiefly leaned before, many of the popish divines began to lean toward the extreme of Pelagius, and commenced rigid and partial defenders of the doctrines of justice, which the German, French, and Swiss reformers had indirectly destroyed, by overthrowing the doctrine of free will, which

is inseparably connected with the doctrine of a day of just judgment. Hence it is, that, at the council of Trent, which the pope had called to stop the progress of the reformation, the Papists took openly the part of the second Gospel axiom; and in the spirit of contradiction began warmly to oppose Augustine's mistakes, which the first Jesuits had ardently embraced, Bellarmine himself not excepted. Party spirit soon blew up the partial zeal of the contending divines. Protestant bigotry ran against popish bigotry; and the effect of the shock was a driving of each other still farther from the line of Scripture moderation. Thus many Papists, especially those who wrote against the Calvinian Protestants, became the partial supporters of the doctrines of justice, while their opponents showed themselves the partial vindicators of the doctrines of grace. Hence it is, that, in the popish countries, those who stood up for faith and distinguishing free grace began to be called heretics, Lutherans, and Solifidians: while, in the Protestant countries, those who had the courage to maintain the doctrines of justice, good works, and unnecessitated obedience, were branded as Papists, merit mongers, and heretics.

Things continued in this unhappy state till oppressed truth made new efforts to shake off the yokes put upon her. For the scales, which hold the weights of the sanctuary, (the two Gospel axioms,) hover and shift till they have attained their equilibrium; just as the disturbed needle of a compass quivers and moves till it has recovered its proper situation, and points again due north. This new shifting happened in the last century, when Arminius, a Protestant divine, endeavoured to rescue the doctrines of justice, which were openly trampled under foot by most Protestants; and when Jansenius, a popish bishop, attempted to exalt the doctrines of distinguishing grace, which most divines of the Church of Rome had of late left to the Protestants. Thus Jansenius, overdoing after Augustine, brought the doctrines of unscriptural grace and free wrath with a full tide into the Church of Rome : while Arminius (or, at least, some of his followers) drove them with all his might out of the Protestant Churches.

Many countries were in a general ferment on this occasion. A great number of Protestant divines, assembled at Dort in Holland, confirmed Calvin's indirect opposition to the doctrines of justice, and condemned Arminius after his death; for during his life none dared to attack him; such was the reputation he had, even through Holland, both for learning and exemplary piety! On the other hand, the pope, with his conclave, imitating the partiality of the synod of Dort, injudiciously condemned Jansenius and his Calvinism, and thus did an injury to the doctrines of grace, which Jansenius warmly contended for. But truth shall stand, be it ever so much opposed by either partial Protestants or partial Papists. Therefore, notwithstanding the decisions of the popish conclave, Jansenism and the doctrines of grace continued to leaven the Church of Rome: while, notwithstanding the decisions of the Protestant synod, Arminianism and the doctrines of justice continued to spread through the Protestant Churches.

Archbishop Laud, in the days of King James and Charles the First, caused in the Gospel scales the turn which then began to take place in our Church in favour of the doctrines of justice. He was the chief