us to believe. We, therefore, in all simplicity interpret the declaration universally, God willeth all men to be saved; that is to say, He wills the salvation of all men, so far as his purpose or intention is concerned. "Nos igitur simpliciter interpretamur hanc sententiam universaliter, Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri; scilicet, quod ad ipsius voluntatem attinet."

The doctrine of Melancthon and of the Church of England, that the scriptural promises of God must be understood generically and not particularly, stood so directly opposed to the tenets of Calvin, that we cannot wonder at his specific resistance to it in set terms. Aliquid disserui, eorum errorem refellens, quibus generalitas promissionum videtur æquare totum genus humanum," said the angry disputant, alluding, it is probable, to the milder and more orthodox system of the author of the Augsburg Confession.

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Our limits will not allow us to follow Mr. Faber through the remainder of the ninth chapter of his second book, in which he illustrates with great success the important position that the other authorized documents of our Church corroborate the interpretation he has given of the seventeenth Article. He shows that the doctrine of election held by the Anglican Establishment, is the choice of certain individuals into the pale of the visible Church, with God's purpose, will, or intention, that, profiting by their privileges, they should finally be saved: holding, at the same time, the moral possibility of those elect persons so falling away from grace as finally and irrevocably, through their own perverseness, to perish; and that, farther, in strict accordance with God's promises as they are generically set forth in Scripture, she holds the doctrine of universal as opposed to particular or limited redemption.

It has been urged by Calvinists that every Christian who reflects seriously must, in effect, adopt their sentiments, because, except on the plan of an assured and irreversible election to eternal glory, no person can feel any solid comfort or satisfaction in his own state; because, in short, no person can say whether he attains to the requisite standard of holiness, or whether after all, he may not finally fall away to perdition. But it is well observed in reply that such a statement as this can never, in the very nature of things, be made to bear on the simple question of the truth or falsehood of a doctrine. In other words, no inward feeling of the comfort of being irreversibly elected to eternal happiness can by any conceivable possibility establish the actual existence of such a plan of Election. Those pious individuals who employ such language unconsciously confound together two points which in themselves are essentially different and distinct : namely, the abstract truth of the Calvinistic doctrine of election, and the as

sumed certainty that he who maintains the truth of that doctrine. is himself one of the elect. On the ground that these two points coincide, is founded the notion, that the Calvinistic tenets as to Predestination and Election must be the source of satisfaction to every true believer. But this assumption, it is obvious, rests on a mere fallacy; for even on the supposition that the doctrine of Calvinistic Election is scripturally true, it by no means follows that every person who receives it is therefore one of the elect. Yet it is quite clear that any comfort accruing to the individual must arise, not from his abstractedly holding the doctrine in question, but from his absolute certainty of his particular election to eternal life. How, then, is this absolute certainty to be attained? Can it be said that a mere belief in the abstract truth of the doctrine conveys the certainty of the believer's own irreversible election to eternal glory? This will not, we presume, be anywhere maintained.

Again, then, it may be asked, how is a disciple of the Genevan school to know assuredly that he is one of the elect? It will be replied, perhaps, that he knows this fact from the conformity of his heart and conduct with the requisitions of God's holy word. But, as Mr. Faber sensibly remarks, if we be finally brought to such an answer, it is difficult to comprehend what greater comfort can be held out by Calvinism than by Anti-calvinism. For a Calvinist may be just as much racked with doubt, whether from his heart, his life and conversation, he has sufficient evidence that he himself is one of the elect, as an Anti-calvinist may be as to the sufficiency of similar evidence that he is indeed a child of God. In short Calvinism can afford no peculiar comfort to any individual, unless he be assured that he is himself infallibly elected to eternal salvation; and that such an assurance must flow, not from a bare speculative belief in a particular scheme of theology, but from a conscious conformity of the heart and life with the revealed word of God; the Spirit itself, from such conformity, bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God. "If "without that conformity, a man deem himself one of the elect " merely because he has an internal feeling that this is the case, "such an individual may well be a subject of our hearty intercessory prayer, but he has placed himself out of the pale of any "reasoning founded upon Scripture."-p. 200.

In the course of this learned work the author has successfully established the following positions; namely, that the primitive doctrine of Election was neither Calvinistic nor Arminian, but the choice of certain individuals to the privileges and hopes of the Gospel; and also that the views entertained on this important tenet by our Church strictly coincide with the opinions held

during the early and purest ages of the faith. He has proved, by a careful examination of historical records and professional treatises, that, prior to the days of Augustine, there was no stumbling-block in the way of the plain Christian, as to the rule of life or the ground of hope after death; and that no one had as yet ventured to teach any other species of Predestination than such as was inculcated by St. Paul and received by the Apostolic Fathers. He has shown that, in primitive times, every professing member of the visible Church of Christ was one of the elect in the original and proper sense of the term; a truth which he illustrates beautifully by a reference to our Liturgy, both in the daily service and occasional offices. We pray that the infant newly baptized may remain in the number of God's faithful and elect children: and we also pray to our holy and most merciful Saviour, that most worthy Judge Eternal, to suffer us not at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from him. The indefectible purpose, the irreversible decree, the seal of heaven fixing from all eternity the weal or woe of every human being, were unknown to Clement, Ignatius, Justin and Irenæus, and indeed to all the writers of the three first centuries.

