free act of the sinner's own will" which makes him come short of the grace of life. How little Dr. Owen, on some occasions, remembered such explicit declarations as these, when he was urging the doctrine of human inability and depravity against the Semi-Pelagians of his day, any one may see who will take the trouble to compare his works. But I return to my immediate purpose.

Dr. Owen does not even stop with the preparatory work of regeneration, where I have left him. He goes on quite beyond Arminius himself; for in speaking of his "preparatory and dispositive work," he says: "These operations of the Holy Spirit are, in their own nature, GOOD AND HOLY; illumination is so; so is conviction; so is sorrow for sin; with a subsequent change of affections and amendment of life." (p. 374.)

Arminius contented himself with averring merely, that these things in the convicted sinner were pleasing to God, because they are dispositive toward regeneration, i. e. constitute an initial state of preparation for that work. But Dr. Owen does not scruple to say, that these very same things are "good and holy." Both acknowledge that they proceed solely from the influence of the Spirit; so that here is no room for making any distinction. If then Arminius was an Arminian in regard to this whole matter, Beza was one equally decided, and Dr. Owen was greatly advanced beyond either, in the same heresy. So easy it is, where history and facts are not consulted, and prejudice and popular clamor are followed, to put down one man for heresy, and cry up another for orthodoxy, when, if both are sifted to the bottom, it will be found, that they are substantially agreed on the very points where they are affirmed widely to differ.

The right or wrong of Arminius, or Beza, or Owen, is not what I am laboring to prove or disprove. This is not my present business. But to do historical justice to the parties concerned, by showing what their opinions really were, and what justice or injustice has been done them by subsequent ages, will be regarded as highly proper, by every candid and discerning man.

My apology for dwelling so long on these points, is, the interest which they claim, at present, in our religious community. Every man who wishes to know "what he speaketh and whereof he affirmeth,” will be glad to have facts placed before him; and then he can judge for himself.

I do not refrain from giving any opinion on the correctness of the sentiments above cited, because I have none; but because, as I have already remarked, it would here be out of place. I say, only in a word, that to some of the things aimed at by these distinguished writers, I can give my hearty assent; to some others I cannot; and to the mode of representation in general, I feel many objections which do not seem to me capable of being removed.

I proceed to another topic of great interest, and respecting which I have yet exhibited no very explicit declarations of Arminius; I mean the sin and fall of our first parents. In his thesis respecting this, he ascribes their first sin to their own free will, and to Satan, as concurrent causes of it. As to its effect on their posterity, he uses the following language :

"This whole sin is not peculiar to our first parents, but is common to the whole race of their posterity; who, at the time when they sinned, were in their loins, and afterward descended by natural generation from them. For all sinned in Adam, Rom. v. Whatever punishment, therefore, was inflicted on our first parents, has gone down through, and still rests on, all their posterity; so that all are children of wrath by nature, Eph. iii, 3, being obnoxious to condemnation, to death temporal and eternal, and to a destitution of original righteousness and holiness. To these evils they will remain eternally subject, unless they are delivered from them by Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever." (p. 243.)

To the same purpose Arminius speaks, in another thesis respecting the effects of the sin committed by our first parents. "If they transgressed, their posterity were to be deprived of such blessings as they enjoyed, [viz. the favor and grace of God,] and were to become obnoxious to the opposite evils. Hence it comes, that all men who are their natural descendants, have become obnoxious to eternal and temporal death, and are destitute of original righteousness; which penalty is usually called, a loss of the Divine image, and original sin." (p. 378.)

If President Edwards, who endeavors to prove the physical and metaphysical unity of all men with Adam and Eve, was sufficiently strenuous on the doctrine of original sin and imputation of sin; then is Arminius to be regarded in the same light as to this point; inasmuch as he maintains the absolute physical unity of all men with Adam, and that the same sentence of death, temporal and eternal, has come upon all, because they did thus partake of Adam's sin. So says the Westminster Catechism, moreover : "Who sinned IN him, and fell with him, in his first transgression." I have met with no orthodoxy of a higher type than that of Arminius, on this much contested point.

