any meetings, either privately or publicly, When Luther declared himself against the church of Rome, the Bohemian Brethren endeavoured to join his party. At first, that reformer shewed a great aversion to them; but, the Bohemians sending their deputies to him in 1565, with a full account of their doctrines, he acknowledged that they were a society of Christians whose doctrine came nearest to the purity of the Gospel. This sect published another confession of faith in 1535, in which they renounced anabaptism, which they at first practised: upon which a union was concluded with the Lutherans, and afterwards with the Zuinglians, whose opinions from thenceforth they continued to follow.

cording to Dr. Campbell, properly denotes || rejected the popish ceremonies in the cele calumny, detraction, reproachful or abusive bration of the mass; nor did they make use language, against whomsoever it be vented, of any other prayer than the Lord's prayer. It is in scripture applied to reproaches not They consecrated leavened bread. They aimed against God only but man also, Rom allowed no adoration but of Jesus Christ in iii. 8. Rom. xiv. 16. 1 Pet. iv. 4. Gr. It, the communion. They rebaptized all such however, more peculiarly restrained to evil as joined themselves to their congregation. or reproachful words offered to God. Ac- They abhorred the worship of saints and cording to Lindwood, blasphemy is an injury images, prayers for the dead, celibacies offered to God, by denying that which is vows, and fasts; and kept none of the fes due and belonging to him, or attributing to tivals but Christmas, Easter, and Whithim what is not agreeable to his nature. suntide. "Three things," says a divine," are essen- In 1503 they were accused by the Cathotial to this crime; 1. God must be the lics to king Ladislaus II, who published an object.-2 The words spoken or written, in-edict against them, forbidding them to hold dependent of consequences which others may derive from them, must be injurious in their nature.-And, 3. He who commits the crime must do it knowingly. This is real blasphemy; but there is a relative blasphemy, as when a man may be guilty ignorantly, by propagating opinions which dishonour God, the tendency of which he does not perceive. A man may be guilty of this constructively; for if he speak freely against received errors, it will be construed into blasphemy." By the English laws, blasphemies of God, as denying his being or providence, and all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, &c. are offences by the common law, and punishable by fine, imprisonment, and pillory; and by the statute law, he that denies one of the persons in the Trinity, or asserts that there are more than one God, or denies Christianity to be true, for the first offence is rendered incapable of any office; for the second, adjudged incapable of suing, being executor or guardian, receiving any gift or legacy, and to be imprisoned for years. According to the law of Scotland, blasphemy is punished with death: these laws, however, in the present age, are not enforced; the legislature thinking, perhaps, that spiritual offences should be left to be punished by the Deity rather than by human statutes. Campbell's Prel. Diss., vol. i. p. 395; Robinson's Script. Plea, p. 58.

BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. See UNPARDONABLE SIN.

BOOK OF SPORTS. See SPORTS.

BORRELLISTS, a Christian sect in Holland, so named from their founder Borrel, a man of great learning in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. They reject the use of the sacrament, public prayer, and all other external acts of worship. They assert that all the Christian churches of the world have degenerated from the pure apostolic dcctrines, because they have suffered the word of God, which is infallible, to be expounded, or rather corrupted, by doctors who are fallible. They lead a very austere life, and employ a great part of their goods in alms.

