leading principles which run through her productions are as follow:-That man is perfectly free to resist or receive divine grace. That God is ever unchangeable love towards all his creatures, and does not inflict any arbitrary punishment; but that the evils they suffer are the natural consequences of sin. That true religion consists not in any outward forms of worship, nor systems of faith; but in an entire resignation of the will to God.* See Mystics. This lady was educated in the Roman Catholic religion; but she declaimed equally against the corruptions of the church of Rome and those of the reformed churches: hence she was opposed and persecuted by both catholics and protestants. She maintained that there ought to be a general toleration of all religions. Those who are desirous of seeing a particular account of the life and writings of this lady, may consult an abridgment of the "Light of the World," published in seventeen hundred and eighty-six, by the New Jerusalem church. BRETHREN AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT. They, in the thirteenth century, gained ground imperceptibly in Italy, France, and Germany. They took their denomination from the words of Paul, (Rom. viii. 2-14.) and maintained that the true children of God were invested with the privilege of a full and perfect freedom from the jurisdiction of the law. They were called by the Germans and Flemish, Beghards and Beguttes, which was a. name given to those who make an extraordinary profession of piety and devotion. The sentiments taught by this denomination were as follow:-That all things flowed by emanation from God, and were finally to return to their divine source. That rational souls were so many portions of the supreme Deity; and that the universe, considered as one great whole, was God. That every man, by the power of contemplation, and by calling off his mind from sensible and terrestrial objects, might be united to the Deity in an ineffable manner, and become one with the Source and Parent of all things: and that they who by long and assiduous meditation, had plunged themselves, as it were, into an abyss of the divinity, ac-' quired thereby a most glorious and sublime liberty; and were not only delivered from the violence of sinful lusts, but * Dufresnoy's Chronological Tables, vol. ii. p. 253. Mosheim, vol.v. p. 64. Light of the World, p. 27-450. Mrs. Bourignon's Letters. 5799 even from the common instincts of nature. From these, and such like doctrines, the brethren under consideration drew this conclusion: That the person who had ascended to God in this manner, and was absorbed by contemplation in the abyss of Deity, became thus a part of the Godhead-commenced God-was the Son of God in the same sense and manner that Christ was; and was thereby raised to a glorious independence, and freed from the obligation of all laws, human and divine. In consequence of this, they treated with contempt the ordinances of the gospel, and every external act of religious worship; looking upon prayer, fasting, baptism, and the sacrament of the Lord's supper, as the first elements of piety, adapted to the capacity of children, and as of no sort of use to the perfect man, whom long meditation had raised above all external things, and carried into the bosom and essence of the Deity. They rejected with horror every kind of industry and labour, as an obstacle to divine contemplation, and to the ascent of the soul towards the Father of spirits.* Mosheim, vol. iii. p. 122-124. Necessity of Separation, p. 153. Also Neal's Puritans, p. 428. N BROWNISTS, the name given for some time to those who were afterwards known in England and Holland under the denomination of Independents. It arose from a Mr. Robert Brown, whose parents resided in Rutlandshire, though he is said to have been born at Northampton; and who from about fifteen hundred and seventy-one to fifteen hundred and ninety, was a teacher amongst them in England, and at Middleburgh, in Zealand. He was a man of family, of zeal, of some abilities, and had had a university education. The separation, however, does not appear to have originated in him: for by several publications of those times, it is clear that these sentiments had, before his day, been embraced, and professed in England, and churches gathered on the plan of them.† Nor did they call themselves Brownists; but considered it rather as a nick-name given them by their adversaries. Nor did Brown, continue with them'; but, after all that he had preached and written against the church, accepted ́ a living in it, at Achurch, in Northamptonshire. This denomination did not differ in point of doctrine from + Examination of Barrow, Canne's Giffard's Plain Declaration, pp. 1, 2, the church of England, or from the other puritans; but they apprehended that, according to scripture, every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and have the compleat power of jurisdiction over its members, to be exercised by the elders within itself, without being subject to the authority of bishops, synods, presbyteries, or any ecclesiastical assembly, composed of the deputies from different churches. Under this name, though they always disowned it, were ranked the learned Henry Ainsworth, author of the Annotations on the Pentateuch, &c.; the famous John Robinson, a part of whose congregation from Leyden, in Holland, made the first permanent settlement in North America; and the laborious Canne, the author of the Marginal References to the Bible. "Much is said (say they) of the reformation of the church. There has been in deed great reformation of the things in the church; but very little of the church, to speak truly and properly. The people are the church; and to make a reformed