PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

Of the Life of Dr. Laurence WOMACK, the learned and ingenious author of "the Examination of TILENUS," the reader will find a brief sketch in the beginning of the second volume of "Calvinism and Arminianism Compared." I hope to procure materials for a more copious account of this excellent Prelate, to prefix to a new edition of his CALVINISTS' CABINET UNLOCKED, which I have in contemplation. He was one of many hundred divines, who, when through an attachment to Episcopacy they were ejected from their benefices, directed their attention, during the Civil Wars, to the important differences between Calvinism and Arminianism, which had been studiously depicted as one of the chief ostensible causes of the contest between the monarch and his people. Dr. Womack, in common with other great and eminent men of that age, had been full of zeal for the system of Calvin; and nothing more strikingly displays the beneficial results of the change produced in his mind, than a contrast between his sentiments in 1640 and 1660, in two works which he wrote at those periods in behalf of the Episcopal Church. Many eloquent passages, in praise of Episcopacy, I have had the satisfaction of perusing; but never any so eloquent and nervous as those of Bishop Womack.

Every man of feeling will be captivated with the simplicity of style in which he relates his secession from Calvinism, in one of the following pages, (10,) which was effected by his perusal of the writings of the persecuted Dutch Remonstrants: "The greater the prejudices were which had been "instilled into me against these doctrines, the greater you ought to conclude the light to be which hath wrought this my present conviction of their truth, and hath induced me "to embrace them, against all the charms of interest and "secular advantages, wherewith the world tempts us to the contrary." This was the way in which multitudes of the Episcopal clergy became converts to Arminianism, during the

Inter-regnum; but Dr. Womack is the first man whom I have found openly acknowledging his immediate obligations to the writings of the Dutch Divines. In Archbishop Laud's day's, popular as Arminianism is usually said to have been, no man would own himself to be an Arminian, or indebted to the Hemonstrants for the change effected in his sentiments: The reason for this shyness I have given in the second volume, and an allusion to it will be found in page 688. Traces of this feeling may be seen even in that intrepid defender of the doctrines of General Redemption, John GOODWIN, who had nothing to fear or to hope from his Republican brethren, and who, in all his previous writings, never once made a direct avowal of his obligations to the illustrious and amiable Professor of Leyden, till after he had read and admired Dr. Womack's manly account of his departure from the ranks of the Genevan reformer. In doing this, however, Dr. Womack did not risk any part of his reputation; for his pamphlet was published anonymously, and few of his intimate friends knew him as the writer. His enemies knew still less about the matter, and outrageously charged other two eminent men with the publication.

After a perusal of the Examination of Tilenus, it will be perceived, that its style is far superior to the common style of that age: It is exceedingly chaste, and does not abound in Augustinian "quips and quirks," the jocose allusions and double meanings, which sometimes disfigured and sometimes enlivened the productions of the eminent men who flourished in that and the preceding century. But though Dr. Womack had been educated in a knowledge of many of those doctrines which are as much the doctrines of the Gospel as of Calvinism, I regret to find, in this masterly exposition of high Predestinarian intolerance, the germs of those noxious errors which, arising from a spirit of revulsion to some even of the excellences of Calvinism, became distinguishing tenets in the creed of the succeeding English Arminians. Yet, in humorously animadverting upon the errors of the domineering Predestinarians, it was almost impossible to avoid the extreme to which I have here adverted; and such passages of the work as relate to experimental religion must be read with as much caution as

those which contain the specious arguments of an Infidel, and of a Carnal, a Slothful, or a Tempted Professor.

But this pamphlet was written for the purpose of exposing not only a few of the doctrinal vagaries of the Republican Calvinists, but likewise the partial and cruel conduct of Cromwell's Commission of "Triers," whom he had appointed to regulate the admission of persons into Holy Orders and consequently to ecclesiastical benefices. Of those Commissioners "the Independents formed the majority, and were the most active in the use of their delegated powers:" This therefore is an admirable specimen of the illiberality and intolerant views of that denomination of Christians.

The interlocutors in the Dialogue, though generally speaking in the same smooth style, were sufficiently distinguished from each other by the sentiments which they severally expressed, and were thus rendered objects of public vituperation. The peculiarities by which each of them was then known, not having been matters of cotemporary record, are now nearly lost to posterity. I think, however, it would not be difficult for a man of letters, accurately read in the singular lore of that period, to put his finger upon several passages in the Dialogue, and to say, "This is verbatim one of Dr. Twisse's curious assertions," and "This is in the phraseology of Dr. Owen, Stephen Marshall, or Jeremiah Burroughes." My reading qualifies me to pronounce, with any thing like certainty, only upon three of them: Mr. Narrow-grace was intended for PHILIP NYE; Mr. Know-little, for HUGH PETERS; and Dr. Dubious, for RICHARD BAXTER. If it be objected, "that Baxter was not one of the Trying Commissioners," it may be observed in reply, that this circumstance was not accounted essential to the author's design; for there is at least another dramatic personage introduced by name, who never had more than a sentimental existence in England: This is Dr. DAM-MAN, which was the significant name of one of the secretaries to the Synod of Dort, a person of the most rigid Calvinistic principles. If all the other portraits were as faithfully executed as that of Baxter, they must have been recognised by cotemporaries as striking likenesses. Baxter knew his own features in this faithful mirror; and the sight of them

roused all his latent querulousness, to which he gave abundant utterance in the Preface to his Grotian Religion Displayed. When I first read the Rev. Thomas ScoTT's Articles of the Synod of Dort, I was strongly reminded of Baxter's complaints concerning the abridgment of those Articles, which will be found in a subsequent page. (39.)

John Goodwin had been Womack's precursor in opposing the Commissions of Triers and Ejectors. In 1657 he published a pamphlet under the title of "The Triers, or Tormentors, tried and cast, by the Laws both of God and Men,” &c. In my friend Mr. JACKSON's fine Life of Goodwin, the reader will meet with copious extracts from this most spirited and interesting pamphlet. Mr. Hickman, a celebrated Calvinistic skirmisher in those days, found himself aggrieved by the contents of Dr. WOMACK's Examination of Tilenus. Whether, like Baxter, Hickman thought he had discerned his own face as in a glass, I have no means of ascertaining. If, however, he had made such a painful discovery, he was much too prudent to publish it to the world. But, for the sake at least of the good old cause itself, he published a pamphlet against the Examination of Tilenus, upon which Dr. Womack "let fall a few soft drops," according to the expression in the title-page to his Calvinists' Cabinet Unlocked. Having adverted to some of the railing names,-such as Ethiopian, Scribbler, this poor Fellow,—which he had "uncivilly" cast upon the assumed Tilenus, Dr. Womack informs his readers: "Master Hickman may pass muster for a precious saint, as the present accounts are made below; but I am sure he can gather none of those flowers of rhetoric from the discourses of the holy angels that converse above. He chargeth that author [Tilenus] with impudence in abusing the Triers: But I must tell him (on his behalf) when such schemes of rhetoric are used,—as they may be with wonderful advantage, being not only instrumental to illustrate and adorn a truth, but also to make it the more pungent and take impression,-the abuse imagined to result from them is ever, amongst wise men, ascribed to him that takes the impudence to make the application. And whereas he saith further, that the Synod of Dort, which Tilenus writes against, is a man made up of his