BOURIGNONISTS, the followers of Antoinette Bourignon, a lady in France, who pretended to particular inspirations. She was born at Lisle in 1616. At her birth she BODY OF DIVINITY. See THEOLOGY. was so deformed, that it was debated some BOGOMILI, or BOGARMITE, a sect of days in the family whether it was not proheretics which arose about the year 1179. || per to stifle her as a monster; but her deThey held that the use of churches, of theformity diminishing, she was spared; and sacrament of the Lord's supper, and all afterwards obtained such a degree of beauty, prayer except the Lord's prayer, ought to that she had her admirers. From her childbe abolished; that the baptism of Catholics hood to her old age she had an extraor is imperfect; that the persons of the Trinity dinary turn of mind. She set up for a reare unequal, and that they often made them- former, and published a great number of selves visible to those of their sect. books filled with very singular notions; the BOHEMIAN BRETHREN, a sect of most remarkable of which are entitled, The Christian reformers which sprung up in Light of the World, and The Testimony of Bohemia in the year 1467. They treated Truth. In her confession of faith, she prothe pope and cardinals as antichrist, and the fesses her belief in the scriptures, the divinity church of Rome as the whore spoken of in and atonement of Christ. She believed also the Revelations. They rejected the sacra- that man is perfectly free to resist or rements of the Romish church, and chose lay-ceive divine grace; that God is ever unmen for their ministers. They held the changeable love towards all his creatures, and scriptures to be the only rule of faith, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishments

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but that the evil they suffer are the natural consequence of sin; that religion consists not in outward forms of worship nor systems of faith, but in an entire resignation to the will of God. She held many extravagant notions, among which it is said, she asserted that Adam, before the fall, possessed the principle of both sexes; that in an extacy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state; as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like an hermit, and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland, She died at Faneker, in the province of Frise, October 30, 1680. Her works have been printed in 18 vols. 8vo.

BRETHREN AND CLERKS OF THE COMMON LIFE, a denomination assumed by a religious fraternity towards the end of the fifteenth century. They lived under the rule of St. Augustin, and were said to be eminently useful in promoting the cause of religion and learning.

BRETHREN WHITE, were the followers of a priest from the Alps about the beginning of the fifteenth century. They and their leader were arrayed in white garments. Their leader carried about a cross like a standard. His apparent sanctity and devotion drew together a number of followers. This deluded enthusiast practised many acts of mortification and penance, and endeavoured to persuade the Europeans to renew the holy war. Boniface IX. ordered him to be apprehended, and committed to the flames; upon which his followers dispersed.

BRETHREN UNITED. See MORA

VIANS.

BREVIARY, the book containing the daily service of the church of Rome.

BOYLE'S LECTURES, a course of eight sermons, preached annually; set on foot by the honourable R. Boyle, by a codicil annexed to his will, in 1691, whose design, as expressed by the institutor, is to prove the truth of the Christian religion against infidels, BRIDGETINS, or BRIGITTINs, an order without descending to any controversies denominated from St. Bridgit, or Birgit, a among Christians, and to answer new diffi- Swedish lady, in the fourteenth century. culties, scruples, &c. For the support of Their rule is nearly that of Augustin. The this lecture he assigned the rent of his house Brigittins profess great mortification, poverty, in Crooked Lane to some learned divine and self-denial; and they are not to possess within the bills of mortality, to be elected any thing they can call their own, not so for a term not exceeding three years. But much as an halfpenny; nor even to touch the fund proving precarious, the salary was money on any account. This order spread ill paid; to remedy which inconvenience, much through Sweden Germany, and the archbishop Tennison procured a yearly sti- Netherlands. In England we read of but pend of 501. for ever, to be paid quarterly, one monastery of Brigittins, and this built by charged on a farm in the parish of Brill, in Henry V, in 1415, opposite to Richmond, the county of Bucks. To this appointment now called Sion House; the ancient inhabitwe are indebted for many excellent de-ants of which, since the dissolution, are setfences of natural and revealed religion.

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BRANDENBURG, Confession of. formulary or confession of faith, drawn up in the city of Brandenburg by order of the elector, with a view to reconcile the tenets of Luther with those of Calvin, and to put an end to the disputes occasioned by the confession of Augsburgh. See AUGSBURGH CONFESSION.

