"M. Rivet dare not declare which of those fountains of evils that Grotius has here indicated, he will acknowledge for his own, and which of them he will disavow. The reason of his hesitation undoubtedly is, lest he should either desert such great defenders of his own cause, or lest he should expose his colleagues [the Professors] in France to great and deserved hatred by openly explaining the meaning of their expressions. On this account therefore he throws dust into the eyes of his readers, to prevent them from seeing through the whole matter. He is desirous, indeed, to defend the saying of M. du Moulin :* But the client exclaims against his advocate. He who does not worship God is not a just man, because the worship of God is a great part of justice [or righteousness]: But such a person is the just possessor of those things which he holds by that title which the laws approve. To discuss the righteousness of PosSESSION, is one thing; and the righteousness of THE PERSON, is another. Yet Du Moulin must not be accounted the inventor of this contrivance, which confounds two things that are different; for the same sentiment was one of those which were condemned in Wicliffe, and with great propriety. Because if the ELECT have now a right to those things which the REPROBATES possess, it follows, that they may claim such things for themselves."

But though much and deservedly blamed for the open manner in which he evinced the Genevan antipathy to the regal authority, Paræus seems actually to have considered that he was imparting greater stability to a proviso in Calvin's Institutes by propounding it in a more scholastic form, and deducing some of its legitimate consequences. Calvin had introduced it, with that consummate art which he evinced on some

This expression occurs in that furious publication the Anatome of Arminianism, which was published by Peter du Moulin in 1619; and which was ably answered by Corvinus in 1621. Prior, however, to the appearance of this Reply, the bauished Remonstrants addressed a letter to Moulin, of which the subjoined paragraph is an extract:

"There are some persons who also place a black mark of disapprobation upon the following axiom which you have derived from the school of Machiavel: He who is destitute of faith in Christ, is not a child of God; and, consequently, he cannot be the heir and just possessor of earthly benefits, 'whatever may be the civil virtues with which he is adorned.' If this be not plotting against the sceptres of Kings, we cannot certainly perceive in what that crime consists. Are you then beginning to accommodate the Reformed [Calvinistic]Theology to seditions, rebellions and demands upon Kings? What insanity is this of yours!-that Princes who do not believe in Christ, are not the rightful lords of their own kingdoms and dominions! By what law is this just title of possession invalidated? Relying on the strength of this axiom, you presumptuously claim for yourself and the princes of your religion the kingdom of France: For the answers to the Heidelberg Catechism teach, that the Roman Catholics (of whom the King of France is one,) do in reality deny Christ.' He that hath ears to hear, let him hear !"

To this seditious sophism Grotius, in the text, returns an appropriate

answer.

other occasions, into the doctrine which he delivers concerning the duty of subjects to their Princes and Rulers, thus: "For if the vengeance of the Lord is the correction of unrestrained domination, we must not on this account instantly suppose that such vengeance is committed to us, who have received no other command than to obey and suffer. I am in this chapter] always speaking about men in private stations. In former days there were popular magistrates, who, as Ephori, were placed in opposition to the Spartan Kings; as Tribunes of the People, were opposed to the Roman Consuls; or, as Demarchi, to the Athenian Senate: And the same kind of power perhaps is exercised, in the present state of society, throughout different kingdoms, by the three Estates of each realm when they hold their grand assemblies. If there be now any such popular magistrates appointed to restrain the licentiousness of Kings, I am far from forbidding them, in accordance with their duty, to obstruct or oppose the ferocious liberty of Kings: So that if they should connive at Kings when conducting themselves tyrannically, and when they insultingly lord it over the humbled people, I would declare that their dissimulation [or connivance] is not devoid of nefarious perfidy, since they thus deceitfully betray the liberty of the people, of which they knew themselves to have been appointed the protectors by God's ordination.”— Among other improvements on Calvin's doctrine, Paræus ascribes to these subordinate magistrates a power to defend themselves, the Commonwealth, and the Church, even by arms, against the superior magistrate." Buchanan carried this doctrine still further, by asserting, "that the whole body of the people have as much authority over the persons of their kings as they have over every one of their own number;" and he thinks it "unreasonable and absurd, that kings are not made amenable to the ordinary judges of their several kingdoms, as often as any of their subjects may accuse them of murder, adultery, neglect in government," &c. In proof of this reforming position, Buchanan then quotes twelve instances of Scottish Kings, that had either been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or had by voluntary death or exile escaped the punishment due to their crimes.-Cambden tells us, that John Knox, the Calvinistic Reformer of Scotland, delivered this as a political axiom, "It is the duty of the nobles to take away idolatry by their own authority, and to reduce Kings by force within the prescribed bounds of the laws."* To every unprejudiced reader,

