reign and the true religion was so well established before she left the world, that her reign ought justly to be termed the golden age of the church of England (i)."

SECTION XIX.

State of the Calvinistic Doctrines in England, from the death of Elizabeth, to that of king James I.

JAMES the First's accession to the crown of England was, for many years, followed by no shadow of alteration in the theological principles of our ruling ecclesiastics. The king himself was a Calvinist in theory: but more, by virtue of outward and visible education, than of inward and spiritual grace. His own personal morals did by no means comport with the rectitude of his speculative system. England had seen few princes more warmly orthodox; and not very many, whose private manners were so thoroughly profligate and eccentric. A proof, that the purest set of religious tenets, when they float merely on the surface of the understanding, and are no otherwise received, than scholastically, as a science, without reaching the heart; are sure to leave the life and manners uncultivated and unrenewed. The regenerating influence of God's holy Spirit on the soul, is the best door for the doctrines of grace to enter at. When they flow to us through the channel of celestial experience, they cannot fail to throw our hearts, our tempers, and our morals, into the mould of holiness.

(i) Rolt's Lives of the Reformers, p. 202.

There are two sorts of persons, whose condition is eminently dangerous: those, who know just enough of the gospel system, to hate it; and those, who profess to love it, but hold it in unrighteousness.

King James, amidst all his deviations from virtue; amidst all his mental weaknesses, and political absurdities; was the most learned secular prince then in Europe. His talents, as a scholar, were far from being so extremely despicable and superficial, as his defect of wisdom and his excess of self opinion have led some historians to suppose. Had his judgment and his virtues borne any proportion to his acquirements, his name would have adorned, instead of dishonouring, as it does, the catalogue of kings. His two sons, prince Henry, and Charles the first, though they had not half the literary attainments of their father, yet eclipsed him totally, even as a man of parts, by force of superior genius, and by possessing a larger stock of private virtue. Vice (especially those species of it, to which James was enslaved) has a native tendency to debase, enfeeble, and diminish, the powers of the mind. To which must be added, that the erudition, as well as the whole personal and civil conduct, of this mean prince, appeared to peculiar disadvantage, after the wise, the shining, the vigorous administration of Elizabeth who was immensely his superior, both in elegant learning, and in the art of government.

That James was a speculative Calvinist, his own writings abundantly declare. Mr. Hume gives a sort of ambiguous intimation, (k) that, toward the end of his reign, he adopted the principles of Arminius. I wish that polite, but not always impartial historian, had favoured us with the authorities (if any such there be) on which that implication was grounded. I should be extremely glad, to see it proved, that James actually did, apostatise,

(k) Hist. of Eng. vol. v. p. 572.

in his latter years, to the Arminian tenets. For he really was no honour to us. King as he was, the meanest Calvinist in his dominions might have blushed to call him brother. It were pity, that a man of so corrupt a heart should live and die with a set of sound opinions in his head.

But I have never been able to find, that there is the smallest shadow of foundation, for supposing, that he ever dropped, what Mr. Hume pleases to term, "The more rigid principles of absolute reprobation and unconditional decrees." On the contrary, his religious tenets, and his principles of political tyranny, seem, like flesh and spirit, to have been in perpetual conflict with each other, during the last years of his life.-Let me explain myself. The point is curious: and not altogether uninteresting.

James was wicked enough, to hunger and thirst after the liberties of his people. But, with all his boasted king-craft (as he called it), he was, provi. dentially, destitute both of wisdom and spirit, to carry his wish into execution. Much of his reign was wasted, in contemptibly striving to balance matters between the protestants and the papists; the latter of whom he affected to keep fair with, on account of their being, as he phrased it, "dexterous king-killers." Just as some Indians are said to worship the devil, for fear he should do them a mischief.

For sometime before his death, James's wretched politics took a turn, somewhat different. His royal care was to trim between the Calvinists and the Arminians (though the latter, at that time, hardly amounted to a handful): or, rather, to play them off against each other, while he buckled himself the faster into the saddle of despotism.

The Calvinists, though, even in his own judgment, religiously orthodox, were considered by him as state heretics, because they were friends to the rights

of mankind, and repressed the encroachments of civil tyranny.

On the other hand, the Arminians (then newly sprung up; or rather, newly imported from the Dutch coast) were detested by James, for the novelty, and for the supposed ill tendency, of their religious sentiments. The Arminians had, therefore, but one card to play, in order to save a losing game: which was to compensate for their religious heterodoxies, by state orthodoxy. They were forced, even to avoid the inconveniences of persecution itself (for James had given proof, that he could burn heretics as well as any of his predecessors), to fall in with the court-measures for extending the prerogative.

This card the Arminians accordingly played. It won and gave a new turn to the game. It not only saved them from civil penalties, but (of which, probably, at first, they were not so sanguine as to entertain the most distant expectation) they even began to be regarded, at court, as serviceable folks.

Hence, from being exclaimed against, as the very pests of Christian society; they gradually obtained connivance, toleration and countenance.-To sum up all they got ground, in the close of James's reign; and, in that of Charles, saw themselves, for the first time, at the top of the ecclesiastical wheel.

Every one, who is at all acquainted with the history of James's administration, knows, that I have not over-charged a single feature. For the sake, however, of such readers, as may not be versed in this kind of enquiries, I confirm the account, already given, by the following extract from Tindal.

"Soon after the accession of king James, the canons of the church were confirmed by the king and convocation.- -Things were in this state, when a great turn happened in the doctrine of the church. The Arminian, or remonstrant tenets, which had been condemned by the synod at Dort,

began to spread in England (1).-The Calvinistical sense of the [XXXIX] articles was discouraged; and injunctions were published against preaching upon predestination, election, efficacy of grace, &c. while the Arminians were suffered to inculcate their doctrines (m)" without control.

So much for the conduct of James and his court. Now, for the reason of that conduct. This the above historian immediately assigns, in manner and form following.

"As Arminianism was first embraced by those who were for exalting the [king's] prerogative above law; all, who adhered to the side of [civil] liberty, and to the Calvinistical sense of the articles, though ever so good churchmen, were branded by the court with the name of puritans.- -By this means, the [real] puritans acquired great strength: for, the bulk of the people and clergy were at once confounded with them (n)," under the absurd, new invented names of doctrinal and state puritans.

What if, to the testimony of this whig historian, we add that of a tory compiler?-The whole nation was now" [viz. A. D. 1622,]"divided between the court and the country parties. All the papists, and the Arminians (who were by this time formed into a sect in England), espoused the cause of the king.Those who professed the tenets of Arminius, were now as much caressed, as they had

(1) Observe: the "Arminian tenets" did not "begin" to "spread in England," till after the said tenets had been condemned " by the synod at Dort." Which condemnation by that synod took place, A. D. 1619; about sixteen years after James's accession to the English crown, and little more than five years before his majesty's death. Of such very modern standing, in England, is that Arminianism, which, coming to its full growth under Charles the First, Per populos graiûm, mediæque per elidis urbem, Ibat ovans, divumque sibi poscebat honores! (m) Tindal's Cont. of Rapin, vol. iii. p. 279, 280. 8vo. (n) Tindal, ibid. 280.

VOL. II.

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