BRETHREN AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT, an appellation assumed by a sect which sprung up towards the close of the thirteenth century, and gained many adherents in Italy, France, and Germany. They took their denomination from the words of St. Paul, Rom. viii. 2. 14. and maintained that the true children of God were invested with perfect freedom from the jurisdiction of the law. They held that all things flowed by emanation from God;|| that rational souls were portions of the Deity; that the universe was God; and that by the power of contemplation they were united to the Deity, and acquired hereby a glorious and sublime liberty, both from the sinful lusts and the common instincts of nature, with a variety of other enthusiastic notions. Many edicts were published against them; but they continued till about the middle of the feenth century.

tled at Lisbon.

BRIEFS (apostolical) are letters which the pope despatches to princes and other magistrates concerning any public affair.

BROTHERS, Lay, among the Romanists, are illiterate persons, who devote themselves in some convent to the service of the religious.

BROWNISTS, a sect that arose among the puritans towards the close of the sixteenth century; so named from their leader, Robert Brown. He was educated at Cambridge, and was a man of good parts and some learning. He began to inveigh openly against the ceremonies of the church, at Norwich, in 1580; but, being much opposed by the bishops, he with his congregation left England, and settled at Middleburgh, in Zealand, where they obtained leave to worship God in their own way, and form a church according to their own model. They soon, however, began to differ among themselves; so that Brown, growing weary of his office, returned to England in 1589, renounced his principles of separation, and was preferred to the rectory of a church in Northamptonshire. He died in prison in 1630. The revolt of Brown was attended with the dissolution of the church at Middleburgh; but the seeds of Brownism which he

had sown in England were so far from be-ed, and some hanged. Brown himself deing destroyed, that Sir Walter Raleigh, in a clared on his death-bed that he had been in speech in 1592, computes no less than 20,000 thirty-two different prisons, in some of which of this sect. he could not see his hand at noon-day. They were so much persecuted, that they resolved at last to quit the country. Accordingly many retired and settled at A:nsterdam, where they formed a church, and chose Mr. Johnson their pastor, and after him Mr. Ainsworth, author of the learned Commentary on the Pentateuch. Their church flourished near 100 years. Among the Brownists, too, were the famous John Robinson, a part of whose congregation from Leyden, in Holland, made the first permanent settlement in North America; and the laborious Canne, the author of the marginal references to the Bible.

1584, with all his disciples, but afterwards he was admitted to the communion of the Socinian sect.

The articles of their faith seem to be nearly the same as those of the church of England. The occasion of their separation was not, therefore, any fault they found with the faith, but only with the discipline and form of government of the churches of England. They equally charged corruption on the episcopal and presbyterian forms; nor would they join with any other reformed church, because they were not assured of the sanctity and regeneration of the members that composed it. They condemned the solemn celebration of marriages in the church, maintaining that matrimony being a political contract, the confirmation thereof ought to BUCHANITES, a sect of enthusiasts who come from the civil magistrate; an opinion sprung up in the West of Scotland about in which they are not singular. They|| 1783, and took their name from a Mrs. would not allow the children of such as were Buchan, of Glasgow, who gave herself out not members of the church to be baptized to be the woman spoken of in the ReveThey rejected all forms of prayer, and held lations; and that all who believed in her that the Lord's prayer was not to be recited should be taken up to heaven without tasting as a prayer, being only given for a rule or death, as the end of the world was near. model whereon all our prayers are to be They never increased much; and the death formed. Their form of church government of their leader within a year or two afterwas nearly as follows. When a church was wards, occasioned their dispersion, by putto be gathered, such as desired to be mem-ting an end to their hopes of reaching the bers of it made a confession of their faith in New Jerusalem without death. the presence of each other, and signed a BUDNÆANS, a sect in Poland, who covenant, by which they obliged themselves disclaimed the worship of Christ, and run to walk together in the order of the Gospel. into many wild hypotheses. Budnæus, the The whole power of admitting and exclud-founder, was publicly excommunicated in ing members, with the decision of all controversies, was lodged in the brotherhood. Their church officers were chosen from among themselves, and separated to their several offices, by fasting, prayer, and imposition of hands. But they did not allow the priesthood to be any distinct order. As the vote of the brethren made a man a minister, so the same power could discharge him from his office, and reduce him to a mere layman again; and as they maintained the bounds of a church to be no greater than what could meet together in one place, and join in one communion, so the power of these officers was prescribed within the same limits. The minister of one church could not administer the Lord's supper to another, nor baptize the children of any but those of his own society. Any lay brother was allow- BURIAL, the interment of a deceased ed the liberty of giving a word of exhor- person. The rites of burial have been looktation to the people; and it was usual fored upon in all countries as a debt so sacred, some of them after sermon to ask questions, that such as neglected to discharge them were and reason upon the doctrines that had been thought accursed. Among the Jews, the pripreached. In a word, every church on their vilege of burial was denied only to self-murmodel is a body corporate, having full power derers, who were thrown out to putrefy upon to do every thing in themselves, without the ground. In the Christian church, though being accountable to any class, synod, con- good men always desired the privilege of invocation, or other jurisdiction whatever. terment, yet they were not, like the heaThe reader will judge how near the Inde- thens, so concerned for their bodies, as to pendent churches are allied to this form of think it any detriment to them if either the government. See, INDEPENDENTS.-The barbarity of an enemy, or some other accilaws were execnted with great severity on dent, deprived them of this privilege. The the Brownists; their books were prohibited primitive church denied the more solemn by queen Elizabeth, their persons imprison-rites of burial only to unbaptized pers

