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authorities; and I think I shall have irrefragably proved, to all impartial persons, that, after Calvinism had exerted its influence uncontrolled under almost every varying form among the inhabitants of Great Britain, public morals were in a worse condition a year prior to the Restoration, than they were in 1637.*

Appendix E will contain a short Life of Thomas PARKER, the young man, who, when these Theses were subjects of reprehen sion in the Synod of Dort, was charged with having been the author of them, and who thus very conveniently removed a great portion of blame from Maccovius.

In Appendix F, I shall expose the ignorance of those who are accustomed to class Arminianism with Socinianism, and shall prove the far more numerous points of agreement between Calvinism and Socinianism. Among modern Calvinistic writers, I have met with no one that has so frequently and unjustly preferred this unsupported accusation, as the late Rev. Thomas Scott. I shall therefore present the reader in that place with a few animadversions on his inconsiderate expressions.

I shall devote Appendix G to the Life of Robert PARKER, the father of Thomas; and Appendix H to that of AMES and of ROBINSON. These three biographical sketches will afford me an opportunity of communicating some rather novel information on the rise and character of Independency, the very slender grounds of the Puritans' objections against the ceremonies and ritual of the Established Church, and the nature of the persecution which "the unconformable clergy" were compelled to endure.+ The

*This is ingenuously confessed by many of the Preachers before the Long Parliament, as will be shewn in a subsequent part of this Introduction.

In WILLIAM BRIDGE's Sermon before the Commons, Nov. 5, 1647, hé said: "And now of late, what bitterness of spirit among professors! What divisions, oppressions instead of justice! What new-fangled prides? What unwillingness to be reformed? Time was heretofore when we did call for Truth, and cried aloud for Truth. Oh that we might know the Truth! But now we deal by Truth, as the Friar said the people did by their Holy Water: * Ye call and cry,' said he, 'for Holy Water; but when the Sexton sprinkles it, ye turn away your faces and it falls on your backs! So the times were heretofore, that we called and cried out for Truth, Truth! It is now come unto you? We would sprinkle it upon you; but ye turn away your faces from it, and it falls on your backs.

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"And is there not as much swearing, drunkennesss, profaneness still as before? I read of a street in Rome, called Vicus Sobrius, the sober street,' because there was never an ale-house to be found in it: And, upon this account, I think, there will be never a sober street in England, or very rare.

"As for the precious ordinances of Jesus Christ, [they were] never so slighted and rejected as now. Nevertheless, the Lord hath saved us: Yea, he hath saved us with a great salvation, I may say, a miraculous salvation!"

Thus, when Calvinism, in all its variations, had been indulged with unbounded sway for seven years, the state of society was not amended, and the people shewed their strong aversion to the Predestinarian rigours.

The subjoined paragraph commences with a quotation from AMES, which will prove, that the early Puritans, as well as their successors who flourished

"account of AMES will also furnish me with an occasion of instituting a comparison between the arbitrary measures of Archbishop ABBOT, and those of his great but ill-fated successor Archbishop LAUD: When, notwithstanding the popular yet illfounded prejudices against the latter, I shall adduce proofs sufficient to convince every equitable man, that Laud excelled his predecessor both in the liberality of his sentiments, and in the actual execution of his measures. *

during the Civil Wars, had no just notions whatever either of civil or religious liberty, in the modern acceptation of these terms. The only Toleration which they acknowledged, was the law of retaliation; and the axiom, by which they regulated their conduct towards those who differed from them on any doctrinal or ceremonial point, was that of Kill, or be killed!

OBADIAH SEDGWICK, in his sermon before the Commons, on the same day and from the same chapter as Hussey's in a subsequent page, says to the members of the Honourable House: "It was but the scornful speech of Tiberius, that the Gods alone must remedy the injuries offered unto them.' O no! You are custodes utriusque tabulæ. You are designed to be nursingfathers: You have received the sword, to be a terror to the evil. Pious and and learned Amesius, (Cases of Conscience, 1. 4, c. 4,) speaking to that question, 'Whether Heretics are to be punished by the Civil Magistrate?,' answers thus: It is his place and duty to repress them and restrain them, if they be ' noxious and turbulent.' Yea, and he adds more than every one will be patient to hear, namely, that, if also they be manifestly blasphemous and pertinacious, < they may be cut off supplicio capitali, [by capital punishment,] according to that in Leviticus, xxiv, 16.'"The passage to which Ames refers, is the following: And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: As well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall he be put to death.' Obadiah then specifies "nine ways," by which "the danger. ous flood" of heresies might be stopped. In the third of them he says, 66 If the discipline [of the Presbytery] were fully and generally established, you should not have a heresy, or blasphemy, or any erroneous opinion, creeping out in any part of the kingdom, but there would be a timely discovery of it, and likewise a spiritual remedy to recover erring persons, and to prevent their further spreading." The ninth way is, " By using your co-ercive power, with such methods and proportions as the real safety of truth and souls doth require, and the repression of dangerous errors doth need: So managing the distributions thereof, that, under the notion of restraining heresy, you by no means injure real sanctity, nor yet, under the pretence of sanctity, you do not favour the growth of heresy."