My readers will doubless be curious to inquire, whether Arminius has given us still more particular views, in respect to the hereditary depravity which we derive from Adam. In his thesis on actual sins, he has touched this point. He is speaking of the cause of our sinning, when he says: "The efficient cause of all actual sins, is man's free will. The causa ponyovμévn, precedent cause, is our original inclination to that which is contrary to the Divine law, which [inclination] we contracted by natural generation from our first parents. The causæ πроxατάρитixa, the predisposing causes, [of sin,] are the objects and occasions which solicit to sin." (p. 245.)

In his thesis respecting the free will and ability of men, he represents the unregenerate man as "impotent in his will with respect to good; as mangled, wounded, infirm, bowed down, beat down, taken captive, undone, lost; his ability not only weakened and inefficacious, without the assistance of Divine grace, but as amounting to nothing at all without such grace; for, adds he, Christ has said, Without me ye can do nothing. The mind of man, in his natural state, he declares to be darkened, and incapable of understanding the things of the Spirit. With this is associated the perverseness of the heart and affections, so that the sinner hates what is truly good, and loves and pursues what is evil. The carnal mind is enmity against God, is not subject to his

law, neither indeed can be. The heart is deceitful, perverse, uncircumcised, hard, and stony; its imagination is only evil, from youth." His impotence as to all that is good, corresponds to his blindness of mind and perversity of heart. An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit. He is not subject to the law of God, neither can he be so. He

is altogether dead in sin. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; the Son only can make us free; "it follows, therefore, that our will, since the first offence of Adam, is not free to good, unless it is made free by the Son." (pp. 263, 264.)

After thus exhibiting the history and creed of Arminius, the learned professor thus sums up his own views respecting him and his doc

trine :

'On the whole, it must be conceded that Arminius had rare talents to sustain the place of a leader of a party: He was learned, eloquent, bold, ardent, fearless, persevering, and undismayed by partial defeat. If he was repulsed, and his forces scattered, and the enemy were retiring to celebrate their supposed final triumph, he would rally again, pursue his exulting foes, and attack them while crowned with the garlands of victory. He was so thoroughly versed in the ancient fathers of the Church, so acute in school logic, and familiar with the masters of it, and withal so much of an adept in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, that his declarations respecting these matters carried along with them a weight among the learned, which his antagonists could not well resist. Then, when he appeared in public as a preacher, his great engagedness, the great remove at which he placed himself from the school theology, which was unintelligible to the common people, and withal his sweet voice, his winning manner, and his seriousness and fervor, overcame all the prejudices that his opponents could raise against him, and made him the idol of his congregation at Amsterdam, and equally so of the students at Leyden. Not a little of the asperity of Gomar's opposition to him, sprung, in all probability, from this source. How can we bear, not only that another should venture to differ from our own opinion, but that he should even make it and himself more popular than we can make our cause and ourselves? It is one of the hardest burdens to bear, that poor human nature ever takes upon itself. Nothing but magnanimity above the ordinary stamp, and even this sanctified by the grace of God, will enable a man meekly and patiently to sustain such a load.

With all the superior advantages of person and talent which Arminius possessed, there was joined an expertness and dexterity of management, which he had acquired by long personal experience. When a child, he became an orphan. From the very dawn of his being, then, he was inured to struggle with difficulties and trials. Early in life he went abroad, and began to contend with some of the first geniuses of the age, in regard to metaphysics and dialectics. In all the universities where he came, he was put forward as a leader and spokesman. Defamation attacked him on his outset in life. All these things gave him experience and dexterity; and these, united with his talents and learning, his personal manners and appearance, his fervor

and eloquence, fitted him in an extraordinary manner to gain popularity and influence, and to foil his adversaries in serious conflict.