BULLS Popish, are letters called apostolic by the Canonists, strengthened with a leaden seal, and containing in them the decrees and commandments of the pepe.

BURGHER SECEDERS, a numerous and respectable class of dissenters from the church of Scotland, who were originally connected with the associate presbytery; but, some difference of sentiment arising about the lawfulness of taking the Burges oath, a separation ensued in 1739; in consequence of which, those who pleaded for the affirmative obtained the appellation of Burgher, and their opponents that of Antiburgher Seceders. See SECEDERS.

self-murderers, and excommunicated per- ||tary burying places were forbidden till the sons, who continued obstinate and impenitent | twelfth century. See FUNERAL RITES. AS in a manifest contempt of the church's cen- to burying in churches, we find a difference sures. The place of burial among the Jews of opinion: some have thought it improper was never particularly determined. We find that dead bodies should be interred in the they had graves in the town and country, church. Sir Matthew Hale used to say, that upon the highways or gardens, and upon churches were for the living, and churchmountains. Among the Greeks, the temples yards for the dead. In the famous bishop were made repositories for the dead, in the Hall's will we find this passage: after desiprimitive ages; yet, in the latter ages, the ring a private funeral, he says, "I do not Greeks as well as the Romans buried the dead hold God's house a meet repository for the without the cities and chiefly by the high-dead bodies of the greatest saints." Mr. ways. Among the primitive Christians, burying in cities was not allowed for the first three hundred years, nor in churches for many ages after; the dead bodies being first deposited in the atrium or church-yard, and porches and porticos of the church: heredi

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Hervey, on the contrary, defends it, and supposes that it tends to render our assemblies more awful; and that, as the bodies of the saints are the Lord's property, they should be reposed in his house.

sidered as of equal truth and authority with the express declarations and doctrines of Scripture.

