many more imaginary Calvinistic triumphs terminated in the hopelessness of despondency. Yet, after the lapse of a few years, a great door of hope was opened to the party in England: They seized upon the opportunity of the quarrel between King Charles I and his Parliament, introduced CALVINISM as the only religion to be tolerated in these realms, and overturned the monarchical government of the country. I know it is usual for writers on this subject to expose the clashing designs and interests of the different parties, who, either as principals or accessaries, were concerned in that religious and political revolution. But let them be called Presbyterians, Independents, or Episcopal Puritans, they were all animated by the same paramount desire of crushing Arminianism :* and the genius of Presbyterianism and Independency will be allowed by all moderate men to point towards a Republican form of government in the State as well as empire, and the States of the Netherlands, that he had not undertook this war to suppress the religion, but to chastise the insolencies of rebellious subjects. And what he signified in words, he made good by his deeds; for when the war was at the hottest, all those of that religion in the city of Paris lived as securely as before, and had their accustomed meetings at Charenton, as in times of peace." After alluding to the very imprudent act of King Charles I., in assisting the French Calvinists in 1626 and 1628, Dr. Heylin thus proceeds : "Which being observed by those of Rochelle, who were then besieged to landward by the King in person, and even reduced unto the last extremity by plagues and famine; they presently set open their gates, and, without making any conditions for their preservation, submitted absolutely to that mercy which they had scorned so often in their prosperous fortunes. The King, thus master of the town, dismantleth all their fortifications, leaves it quite open both to sea and land, commands them to renounce the name of Rochelle, and to take unto the town the name of Mary Ville, or Bourg de St. Mary." * Strong and irrefragable proofs of this assertion will be found in many of the subsequent parts of this Appendix. Indeed, it was a subject about which, in a short time, the English and Scotch Calvinists used no kind of disguise, as will appear by the following quotation from one of the letters of Grotius to his brother, dated March 30th, 1641:-" It is supposed that [the Earl of Strafford] who has been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, will clear himself from all charges. Far greater hatred is displayed by the populace against the Archbishop [Laud], as was very apparent when he was committed prisoner to the Tower: For a seditious tumult was raised against him, as though he was not then sufficiently unfortunate. Yet, on that unhappy occasion, he quoted these lines of Juvenal, and applied them with the greatest propriety to the outrageous mob: at quid turba fremit? sequitur fortunam, ut semper, et odit damnatos, &c.—Sat. x. "Good! what think the people?"-They! ........ They follow fortune, as of old; and hate, Gifford. A short Apology by the Scotch has been published here, in which they declare, that they have not taken up arms against the King or the English nation, but against the Archbishop and the REST OF THE ARMINIANS! You perceive what uncommon hatred is manifested against THE TRUTH, that is, against sentiments that are moderate, and can, in their origin, lay claim to antiquity." In my early theological studies, it was frequently a subject of wonder to me, that Arminianism should be called Popery by some of its early opponents: For this reproachful epithet I could never discover a cause. One in the Church. Besides those who reflect on the peculiar condition of the great European family at that juncture, will perceive that the Dutch Republic, which had then so lately rendered the most important services to Rigid Predestination, was the only country in which the Calvinists were in a flourishing condition: This was a circumstance which was not forgotten in the harangues and publications of the various Puritanic emigrants who had found an asylum in the United Provinces, and who flocked to England in large companies as soon as they learnt the probability of a commotion being raised in their favour. These men imported into this country all the visionary enthusiasm, to which, after the Synod of Dort, they had been accustomed in the Low Countries. A hundred instances might be produced of their Calvinistie extravagancies; a few may here suffice: "The bishops had been about this time voted out of the house of parliament, and some upon that occasion sent to the Tower, which made many covenanters rejoice, and most of them to believe Mr. Brightman (who probably was a well-meaning man) to be inspired when he writ his Comment on the Apocalypse; a short abridgment of which was now printed, cried up and down the streets and called Mr. Brightman's Revelation of the Revelation, and both bought up and believed by all the covenanters. And though he was grossly mistaken in other things, yet, because he had there made the churches of Geneva and Scotland, (which had no bishops) to be Philadelphia in the Apocalypse, that angel that God loved; and the power of prelacy to be Antichrist, the good and sufficient reason, applicable to