Beside these things, which account for his influence and success, it must be remembered, that his own personal heresy, (if indeed such a name must be given to his opinions,) was not a very grievous one in the eyes of sober and reflecting persons, who were not partisans in theology. On all the great doctrines of the Gospel, total depravity, special grace, atonement by the death of Christ, justification by grace alone through faith, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Divine authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures, and other doctrines necessarily connected with these, he was altogether orthodox. He only contended against the decretum absolutum and irresistible grace, and doubted about final perseverance, because he thought that this could not be maintained, without infringing upon the liberty and free agency of man. And admitting that he reasoned wrongly here, it amounts to an error in the philosophy of religion, rather than in its theosophy, if I may use this word in the sense which its origin indicates. Consequently the moderate part of thinkers in religion, did not regard Arminius as deserving of decided and hostile reprobation. They first sympathized with him under the abuse which he received; and (which is very natural) at last with his sentiments. This done, the more he was impinged upon by his opponents, the closer did his friends draw around him.

He had powerful friends. Uytenbogart was the most distinguished pulpit orator of his day in Holland. Oldenbarneveld, Grotius, Hogerbeets, Casaubon, J. G. Vossius, Vorstius, some of them among the most distinguished scholars the world has seen, were the decided friends of Arminius. He well knew this; and supported by such influence, he redoubled his zeal and his confidence.

To sum up the whole of Arminius' character in a word; he was a man of very distinguished talents and learning; he possessed shining and popular talents to an uncommon degree; he was too much actuated by the love of popularity and novelty; and too much intent on making his opponents unpopular. He was fitted, in an unusual manner, to become a powerful heresiarch; but most of the accusations of heresy made against him, appear to be the offspring of suspicion, or of a wrong construction put upon his words. In reference to what is now, and has for a long time been, called Arminianism among us, we may well and truly say, that Arminius himself was no Arminian. The justification of such an assertion is altogether unnecessary, after having made such copious extracts from his writings as I have made above. Unless Sublapsarians are to be counted heretics, Arminius himself is not justly to be called a heretic. If he is, then the Lutheran Churches are to be deemed heretical; who have almost universally accorded with his sentiments. If any insist upon it, moreover, that Sublapsarians are heretics, a majority of the synod of Dort must come under this denomination. I trust that a sober man will be disposed to consider the subject very seriously, before he proceeds in a plan of excommunication so extensive as this.'

We know not to what particular system of doctrines Professor Stuart alludes, when he says above that, In reference to what is now, and

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has for a long time been called Arminianism among us, we may well and truly say, that Arminius himself was no Arminian.' We know of no sect indeed, at the present time, which is distinguished by the name of Arminian, only so far as this name may have been applied to us as a term of reproach, and which we have constantly repelled, not by denying that we are Arminians, understanding thereby those who hold to the doctrines taught by Arminius; but by endeavoring to show that Arminianism properly understood was not that dreaded heresy which our opponents had so often and so long represented it to be; and we are now glad to find ourselves sustained and justified by so able a champion for orthodoxy as is Professor Stuart.

We allow, indeed, that many have been called Arminians, who were as far from the creed of Arminius, as he was represented to be by his adversaries from genuine orthodoxy, and from which the present piece so triumphantly vindicates him; but why Arminius himself, or any of his genuine followers, should be reproached with sentiments they never held, but always and uniformly protested against, we cannot tell; and we cannot but hope that hereafter we may hear no more that Arminianism, or in other words Methodism, should be ranked among the enemies of the cross of Christ.

Circumstances having placed us in such a position as to compel us to look narrowly and cautiously into this controversy, we have often wondered at the flippancy of some writers who have so positively condemned Arminianism as a detestable heresy. We asked ourselves, Do not these writers know better? If they do not, they are certainly unfit to write on this subject; because it was as clear to our minds as the light at noon day, that they entirely misapprehended the doctrine taught by Arminius; and identifying our principles with that, without a proper examination, they set us down also as unsound in the faith. If, on the other hand, they knew better, we were at a loss to reconcile their conduct with common honesty. And we think the discussion of this subject by Professor Stuart, considering the results to which he has so justly arrived, leads to one or the other of the following conclusions: either,

1. That the enemies of Arminius and of Arminianism wilfully misrepresented him and his doctrine; or,

2. That they were ignorant of the man and of his communication. And whoever will consult Nichols' edition of the Works of Arminius will be at no loss in determining this question. We are extremely gratified, however, to find that bigotry is giving place to candor, and that such a man as Professor Stuart is ennobling his character by doing such an act of justice to the illustrious dead. It is a service for which the Christian community ought to thank him, and more especially his