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Perhaps the following passage from Louis Du MOULIN'S " Appeal of all the Nonconformists in England to God, and all the Protestants of Europe, iu order to manifest their sincerity to God and the King," in 1680, will serve as an explanation of this matter: "The Assembly of Divines in Westminster, "chosen by the Parliament, were all CONFORMISTS, and none of them SI 66 LENCED MINISTERS, except eight or nine, and four Scots."-This, unlike many of that rash man's assertions, is almost correct, and corroborated nearly verbatim by RICHARD BAXTER, in the First Part of his Nonconformists' Plea in which work he also describes "the Houses of Lords and Commons, excepting "an inconsiderable number, the Lord Lieutenants whom the Parliament chose, "and the far greater part of the General Officers, &c., of the Earl of Essex his 66 army, and of the sea-captains," &c., as consisting of "those that had still lived in Conformity." The fallacy of these remarks will be exposed in another part of this Introduction, by the difference between 1640 and 1643. Now, to

Appendices I and K will not occupy much space, the former consisting solely of a short account of Parker's Theses, and the latter of a few remarks on the deficiency of learning in the vaunting Prefacer.

Appendix L will be very long: After alluding to Arminius, Corvinus, and Tilenus, it will embrace many curious particulars concerning the origin, the genius, the progress, and the effects of Arminianism in Holland and Great Britain. The decidedly Arminian complexion of the Articles of the Church of England, will also be summarily described, in valuable quotations from a few of our best divines. Among some of the conclusions, which I shall endeavour to deduce from undisputed historic facts, will be the very important one, that the adherents to all the religious systems which have passed the golden mean maintained by Arminianism, (between Baxterianism and Calvinism on the one hand, and between Semi-pelagianism and Pelagianism on the other,) have fallen into errors on the important doctrine of the TRINITY, while those who have adhered to the evangelical Arminian scheme, as propounded by its founder, have retained all the grand verities which distinguish the ORTHODOXx both amorg the Ancients and the Moderns.

In Appendix M, the doctrine of SCIENTIA MEDIA will be compendiously exhibited; and, in N, Bishop Womack's remarks on the absurdity of several metaphysical reveries about Christian doctrines will be strenuously enforced.

These are the subjects which were suggested by a perusal of the Preface to Parker's Theses, and of Bishop Womack's annotations; and this is the outline of the plan, according to which I have attempted to institute a comparison between CALVINISM and ARMINIANISM, and to demonstrate the favourable bearing which the LATTER SYSTEM has had upon the civil and religious liberties of

mankind.

evince Archbishop Laud's superior moderation, I only require any man, who is acquainted with the general hist..y of that period, to peruse the list of the farfamed Assembly of Divines, and then deliberately to declare if, at any former period, such pragmatical Divines, as three-fourths of the members had then proved themselves to be, would have been permitted to be unsilenced ministers. Under none of Laud's predecessors, even those of them who were most Calvinistically inclined, would the majority of those who afterwards composed the Predestinarian Assembly have been allowed to remain in the circumstances described by Du Moulin; on account of their previous mal-practices, they would either have been suspended or banished. That restless old Nonconformist, Cartwright, in the days of Archbishop Whtigift, was a petty offender against the eeclesiastical laws of the realm, when compared with many of these disaffected though "conformable" individuals. With the exception of two or three members, the Divines summoned to the Assembly were Calvinists; and, at the very commencement of the Civil Troubles, arranged themselves either in the ranks of Presbyterianism or Independency. (See page 400.) Of the few very able Episcopal Clergy, who were nominated to that office, Archbishop Usher, Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Gauden, and other worthies, had not then become Arminians.