In a letter addressed by Grotius, in 1638, to the Rev. Sampson Johnson, he says: "Those neighbours of yours [the Scotch] are actuated by the spirit of the flock to which they belong: And unless some method be discovered for dissolving the unlawful confederacy, I entertain apprehensions of a great wound being inflicted, I will not now say upon the EPISCOPAL, but upon the RECAL AUTHORITY. I cannot express the solicitude which this affair

the turbulent character of Knox will not appear to much advantage, after all the ingenious palliations of Dr. Mc'Crie, who, like a devoted friend, is at once his biographer and apologist.

Dr. Thomas Pierce, who was, during the Inter-regnum, one of the most intrepid champions for the genuine doctrines and discipline of the Church of England in those her days of mourning and depression, speaks thus, in his Divine Philanthropy Defended, which was published a few years prior to the Restoration: "What shall we think of the Aërian or Presbyterian 'flaunt,' which denieth a supremacy to all civil power, in all cases and over all persons as well ecclesiastical as civil, and for this very reason were never known to be quiet any longer than they were flattered or kept in awe? The power to excommunicate the supreme civil Magistrate was never arrogated by any, except the POPE and the PRESBYTERIAN, in direct opposition to the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England, and to the Protestant

gives me, on account of the great affection which I feel for your nation. That [seditious] trumpet of Knox and Buchanan possesses uncommon influence in exasperating and inflaming ignorant and inexperienced men, especially when they have before their eyes examples of successful revolutions."

This is the language of a kind friend and of a true prophet. But, though thus laudably anxious for our national prosperity and for the due maintenance of the regal authority, he was a decided enemy to all harsh and imprudent measures, as will appear by the subjoined extract from one of his letters at that period to the Swedish Ambassador at the Hague: "These commotions in Scotland occur most unhappily at a very bad juncture. I wish both parties may possess sufficient prudence and moderation of mind to discover some remedy for such a dangerous evil. Of this I am well assured, that if any thing be extorted by force from the King in Scotland, the infectious example will extend to England, since there are in that kingdom not a few individuals to whom the present state of affairs is exceedingly displeasing." In a letter addressed to the same personage, about a month afterwards, he gives the following just and statesman-like views of our national concerns at that crisis; which, let it be observed, are the more valuable because they are the views of an impartial person who was competent to form a correct opinion concerning their causes and issue, long before the civil wars commenced. To a historian of those events, such brief notices are worth a thousand pages of those combined reasonings and statements, which have since been written by prejudiced partizans: "The affairs of Scotland fill me with anxiety. I think, if that nation had received the English Liturgy and the ceremonies which are agreeable to antiquity, as it had already received Bishops, it would not have committed any offence, and such a conformity in public rites might likewise have been of service in cementing together the two nations who are under the rule of the same sovereign. But now, when they have evinced an aversion of mind, which probably does not arise so much from things themselves as from mere suspicions, the deliberation is altered, and becomes truly difficult through the commotions of theople and the diminution of the royal authority: I humbly beseech God that the plan adopted may be such as will be salutary to the Monarch and to both nations. The University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, has condemned these commotions as illegal and disgraceful to Christians. But I entertain serious doubts, whether such [an Academic decree] can possibly assuage or pacify people that are thus highly excited and inflamed." Many other equally pertinent extracts might be here adduced: But these will shew Grotius to have been a good man and an able politician.

