tify, that I have walked with simplicity and sincerity, and in all good conscience,' in my office and vocation; that I have guarded with the greatest solicitude and care, against advancing or teaching any thing, which, after a diligent search into the Scriptures, I had not found exactly to agree with those sacred records; and that all the doctrines advanced by me, have been such as might conduce to the propagation and increase of the truth of the Christian religion, of the true worship of God, of general piety, and of a holy conversation among men,—and such as might contribute, according to the word of God, to a state of tranquillity and peace well befitting the Christian name; and that from these benefits I have excluded the Papacy, with which no unity of faith, no bond of piety or of Christian peace, can be preserved." Arminius, pp. 45, 46.

Thus have we done what justice Mr. Nichols, we presume, would require of us; that which we consider also the debt of truth to his hero Arminius. We rank him very high in placing him, not merely above his enemies in temper, for that were small praise; but in placing him among the peace-makers, to the best of his ability, and the peace-lovers. He was a courageous and unflinching confessor of what he deemed to be truth: but it was in a spirit of humility, and in the meek abiding of Christian charity. In doctrine shall we place him low, if we place him much on a level with his exact predecessor in age, the melancholy and interesting Melanchthon? We believe the points of resemblance between them will be found greater than is ordinarily supposed *. And,

Particularly, and very remarkably we might say, in their general approbation, use, and even profound admiration of Calvin's works, and Calvin's mind." After the holy Scriptures (the perusal of which I earnestly inculcate more than any other person, as the whole university as well as the consciences of my colleagues will testify), I exhort the students to read the Commentaries of Calvin, on whom I bestow higher praise than Helmichius ever did, as he confessed to me himself. For I tell them, that he is incomparable in the interpretation of Scripture; and that his Commentaries ought to be held in greater estimation, than all that is delivered to us in the writings of the ancient Christian fathers: so that, in a certain eminent spirit of prophecy, I give the preeminence to him beyond most others, in

if we were to proceed into the merits of those doctrinal questions which seem too big for suppression at this moment, we should say, that both these divines were led into the novelties of their system, by the overwhelming dread they felt at the excessive and perverted uses of the doctrine of election. These were such as to overlay the simple, unsophisticated and scriptural generalities of Germanic, Helvetic, or Belgic Confessions.

They were such as

justly to be described as "needing a toleration, far more than the most palpable anti-Calvinism of their opponents." They were often summed up in a few crude particulars, which some advocates of those days honestly avowed, or openly asserted, as the necessary results of their doctrine. And when positions the most revolting (such as those which made God more or less the author of fore-ordained sin, and man more or less the helpless victim of foreordained punishment), were sustained by metaphysics the most contemptible (such as severed the justice of God from His mercy), these real philosophers, and their followers, could not but remonstrate against such abuses.-They remon

deed beyond them all. I add, that, with regard to what belongs to common places, his Institutes must be read after the CateBut to all this I subjoin the remark, that chism, as a more ample interpretation. they must be perused with cautious choice, like all other human compositions." Arminius, pp. 295, 296.-Is this thy voice, Arminius? Even so! in a letter dated May 3, 1607, not two years before his death. Hooker might say the same. But the modern anti-Calvinist would hold it unfit to praise Calvin for a preface, or even for his well known elegant Latin. See Dean Kipling. We need not speak of Melanchthon in this particular, whose later agreement, nevertheless, with Arminius's views on election seems well nigh admitted on all bands. Arminius has stated the whole question of election thus: "Do we believe because we have been elected?" or, "Are we elected because we believe?" How delightful the knowledge of those questions now possessed by such spirits as those of Calvin, Arminius, and Melanchthon, whilst they

bliss in one measure for ever!"
clasp inseparable hands with joy and

strated, it is true; but, it is to be feared, too much on their own part in that very spirit of philosophy which they had learned from the others; and thus, by little and little, deviated into doctrines of an opposite nature, and no less derogatory to the Divine Being, As the mere philosophic Calvinist thus tended towards Manicheism, so the philosophic Arminian thus tended towards Pelagian and Socinian heresies; both, properly considered, the result of irreverently or philosophically tampering with the mysteries of Revelation. Explanations and defences of Divine mysteries we have always thought to be most hazardous, and never more so than in treating of God's predestination. Simply to prove that solemn doctrine from the declarations of Scripture is a course of a very different tendency: and is guarded at once by the undoubted fact, that unlimited mercy and conditional salvation (we use the phrase for want of a better-not as altogether admiring it) are equally capable of demonstration from the same records. If Calvinists had confined themselves to this one ground of argument, we question much if they would ever have been shaken from their once secure possession of the entire territory of the glorious Reformation. And if Arminius had abstained from his "twenty twenty" metaphysical reasons against, in answer to the twenty metaphysical reasons for, the suspected doctrine, we doubt if he would ever have fallen a premature victim to the rage of party, or dragged his few highminded and independent associates into ultimate proscription and ruin.

