Bishop Womack has also observed in his Arcana Dogmatum: Anti-Remonstrantium: " This opinion [the necessary and infallible determination of the will] is a great and ready inlet to all

nisters of Christ within the Province of London. This was signed by fiftytwo Presbyterian ministers, and made mention of "NEW LIGHTS and new truths which are broached and maintained here in England among us,-all of them repugnant to the Sacred Scriptures, the scandal and offence of all the Reformed Churches abroad, the unparalleled reproach of this Church and nation, totally inconsistent with the Covenant and the Covenanted Reformation," &c. Of the three "abominable errors, damnable heresies, and horrid blasphemies," which they ascribed to Dr. Hammond, "the first (says that reverend divine,) is recited by them, page 9, and it is this, Christ was given to undergo a shameful death voluntarily upon the cross, to satisfy for the sin of Adam, and for all the sins of all mankind.' This is thus plainly set down in their catalogue of infamous and pernicious errors, but without the least note to direct what part of this proposition is liable to that charge, any farther than may be collected from the title of the ERRORS under which it is placed, viz. Errors touching Universal or General Redemption. From whence I presume to discern their meaning to be, that to affirm, Christ to have satisfied for or redeemed ALL MANKIND,' is this pernicious error by them abominated. And such I confess I should acknowledge it to be, if it had any right to be joined with that other, by these men set under the same head, THE DAMNED SHALL BE SAVED; but I hope that error bath received no patronage from that [Practical] Catechism, nor sure from that. assertion of Christ's redeeming all munkind."

Such was part of the good doctor's defence in his "View of some Exceptions to the Practical Catechism," &c., and I have repeated it in this place not merely to shew the kind of heresies which these intolerant Calvinists condemned, but the double-dealing of which they were guilty in their mode of classification. But their evident intention to fasten upon the doctor the charge of favouring the unscriptural doctrine of the final restoration of all lapsed intelligences, was but a stale trick, which they had learnt of the Dort Synodists. In the Works of Arminius, (vol.1, page 577,) I have exposed the highly disingenuous and inferential character of a similar mode of implication, adopted against an equally plain and scriptural assertion by Arminius on this very subject, which the Dort divines chose to couple with one of the assertions of Vorstius, to give it the semblance of an apology for the doctrine of "Universal Restoration," instead of GENERAL REDEMPTION!-But the reader will in this work meet with many other instances of the servility with which the English Calvinists aped the manners of the successful Dutchmen. A circumstance which arose from this interference of the Presbyterian ministers, is thus related by Isaac Walton: "After which there were many letters passed betwixt the said Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sanderson, and Dr. Pierce, concerning God's grace and decrees. Dr. Sanderson was with much unwillingness drawn into this debate; for he declared it would prove uneasy to him, who, in his judgment of God's decrees, differed with Dr. Hammond, (whom he reverenced and loved dearly,) and would not therefore engage himself in a controversy, of which he could never hope to see an end: nevertheless they did all enter into a charitable disquisition of these said points in several letters, to the full satisfaction of the learned. I think the judgment of Dr. Sanderson was by these debates altered from what it was at his entrance into them; for in the year 1632, when his excellent sermons were first printed in quarto, the reader may on the margent find some accusation of Arminius for false doctrine; and find, that upon a review and reprinting those sermons in folio in the year 1657, that accusation of Arminius is omitted. And the change of his judgment seems more fully to appear in his said letter to Dr. Pierce. And let me now tell the reader, which may seem to be perplexed with these several affirmations of God's decrees before mentioned, that Dr. Hammond in a postscript to the last letter of his to Dr. Sanderson, says, 'God can reconcile his own contradictions, and therefore advises all men, as the Apostle does, to study moderation, and to be wise to sobriety.' And let me add further, that if these 52 ministers of Sion Col

enthusiasms; and it is not only easy but ordinary for men to intitle their diabolical delusions to the determinations of God's Spirit; and his broad seal is frequently stampt upon that commission (to authorize it), which is drawn up by a lying, and one haply a great deal worse than their own private spirit. When men of high ambition, and hot brains, and strong phantasies, and passionate appetites, will not acquiesce (as you know, many times they will not) in God's clear and distinct revelations concerning their duty; but entertain new designs, pretended to a good end, though the only means visibly conducible to carry them on be apparently unwarrantable; what methods do they follow in this case? God is earnestly sought and wrestled with, for obtaining a dispensation and success in a course of disobe dience, against his own express command. When God, (who is not so much called upon to counsel, as to countenance and assist in the affair [which] such men have resolved upon, and

lege were the occasion of the debates in these letters, they have, I think, been the occasion of giving an end to the quinquarticular controversy; for none have since undertaken to say more; but seem to be so wise, as to be content to be ignorant of the rest, till they come to that place, where the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open. And let me here tell the reader also, that if the rest of mankind would, as Dr. Sanderson, not couceal their alteration of judgment, but confess it to the honour of God and themselves, then our nation would become freer from pertinacious disputes, and fuller of recantations."