Р

Heirarchy by whom they were composed, and who never were known to beard their Sovereigns,- -a thing as natural to the Scottish Presbytery as eating and drinking to other men. And what affinity (or identity rather) there is betwixt the Scottish and English followers of Aerius, their League and Covenant hath made apparent."-The venerable Hooker has shewn, in his Preface to the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the progress which the English Calvinists made in this kind of learning; and, among other "methods of winning the people's affections unto a general liking of the cause" of the Genevan Discipline, he adduces the three following: "First. In the hearing of the multitude the faults especially of higher callings are ripped up with marvellous exceeding severity and sharpness of reproof, &c.-The next thing hereunto, is to impute all faults and corruptions, wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical government established, &c.-Having gotten thus much sway in the hearts of men, a Third step is to propose their own form of church-government as the only sovereign remedy of all evils, and to adorn it with all the glorious titles that may be," &c.-Most justly therefore might Dr. Heylin say: "As for points of practice, should we look that way, what a confusion should we find in most parts of Europe, occasioned by no other ground than the entertainment of the se principles, and the scattering of these positions among the people! -And, to say truth, such is the genius of the sect, that though they may admit an EQUAL, (as parity is the thing most aimed at by them both in Church and State,) yet they will hardly be persuaded to submit themselves to a SUPERIOR, to no superiors more unwillingly than to Kings and Princes; whose persons they disgrace, whose power they ruinate, whose calling they endeavour to decry and blemish by all means imaginable. The designation of all those who bear public office in the Church, the calling of Councils or assemblies, the presidency in those Councils, ordaining public fasts and appointing festivals, (which anciently belonged unto Christian Princes as the chief branches of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which is vested in them,) are utterly denied to Kings and Princes in their Books of Discipline. -As for their power in temporal or civil causes, by that time Knox's Peers and Buchanan's Judges, Paræus's Inferior Magistrutes and Calvin's Popular Officers, have performed their parts, (in keeping them within the compass of the laws, arraigning them for their offences if they should transgress, opposing them by force of arms if any thing be done unto the prejudice of the Church or State, and, finally, in regulating their authority after the manner of the Spartan Ephori and the Roman Tribunes,) all that is left [of the regal authority will be by much too little for a Roi d'Ivitol, or for a King of Clouts, as we English phrase it."

But leaving the Genevan Fathers, from whose writings might be quoted passages still more objectionable than these, we proceed to observe some of the doctrinal peculiarities of Cameron, which caused him to be greatly maligned by the violent Predestinarians. Like his great cotemporary, Piscator, he rejected the doctrine of Christ's imputed righteousness; and was, on this account, objected against by the Synod of Poitou, when in 1618 he accepted the Divinity Professorship at Saumur. But, two years afterwards, this objection was declared to be untenable, by the National Synod held at Alez. He, and many other good men, had viewed with grief the obloquy and persecution to which the pious Arminius had voluntarily exposed himself by asserting the scriptural doctrine of the concur rence of the human will with the grace of God, &c.; and they endeavoured, by lopping off some of the rotten and unfruitful branches of Calvinism, to accommodate doctrinal matters so as to preserve themselves free from ecclesiastical censures, while they imparted to the rigid Predestinarian scheme a greater show of probability, and exhibited it in a form less liable to exception. Among the doctrines thus discarded was what is often called "the imputation of the active righteousness of Christ:" For they perceived, that, by admitting such a tenet and allowing it to be carried onward to its legitimate consequences, they opened the flood-gates to every species of unrighteousness. When men were taught to consider their righteousness as being only imputed, they soon inferred that no attempts were necessary on their part for the attainment of actual holiness: So that, except in the idea itself, (which, when unaccompanied by holy endeavours, has a tendency to puff up rather than to humble,) those persons who gave it entertainment had no personal experience of that transforming power of Divine Grace which the Scriptures describe. In their erroneous account, Christ had repented for them, had believed for them, and had been clothed with the Spirit of holiness for them, (or rather, instead of them,) what need therefore had they to take any thought about repentance, faith, and holiness? Several churches had become infected with this imputation-mania; and the Calvinistic pastors had not, among their treasures of things new and old, any doctrine which they could employ in counteraction: For, in other parts of their heterogeneous system, they had represented all the striving and endeavours of man, though undertaken and prosecuted at the express command of God himself in his blessed word, to be nothing better than legality. Cameron, therefore, Piscator, and a few other celebrated Divines of that age, fully aware of the sad and desecrating effects of such a doctrine, totally discarded it from their systems, and taught their hearers to estimate their standing in religion by their actual progress in holiness, and in humility-its inseparable attendant.