regeneration; such were Ahab's humility, 1 Kings, xxi. 29. Nineveh's repentance, Jer. iii. 5. and Herod's hearing of John, Mark, CALL, CALLING, generally denotes vi. 20. On the whole, the design of God in God's invitation to man to participate the giving this common call in the gospel is the blessings of salvation: it is termed effectual, || salvation of his people, the restraining of to distinguish it from that external or com- many from wicked practices, and the setting mon call of the light of nature, but especially forth of the glorious work of Redemption by of the Gospel, in which men are invited to Jesus Christ. See Gill and Ridgeley's Body come to God, but which has no saving effect of Div. Witsius on the Cov.; and Benupon the heart: thus it is said, "Many are net's Essay on the Gospel Dispensation. called, but few chosen." Matthew xxii. 14. CALVINISTS, those who embrace the Effectual calling has been more particularly doctrine and sentiments of Calvin, the celedefined to be "the work of God's Spirit,brated reformer of the Christian church from whereby, convincing us of our sin and mise-Romish superstition and doctrinal errors. ry, enlightening our minds with the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the Gospel." This may farther be considered as a call from darkness to light, 1 Pet. ii. 9.; from bondage to liberty, Gal. ii. 13; from the fellowship of the world to the fellowship of Christ, 1 Cor. i. 9.; from misery to happiness, 1 Cor. vii. 15.; from sin to holiness, 1 Thes. iv. 7.; finally, from all created good to the enjoyment of eternal felicity, 1 Pet. v. 10. It is considered in the Scripture as an holy calling, 2 Tim. i. 9.; an high calling, Phil. iii. 14.; an heavenly calling, Heb. iii. 1.; and without repentance, as God will never cast off any who are once drawn to him, Rom. xi. 29.

John Calvin was born at Nogen, in Picardy, in the year 1509. He first studied the civil law, and was afterwards made professor of divinity at Geneva, in the year 1536. His genius, learning, eloquence, and piety, rendered him respectable even in the eyes of his enemies.

The name of Calvinists seems to have been given at first to those who embraced not merely the doctrine, but the church government and discipline established at Geneva, and to distinguish them from the Lutherans. But since the meeting of the synod of Dort, the name has been chiefly applied to those who embrace his leading views of the Gospel to distinguish them from the Arminians.

The leading principles taught by Calvin were the same as those of Augustine. The main doctrines by which those who are called after his name as distinguished from the Arminians, are reduced to five articles; and which, from their being the principal points discussed at the synod of Dort, have since been denominated the five points. These are predestination, particular redemption, total depravity, effectual calling, and the certain perseverance of the saints.

The following statement is taken principally from the writings of Calvin, and the decisions at Dort, compressed in as few words as possible.

It has been a matter of dispute whether the Gospel call should be general, i. e. preached to all men indiscriminately. Some suppose that, as the elect only will be saved, it is to be preached only to them; and, therefore, cannot invite all to come to Christ. But to this it is answered, that an unknown decree can be no rule of action, Deut. xxix. 29. Prov. ii. 13; that, as we know not who are the elect, we cannot tell but he may succeed our endeavours by enabling those who are addressed to comply with the call, and believe; that it is the Christian minister's commission to preach the Gospel to every creature, Mark xvi. 15.; that the inspired writers never confined themselves to preach to saints only, but reasoned with, and persuaded sinners, 2 Cor. v. 11:-and, lastly, that a general address to men's consciences has been greatly successful in promoting their conversion, Acts ii, 23, 41. But it has been asked, if none but the elect can believe, and no man has any ability in himself to comply with the call, and as the Almighty knows that none but those to whom he gives grace, can be effectually called, of what use In proof of this they allege, among many is it to insist on a general and external call? other scripture passages, the following, "acTo this it is answered, that, by the exter-cording as he hath chosen us in him before nal call, gross enormous crimes are often avoided; habits of vice have been partly conquered; and much moral good at least has been produced. It is also observed, that though a man cannot convert himself, yet he has a power to do some things that are materially good, though not good in all those circumstances that accompany or flow from

1. They maintain that God hath chosen a certain number of the fallen race of Adam in Christ, before the foundation of the world, unto eternal glory, according to his immutable purpose, and of his free grace and love, without the least foresight of faith, good works, or any conditions performed by the creature; and that the rest of mankind he was pleased to pass by, and ordain to dishonour and wrath, for their sins, to the praise of his vindictive justice.

the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So, then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God, that sheweth mercy. Thou wilt say, then,