church, there must first be a reformed people. This should have been endeavoured by the preach ing of repentance from dead works, and faith in Christ; that the people, as the Lord gave grace, being first fitted for, and made capable of ordinances, might afterwards have communicated in the pure use of them. Others, endeavouring yet a farther reformation, have sued, and do sue to kings, queens, and parliaments, for the rooting out of prelacy, and such evils as grow from it; which, if obtained, would be the further profanation of God's ordinances. Is it not strange that men in the reforming of the church should forget the church, that is, the people; and labour to set Christ as a king over those to whom he hath not been a prophet? Men cannot submit to the discipline of Christ, who have not first been prepared in some measure by his doctrine, and taught with meekness to submit to his yoke.” It has been observed by a late advocate of this denomi nation, and who has corrected many errors of former historians, "Our children at school are taught to read as their lesson the account of the protestant sufferings, during the persecutions of Mary, of Gardiner, and of Bonner; and thus from their infancy they imbibe a just abhorrence of their characters, and their J. Robinson's Justification of Separation, pp. 300, 301. cause: but not all their fathers know that during the reign of the boasted Elizabeth, and by the direction of her reformed bishops, these loyal subjects of her civil government were not only branded with infamy, the fate to which zealous and consistent christians have in every age been subjected by the world, in a greater or less degree, but spoiled of their goods, committed close prisoners for years to dungeons, without being brought to trial; in which many of them perished by cold, hunger, and contagion; banished their native country, and abandoned in a foreign land to obloquy and want;t forced to prefer exile in the American wilderness, where, during the first winter of their emigration, one half of them perished by famine and disease; and finally, the firmest and most distinguished of them executed on gibbets,§ merely for the faith once delivered to the saints."|| * As Brown appears to have been of a violent spirit, and was, upon the whole, to say the least, a doubtful character, it is highly probable that many things which his adversaries allege of the extreme rigidness and bitterness of his party, were true of him and his followers, and which might in part provoke the persecutions which befel them. But this does not appear to be the case with Ainsworth, Robinson, Canne, &c. : and it is observable that the hottest persecution against the Brownists was after Brown had deserted them. See Independents. BUDNEIANS, a branch of the Socinians, which appeared in the year fifteen hundred and eighty-nine; so called from Simon Budnous, who maintained that Christ was not begotten by any extraordinary act of divine power; but that he was born like other men in a natural way, and that consequently he was not a proper object of divine worship and adoration. See Socinians. Strype's Annals, vol. ult. † Epist. Viror. Præstant. &c. Bachus's Hist. of New England, vol. i. p. 40. § Viz. Copping, Thacker, Greenwood, Barrow, Penry, and Dennis. Some account of Mr. Henry Ainsworth, prefixed to a new edition of his two Treatises, printed at Edinburgh, 1789, p. 10. Mosheim, vol, iv. p. 199. CA AINIANS, a denomina- lixtins was also a name given tion which sprang up to those among the Lutherans about the year one hundred who followed the opinions of and thirty, so called on ac- George Calixtus, a celebrated count of their great respect divine in the seventeenth cenfor Cain. They pretended that tury, who endeavoured to the virtue 'which had produc- unite the Romish, Lutheran, ed Abel, was of an order in- and Calvinistic churches in ferior to that which had pro- the bonds of charity and muduced Cain; and that this was tual benevolence.-He mainthe reason why Cain had the tained, (1.) That the fundavictory over Abel, and killed mental doctrines of christiahim for they admitted a great nity, by which he meant those number of genii, which they elementary principles whence called virtues, of different all its truths flow, were preranks and orders. They had served pure in all three coma great veneration for the in- munions, and were contained habitants of Sodom, Esau, in that ancient form of docCorah, Dathan, and Abiram; trine that is vulgarly known and in particular for Judas, by the name of the apostles' under pretence that the death creed :-(2.) That the tenets of Jesus Christ had saved and opinions which had been mankind, and that he betray- constantly received by the ed him for that end. They ancient doctors during the even made use of a gospel of first five centuries, were to be Judas, to which they paid considered as of equal truth great respect. and authority with the express declarations and doctrines of scripture.† The morals of this denomination were said to be the same with those of the Carpocratians. See Carpocratians. CALIXTINS, a branch of the Hussites, in Bohemia and Moravia, in the fifteenth century. The principal point in which they differed from the church of Rome, was the use of the chalice, (calix) or communicating in both kinds. Ca CALVINISTS. [They derive their name from John Calvin, an eminent reformer, who was born at Nogen, in Picardy, in the year fifteen hundred and nine. He first studied the civil law, and was afterwards made professor of divinity at Geneva, in the year fifteen hundred and thirty-six. His genius, learning, * Historical Dictionary, vol. i. (See Cainians.) Broughton, vol. i. p. 190. ↑ Broughton, vol, i. p. 192. Mosheim, vol. iv. p. 150, 451, |