*Nearly four years prior to the Restoration, and while the Church of England was still under the rod of the oppressor, the Rev. Dr. Pierce remarked, in his Divine Purity Defended," Mr. Barlee saith, that God is not a mere legislator of conditional decrees, laws and statutes, but an ABSOLUTE DETERMINER in a sovereign way of the several acts_of_disobe'dience in relation to them. And though he saith also, that God himself is without sin, and DETERMINES the several acts of disobedience also, yet that doth not lesson, but rather aggravate his blasphemy; because he makes no difference betwixt God's determining the acts of obedience and disobe. dience, whilst he saith he is an absolute unconditional determiner' of both the one and the other.-Whether James Nayler hath said any thing like it, 1 have not hitherto been informed; but they who adored him as a Christ did give the Magistrate this reason, that they were forced thereunto by the power of the Lord; and commanded so of the Lord; and thereunto moved of the Lord; and directed by the Spirit of the Lord." (The Grand Impostor.) And when the Presbyterian Ministers of the Kirk of Scotland sent a letter to the Lord Hamilton inviting him to head their forces, (which, without the least pretence of authority of Parliament, the Preachers and THEY ONLY had made to rise,) they told his Lordship in their letter, that the people were animated by the word and motion of GOD'S SPIRIT to take up arms; that is, to rebel. (SPOTSWOOD Hist. Scot.) Now by what principles and opinions they were betrayed to these things, I leave it to be judged by other men. For the peace and safety of Church and State, as well as for the interest and good of souls, I am obliged and concerned to deliver mine own soul by giving fair warnings to other men's. And may it for ever be remembered by such as are of a party, which they are kind to, and extremely willing to excuse, that he who justifieth the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, as well as he who condemneth the just! (Prov. xvii, 15.) To shew my innocence from so great a transgression as the latter, I have not whispered my accusations in a corner, but spoken them out unto the world; nor have I urged them from giddy rumours and reports, (as one sort of men are wont to do,) but from the published writings which I accuse.

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are præengaged to transact,) being provoked by the perverse importunity of such addresses, permits them, in displeasure, to the sway of their own inordinate passions, and to prosper in the irregular pursuit of them, this is presently interpreted to be God's gracious return unto their prayers, and his casting voice, (the intimation of his secret beneplaciture,) for the determination of their will to this choice of their very rebellion against him, and consequently it hath, as is pretended, his unquestionable appro

bation.

"When Balaam, upon Balak's invitation of him to curse Israel, consulted the Lord first about that message and expedition, he gave him a clear and peremptory signification of his will and pleasure. Thou shalt not go with them, thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed. (Num. xxii, 12.) But Balaam, upon a new and more urgent invitation, seeks God again, that he may yet obtain leave to gratify his avarice and ambition. Almighty God, provoked with the perversity of this solicitation, perinits him to his own lust; and upon this, (which was but an instance of God's indignation against him, that he was not satisfied with his express command at first,) without doubt Balaam would have concluded, that God had now infallibly determined and actually sent him, had he not been rebuked for his iniquity by a miracle: But the dumb ass speaking with man's voice, for bad the madness of the Prophet. (2. Pet. ii, 16.) What practices have been suggested and put in execution at Munster, &c. upon a persuasion of such an irresistible determination? and what work that opinion may yet help to make in other parts of Christendom, if not timely prevented, is easy to foresee without a spirit of divination."

Other eloquent and decided testimonies against this sion of Christianity, by pretended inspirations, might be adduced: But it becomes necessary to connect Dr. Twisse with the transactions which have now been briefly recounted, and with those which followed. This connection will be traced, in a manner at once the most concise and authentic, by the following quotations from Dr. Heylin, who having narrated some of the mal-practices of the Calvinists, to which allusion has already been made, proceeds thus: "Such were the fortunes and successes of the Presbyterians in the rest of Christendom, during the last ten years of the reign of King James and the beginnings of King Charles. By which both kings might see how unsafe they were, if men of such pragmatical spirits and seditious principles should get ground upon them. But King James had so far supported them in the Belgick provinces, that his own Calvinists presumed on the like indulgence ;* which prompted them to set

It was a most unfortunate circumstance for King Charles, that his royal father had been such an injudicious author. Who would ever have expected to find the following passage in King James's Defence of the Right

nought by his proclamations, to vilify his instructions, and despise his messages. Finally, they made trial of his patience also, by setting up one Knight, of Broadgates, (now called Pembroke College,) to preach upon the power of such popular officers as Calvin thinks to be ordained by Almighty God, for curbing

of Kings, in answer to Cardinal Perron?" It is moreover granted, if a king shall command any thing directly contrary to God's word, and tending to the subverting of the Church, that clerics in this case ought not only to dispense with subjects for their obedience, but also expressly to forbid their obedience; For it is always better to obey God than man. Howbeit, in all other matters, whereby the glory and majesty of God is not impeached or impaired, it is the duty of clerics to ply the people with wholesome exhortation to constant obedience, and to avert by earnest dissuasions the said people from tumultuous revolt and seditious insurrection."