III. DESCRIPTION OF THE PURITANS UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH.

BEFORE I proceed to an enumeration of the contents of Appendix D, which occupy the greater part of this volume, I will present the reader with a brief description of the race of men upon whose doctrines and practices I have ventured to animadvert. The term PURITANS is applied to those individuals who, during eighty years, dissented either mentally or practically from the rites and institutions of the Episcopal Church of England as established by law But this extensive application of the name is rather inaccurate, on account of the complex nature of the scruples under which different classes of these Dissidents laboured. Some account of the early Puritans will occur in the second volume. That class of them who, soon after the Restoration, refused, on grounds somewhat novel, to unite with the National Church, and received the appellation of "Nonconformists," I do not pretend to describe But my remarks are directed against those Predestinarian divines who, under a pretence of bringing the Church of England to a greater conformity wih the admired platform of Calvin, overturned both Church and State, Episcopacy and Monarchy.

They were a race of the Puritans entirely sui generis, distinct from their predecessors; for, with the exception of the Scotch Presbyterians, these reforming Christians commenced offensive operations, not as seceders from the Church, but as Calvinists. In a preceding note, (p. xliii,) it has been shewn how boldly two men, of the rival Predestinarian sects of Independents and Presbyterians, could each boast, that the divines who first engaged in that seditious enterprise were CONFORMABLE EPISCOPALIANS. The fact was in substance as they have related it, and I place it to the benefit of Archbishop Laud's character, who suffered suchartful Nonconformists so long to shelter themselves under the wings of Conformity: Had he exercised those inquisitorial powers with which, it is allowed by all parties, he was then invested, he would have previously ferreted all those concealed Nonconformists out of their fastnesses, and would have compelled them to appear in their real colours. But the persons "with whom he had to do," were full of artifice and design. In all European, countries, wherever the doctrines of Calvin obtained countenance, and support, they were invariably accompanied by a love for the platform of his ecclesiastical discipline, which was extolled by his zealous adherents as the sole means of rendering his evangelical doctrines fruitful and prosperous. Such encouragement had doctrinal Calvinism received in England under the injudicious administration of Archbishop Abbot; and a secret relish for "the holy discipline of Geneva" was consequently created. When, therefore, under the circumstances related in the succeeding pages,

(242-857,) the Scots, who had embraced Calvinism both in its doctrine and discipline, made a hostile irruption into England, they found their Predestinarian friends "on this side the Tweed" prepared to give them a welcome reception. In the subsequent warm work of Reformation, the English Calvinists, though almost universally nominal Conformists, had little to sacrifice in renouncing Episcopacy and in ranging themselves, according to their several inclinations or opportunities, under the banners of Independency and Presbyterianism. From the eventful year of 1640, EPISCOPACY became the test by which to ascertain Arminians and Calvinists, the former, with scarcely a single exception, adhering to "their Bishops and their King," and the latter deserting both, and arming themselves against their lawful authority. A few Calvinists, very few indeed, also adhered to Episcopacy and Monarchy; but a favourable change in their doctrinal sentiments was generally the consequence of this laudable attachment, and they became followers either of Camero or of Arminius: An instance of this salutary alteration of principle will be found (page 707) in good Bishop Hall, who begun at length to think, that even the Arminians could not be "righteous over much," . -a crime with which he had foolishly charged them in his remarkable sermon before the Synod of Dort. Thus did Episcopacy continue to divide Calvinists from Arminians during the twenty years of Predestinarian misrule, till in the year 1662 it was constituted, accidentally and not by design, a more efficient test of those who professed the doctrines of Particular or of General Redemption. (See page 788.) The rigid Calvinists then almost unanimously became Nonconformists; and the more moderate Predestinarians, with nearly all the Arminians, took refuge under Episcopacy.

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This view of the English Calvinists or Puritans, the only one historically correct, is commonly ill-received by their admirers and I have frequently read, in other authors, such ex-parte and palliative sentences as the following by the Rev. Thomas Scott: "Among those who adhered to the royal party and to the Estab"lished Church in her abject state, even the faults and successes "of the Puritans, Presbyterians, and Independents, were argu❝ments, (and indeed they still are so,) against Calvinism : So that, without studying the subject, they became more and "more Anti-calvinistic, by a sort of heart-revolting* against

* The Divines described by Mosheim, in a subsequent page, (790,) as converts to Arminianism during the inter-regnum, (among whom are numbered Archbishop Tillotson, Bishops Stilling fleet, Burnet, Pearson, Womack, Sanderson, &c., Drs. Cudworth, Pierce, and several others, the memory of whom is deservedly held in high estimation,) can by no means be said "not to have studied the subject:" Their works, on the contrary, prove their very accurate acquaintance with the contending principles of Arminius and Calvin.

That these eminent individuals, and hundreds besides of less consideration, were induced to change their religious principles by no secular interests what

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