Whilst the friends of Arminius were with tears of unavailing regret marking his peaceful flight beyond the region of this lower and turbulent atmosphere, and exclaiming with Bertius, in the language of Scripture, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" the pious good humoured Hall was about, as we have seen, to exchange the obscurity of Halsted for the

more distinguished cure of Waltham,
under the patronage of the Earl of
Norwich. This he entered as Dr.
Hall in 1612: having previously skir
mished with the sect of the Brownists,
who had of course a branch in troubled
Holland, and having been taken up
by one Smith, whom Hall addresses,
and who, our biographer states,
"advanced and maintained the doctrines
of free-will and universal redemption, and
similar tenets, afterwards espoused by
Arminius." Hall, p. 55.

We have seen our Doctor at this time introduced to Royal favour by his acquaintance with Prince Henry at Richmond. In allusion to this his own narrative continues:—

"In the second year of mine attendance on his Highness, when I came for my dismission from that monthly service, it longer stay; and, at last, upon mine pleased the prince to command me a allowed departure, by the mouth of Sir Thomas Challoner, his governor, to tender unto me a motion of more honour and fathat it was his Highness' pleasure and vour than I was worthy of: which was, purpose, to have me continually resident at the court as a constant attendant, while the rest held on their wonted vicissitudes : obtain for me such preferments as should for which purpose, his Highness would yield me full contentment. I returned my humblest thanks, and my readiness to sacrifice myself to the service of so gracious of my unanswerableness to so great exa master; but, being conscious to myself pectation, and loath to forsake so dear and noble a patron, who had placed much of his heart on me, I did modestly put it off, and held close to my Waltham : long time, as I had done also at Halstead where, in a constant course, I preached a before, thrice in the week; yet never durst I climb into the pulpit to preach any sermon whereof I had not before, in my poor the same order wherein I hoped to deliver and plain fashion, penned every word in it; although, in the expression, I listed not to be a slave to syllables." Hall, pp. 57, 58.

The twenty-two years during which Dr. Hall held this living, saw him successively Prebendary of Wolverhampton, with more honour than emolument it would appear; three times engaged in foreign travel under royal orders; and finally Dean of Worcester. This last dignity followed as a kind of recompense for his first expedition in at

tendance on Lord Viscount Doncaster, ambassador to France in 1617, which ended very disastrously to the bodily feelings of our divine, in a dysentery; and, to convey him home,

"A litter was provided; but of so little "A litter was provided; but of so little ease, that Simeon's penitential lodging, or a malefactor's stocks, had been less penal. I crawled down from my close chamber into that carriage: In qua videbaris mihi efferri, tanquam in sandapila, as Mr. Moulin wrote to me afterward." Hall, p. 65.

His second expedition was, immediately afterwards, to Scotland, on the fruitless progress of King James; fruitless, except in the disgrace of broken commands and slighted authority; from which Dr. Hall made a speedy and rather questionable retreat, on the excuse of his services being not required north of Edinburgh,-but, perhaps, because they had been more accept able throughout to the pious Scotch, than to the worldly James. On this expedition, James proclaimed his illfated Book of Sports, for the employment of the Sunday upon enlightened anti-puritanical principles: on which, in conjunction with many other measures of those times of gathering,' it were only needful for us to say, that they seemed the result of infatuation. We are, indeed, entirely released from the necessity of saying more, by the seasonable silence of our worthy bishop on the same subject: in all whose works

"we find no allusion to, or any remarks made upon, this declaration for sports. The good bishop probably passed over such a violation of God's law in silence, out of respect, and from obedience, to the powers

that be for conscience' sake. But it would have been well, if he had left us a testimony of his decided disapprobation of such a violation of the Sabbath; or that he had written purposely on the morality of the Lord's day." Hall, pp. 143, 144.

We have to thank our biographer for very large extracts from Harris's Charles I. and James I. on this and other subjects.

The third expedition of our rising and courtly divine, undertaken by

Royal command, was that in which we are at present more immediately concerned; namely, his expedition in company with Bishop Carleton of Llandaff; Dr. Davenant, Margaret, Professor and Master of Queen's Master of Sydney College, and College, Cambridge; Dr. Ward, Archdeacon of Taunton, to attend in King James's name the Synod of DORT. That King James, who had just before insulted at once the laws of God and man by his blasphemous Book of Sunday Sports; that he, who had long since, under his own favourite motto, "No bishop, no king!" cried down every thing, not only Presbyterian in discipline, but Puritan in doctrine, and (we had almost said) really pious in practice; and whose favour, like that of his son Charles, mainly displayed itself for the anti-Calvinist part of his clergy;-that King James should have felt any burst of sudden and disinterested zeal in behalf of principles strictly Calvinistic and Presbyterian, such as were in preparation for the approaching National Synod of the Dutch Churches,—is an hypothesis to which happily we need not resort, for the explanation of his complaisant mission to that Synod. The circumstances of the whole transaetion, from first to last, were political. King James was too wary, as well as self-sufficient a politician, not to accept the flattering and important invitation from the master spirit of the Dutch Republic: and the temper of the divines sent by him, as well as of his instructions given, clearly prove his intention from the first to have been not opposition, but acquiescence; not discussion, but decision.

A short return must here be made to the circumstances of Holland after Arminius's death. About this period, or rather before, in 1608, we meet with a very significant historical notice in Brandt, which we shall give in his words, as a sort of key to all that followed. The United Provinces, be it observed, were still struggling with their foreign