This doctrine had a Calvinian origin; and it was applied by the Calvinists to their seditious purposes in France, and several years afterwards in England. In both kingdoms they easily shewed, that their sovereigns had " commanded things directly contrary to God's word, [that is, as that word was interpreted by themselves, and tending to the subverting of the Church;" and, for these alleged offences against the prosperity of the Calvinistic Churches, Archbishop Laud and his Royal Master were finally condemned to die on a scaffold.

It was also most unfortunate for this monarch, that, in the Basilicon Doron, which had been published early in the reign of King James and was among certain classes for above twenty years a subject of publie animadversion, the latter bequeathed to his successor all his hereditary antipathies to the Puritans and Presbyterians, in form following: "Yet for all their cunning, whereby they pretended to distinguish the lawfulness of the office from the vice of the person, some of them would sometimes snapper out well grossly with the truth of their intentions, informing the people that all kings and princes were naturally enemies to the liberty of the Church, and could never patiently bear the yoke of Christ: With such sound doctrine fed they their flocks! And because the learned, grave, and honest men of the ministry were ever ashamed and offended with their temerity and presumption, pressing by all good means, by their authority and example, to reduce them to a greater moderation, there could be no way found out so meet, in their conceit that were turbulent spirits among them, for maintaining their plots, as PARITY IN THE CHURCH: Whereby the ignorants were emboldened to cry the learned, godly, and modest out of it: PARITY, the mother of confusion, and enemy to unity which is the mother of order! For if, by the example thereof once established in the ecclesiastical government, the politic and civil estate should be drawn to the like, the great confusion that thereupon would arise may easily be discerned. Take heed therefore, my son, to such PURITANS, very pests in the Church and Common-weal, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oaths or promises bind, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own imaginations (without any warrant of the word,) the square of their conscience. I protest before the great God, (and, since I am here as upon my Testament, it is no place for me to lie in,) that ye shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves greater ingratitude and more lies and vile perjuries, than with these FANATIC SPIRITS! And suffer not the principals of them to brook your land, if ye like to sit at rest; except ye would keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife."

The Puritans and Presbyterians treasured up this offensive character in their memories, and visited upon the son the transgressions of the father. The vanity of King James, and his ambition to be distinguished as a literary man, made him reckless of consequences; but his recorded opinions on this subject, though qualified in the preface to some subsequent editions, were highly detrimental to the interests of King Charles in the subsequent

troubles.

and restraining the power of Kings.* In which, though Knight himself was censured, the doctrines solemnly condemned, and execution done upon a book of Paræus, which had misguided the unfortunate and ignorant man; yet the Calvinians most tenaciously adhered to their master's tendries, with an intent to bring them into use and practice when occasion served. So that King James, with all his king-craft, could find no better way to suppress their insolencies, than by turning Mountagu upon them; a man of mighty parts, and an undaunted spirit; and one who knew, as well as any, how to discriminate the doctrines of the Church of England, from those which were peculiar to the sect of Calvin. By which he galled and gagged them more than his Popish adversary; but raised thereby so many pens against himself, that he might seem to have succeeded in the state of Ismael.

"In this conjuncture of affairs, King James departs this life, and King Charles succeeds;† who, to ingratiate himself with

* See an account of this, page 208.

The prosperous condition of England at that period is thus justly described in Lord Clarendon's Life, written by himself: "England enjoyed the greatest measure of felicity, that it had ever known; the two crowns of France and Spain worrying each other, by their mutual incursions and invasions; whilst they had both a civil war in their own bowels; the former, by frequent rebellions from their own factions and animosities; the latter, by the defection of Portugal; and both laboured more to ransack and burn each other's dominions, than to extinguish their own fire. All Germany weltering in its own blood; and contributing to each other's destruction, that the poor crown of Sweden might grow great out of their ruins, and at their charge; Denmark and Poland being adventurers in the same destructive enterprizes. Holland and the United Provinces, wearied and tired with their long and chargeable war, how prosperous soever they were in it; and beginning to be more afraid of Frauce their ally, than of Spain their enemy. Italy, every year infested by the arms of Spain and France; which divided the princes thereof into the several factions.

"Of all the Princes of Europe, the King of England alone seemed to be seated upon that pleasant promontory, that might safely view the tragic sufferings of all his neighbours about him, without any other concernment, than what arose from his own princely heart, and christian compassion, to see such desolation wrought by the pride, and passion, and ambition of private persons, supported by princes who knew not what themselves would have. His three kingdoms flourishing in entire peace and universal plenty; in danger of nothing but their own surfeits; and his dominions every day enlarged, by sending out colonies upon large and fruitful plantations; his strong fleets commanding all seas; and the numerous shipping of the nation bringing the trade of the world into his ports; nor could it with unquestionable security be carried any whither else: And all these blessings enjoyed under a prince of the greatest clemency and justice, and of the greatest piety and devotion, and the most indulgent to his subjects, and most solicitous for their happiness and prosperity.

O fortunati nimium, bona si sua norint !

"In this blessed conjuncture, when no other prince thought he wanted any thing, to compass what he most desired to be possessed of, but the affection and friendship of the King of England; a small, scarce discernible cloud árose in the North; which was shortly after attended with such a storm, that never gave over raging, till it had shaken and even rooted up the greatest