the case of the English Arminians, is given by Grotius in a preceding page, 209; for unless the Calvinists had constantly infused into the minds of the common people a persuasion, that "Episcopacy and Arminianism were nothing better than specious modifications of Popery," they could not have inspired them with a belief, that "the prophecies in the Revelations, relative to the subversion of the Antichristian kingdom, are as applicable to Arminianism as to Popery." Yet I discovered, that, whenever it suited their convenience, these virulent Calvinistic accusers could congratulate themselves on the congruity which several of their own doctrines held with those of the Papists. John Goodwin said, in 1658, to one of his adversaries: "For doth he not know, that, as the "market of reproach and disgrace now ruleth in this angle of the world, call a man AN ARMINIAN, and you have called him constructively, yea emi"nently, Thief, Traitor, Murderer, Heretic, False Prophet, and whatso"ever else soundeth infamy or reflection upon men ?-Dr. John Owen ac"knowledgeth, and doth little less than triumph, that his doctrine of Perse"verance is owned and asserted by the two great Popish Doctors, BELLAR"MINE and SUAREZ. May not I then, or any other man, upon as reasonable "an account, stigmatize such a doctrine with the ignominious character "of Popish or Jesuitical, as the said Doctor, or any other partisan, cast the "reproach of Arminian upon the tenets argued for by me in these contro"versies? Yea, the truth is, that such a doctrine of Perseverance as the "said Doctor abetteth, would make a more connatural and suitable member "in the crazy body of Popish Divinity, than in the body of the doctrine "maintained by Protestants.' evil angel which the House of Commons had now so spued up, as never to recover their dignity: therefore did those covenanters rejoice, approve, and applaud Mr. Brightman, for discovering and foretelling the bishops' downfall; so that they both railed at them, and at the same time rejoiced to buy good penny-worths of all their land, which their friends of the House of Commons did afford both to themselves and them, as a reward for their zeal and diligent assistance to pull them down." (ISAAC WALTON's Life of Bishop Sanderson.) 6 The next personage introduced does not appear as a prospective but rather as an encouraging retrospective prophet." Dr. Owen also," says the judicious biographer of John Goodwin, "in a strain of genuine fanaticism, which would have disgraced the most despicable of Cromwell's preaching officers, compared the outrageous proceedings of the Regicides to the valorous achievements of the Man after God's own heart, in subduing the enemies of his country, and in preparing the way for the national glory and prosperity by which the reign of Solomon was distinguished. Speaking of Ireton, the Doctor says, He was ' 'an eminent instrument in the hand of God, in as tremendous alterations, as such a spot of this world hath at any time re'ceived, since Daniel saw in general them all......As Daniel's 'visions were all terminated in the kingdom of Christ, so all his [Ireton's actions had the same aim and intendment. This was that which gave life and sweetness to all the most dismal and black engagements that at any time he was called out unto. It was all the vengeance of the Lord and his temple! A Davidical preparation of his paths in blood, that he might for ever reign in righteousness and peace.' Isaac Walton says, in his Life of the venerable Hooker, about some malecontents at an earlier period: Yet these very men, in their secret conventicles, did covenant and swear to each other to be assiduous and faithful in using their best endeavours to set up the presbyterian doctrine and discipline; and both in such a manner as they themselves had not yet agreed on, but up that government must. To which end, there were many that wandered up and down, and were active in sowing discontents and sedition by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the church and state, but especially against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatick, as to believe the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers of God's discipline; and at last some of them were given over to so bloody a zeal, and such other desperate delusions, as to find out a text in the Revelation of St. John, that Antichrist was to be overcome by the sword." The same spirit was alive and in mighty operation during the Civil Wars Grotius has alluded to it in a preceding page. (209.) On the 16th of February, 1641, in a letter to his brother, Grotius writes thus concerning the imprisonment of Archbishop Laud" I pray God in behalf of the Archbishop, that he may obtain more favourable judges than we [ the Dutch Arminians, did formerly. It is beyond the range of human prudence to foresee every thing that may afterwards occur. Yet God manifests a regard towards us; and he solaces with a better hope those who are treated injuriously." In a letter addressed to his brother, a week afterwards, he repeats the same pious wishes, and adds:" I think the Archbishop's purpose has been such, as ought to cause him not to be afraid of having God for the Judge of his intentions. But, if in any age, undoubtedly in this all things are managed by factions. Those persons sport too much with Divine subjects, who suppose that they discover, in the name of the Archbishop, the number which is expressed in the Revelations: After the same manner, Feuardent * has declared that the same number expresses MARTIN LAUTER.-Respecting the Synod of Dort, I think those persons are of the third order who attempt that which you describe: But, as far as I have been able to understand the affair by comparing the judgment of many persons together, I am inclined to believe, that neither the major part of the Bishops nor the Nobility will approve of that scheme, but that all things will be brought back to the same form as that which was established in the days of Elizabeth. It was this Queen who stifled in their very origin the Lambeth Articles, which were a kind of prelude to the Synod of Dort."To shew that some of those passages in the New Testament which were then interpreted, for party-purposes, to apply to the Papal tyranny, had been otherwise applied by many great and good men, Grotius wrote his Commentatio de Antichristo; in which he offers a conjecture, that ULPIUS, the cognomen of the Emperor TRAJAN, as it answered in Greek numerals to 666, was the person there signified. He refers to Eusebius for proof, that this Emperor in the tenth year of his reign revived the persecutions against the Christians; and quotes Augustine's City of God, Sulpitius Severus, and Orosius, as authorities for calling Trajan's cruel measures the Third Persecution of the Christians. He adds, "both Irenæus and Arethas consider it a matter placed beyond * Fenardent was a Franciscan Friar, and one of the most virulent adver saries that ever wrote against the early Protestants. Daillé says, that "he was highly deserving of his name,' -Feuardent signifying in French a brisk or blazing fire. Like all other dabblers in prophetic matters, he was not very scrupulous about the alteration of a few letters in LUTHER'S name, in order to adapt it to the sacred number. + This is an allusion to the Committee of Accommodation appointed by the Long Parliament at the close of 1640, some account of which will be given in the subsequent pages. The persons whom Grotius calls of the third order, were, I suppose, the Sub-committee of Divines, who were empowered to prepare matters of debate for the other Committee, which consisted of ten earls, ten bishops, and ten barons. all controversy, that a Roman Emperor was designated by this number." This pamphlet was answered in 1640, by Samuel Marets, Professor of Divinity at Boisleduc in Brabant, who vindicated in a passionate style the common interpretation of those passages of scripture. Contrary to his usual practice, Grotius did not make any mention of the name of Marets in the Appendix to his tract De Antichristo, which he published early in 1641; but, sporting with the French mode of pronouncing this man's name, which is exactly the same as that of marais, “a swamp," Grotius styled his malevolent adversary Borborita, "dirty fellow," in allusion to the Greek word Bofßofos, and its French derivative bourbe, "mud" or "slime." The reader may judge how well this term suited Marets, by perusing the first sentence of his Preface, which originally commenced in the following manner, till the Amsterdam printer refused to prostitute his types by giving publicity, in the very first sentence, to what he regarded as an untruth: " A small work on Antichrist has lately "been printed, the author of which is he who was the editor of "the book of those two Socinians, Crellius and Volkelius.” Marets is the person who had the famous dispute with Voetius, whether the Synod of Dort decided in favour of the Supralapsarians or the Sub-lapsarians. He was a man of good sense, yet rather deficient in classical learning, as may be seen by his mistaking Borborita for a word of Latin extraction: Grotius says in one of his private letters," that, when he heard of the course of life which Marets had pursued in France, he perceived that this Greek appellative was not misapplied." In his two works against Grotius, he was assisted by the rest of the Calvinian brotherhood -a practice very usual with the French pastors of that age. But, though professedly a reply to Marets, and to an author who had written against him under the fictitious name of FRONTO, this Appendix, it will be seen by the following extract of a letter to his brother, was designed by Grotius to operate as a check to the English and Scotch Puritanic Levellers, who, according to the prophetic annunciation of their own seers, had begun to hail the arrival of the days when they could reward Babylon double according to her works, in the persons of the English Arminians. This letter is dated January 5, 1641: "I am now afraid lest, through the tardiness of the printer, a longer delay should be disagreeable to those who with the greatest justice expect a sight of my answer to Marets and Fronto. Since this answer was due from me, the very necessity of the argument led me to shew that many things are placed among the marks of Antichrist, which can plead antiquity in their favour. But this very circumstance smooths the way to concord, if at any period Kings and Bishops be wishful to indulge serious considerations about it. In completing this work, it was necessary incidentally to demonstrate, that the party which thus severely chastises other people, is not |