It may not be unsuitable to notice that Augustine was almost entirely ignorant of the Greek language, without a competent knowledge of which no one can be held qualified to expound the Scriptures. Gibbon remarks that the superficial learning of the Bishop of Hippo was confined to the Latin tongue; that he disliked and neglected the study of Greek; that he boldly sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free will, and original sin; but that his" orthodoxy was derived from the Manichæan school." These circumstances would of themselves diminish our confidence in the deductions of Augustine, even though he did not stand alone among the Christian commentators of antiquity.

We leave Mr. Faber's book, and pass on to the other mentioned at the head of this article, which professes to treat of the same subject, though, it will soon appear, in a manner as different as possible. The former appeals to Church History as the ground of its decisions; the latter invites its reader to consult his own feelings, to weigh the matter in foro conscientiæ, to listen to the judgment of the inner man, to ponder the dictates of the heart, assuring him, if he does so, that he will no longer repose his belief in Calvinistic Election.

Mr. Erskine has long enjoyed a high reputation in a certain section of the theological world as a zealous advocate of those opinions which distinguish the followers of the late Mr. Irvine. His several treatises, some of which have been noticed in this journal, indicate a strong and settled belief in the miracles

said to have been performed in the North, and even in the supernatural gift of tongues. But a more dispassionate study of the principles and facts to which he formerly yielded his conviction, has satified him that he was deceived; and accordingly, with that candour and love of truth which seem to pervade all the feelings of his heart, he now acknowledges that he had allowed himself to be misled, or, at all events, to adopt conclusions which his maturer thoughts refuse to sanction.

"In two former publications of mine, the one entitled a Tract on the Gifts of the Spirit,' the other, The Brazen Serpent,' I have expressed my conviction that the remarkable manifestations which I witnessed in certain individuals in the West of Scotland, about eight years ago, were the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, of the same character as those of which we read in the New Testament. Since then, however, I have come to think differently, and I do not now believe that they were so. But I still continue to think that to any one whose expectations are formed by and founded on the declarations of the New Testament, the disappearance of those gifts from the Church must be a greater difficulty than their re-appearance could possibly be. I think it but just to add that though I no longer believe that those manifestations were the gifts of the Spirit, my doubts as to their nature have not at all arisen from any discovery, or even suspicion, of imposture in the individuals in whom they have appeared. On the contrary, I can bear testimony that I have not often in the course of my life, met with men more marked by native simplicity and truth of character, as well as by godliness, than James and George M'Donald, the two first in whom I witnessed those manifestations. Both these men are now dead, and they continued, I know, to their dying hour, in the confident belief that the work in them was of the Holy Ghost. I mention this for the information of the reader who may feel interested in their history, although it is a fact which does not influence my own conviction on the subject. To some it may appear as if I were assuming an importance to myself by publishing my change of opinion, but I am in truth only clearing my conscience, which requires me thus publicly to withdraw a testimony which I had publicly given, when I no longer believe it myself."

Leaving the author to settle this case with his former friends, the believers in Mr. Irvine, we proceed to examine the grounds on which he has established his new faith as to the doctrine of Election. The result at which he arrives differs not essentially from that so ably recommended to our acceptance by Mr. Faber, though the medium whereby he has attained his end is, as we have already observed, totally unlike. He does not conceal that, for many years, he professed to hold the Calvinistic doctrine, modified, as he acknowledges, "very inconsistently," by the belief of God's love to all and of Christ having died for all; and yet when he looks back on the state of his mind, he now feels it would be

truer to say that he submitted to it rather than believed it. He submitted to it because he did not see how the language of the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans could bear any other interpretation: though all the while he could not help feeling that, on account of a few difficult passages, he was giving up the plain and obvious meaning of all the rest of the Bible, which, in the most unequivocal language and in every page, seems to say to every man, "See I have set before thee, this day, life and good, "death and evil, therefore choose life that thou mayest live." He could not help feeling that if the Calvinistic hypothesis were well founded, then that on which a real and righteous responsibility in man can alone be founded, is wanting; and that the slothful servant had reason when, in vindication of his unprofitableness, he said, "I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou "hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed.' Above all, he could not help feeling that if God were such as the Calvinistic doctrine describes him, then the Creator of every man is not the friend of every man; and that when Christ was preached to sinners, the whole truth of God was not preached to them, for that there was something behind in the mind of God, giving the blessing to one and withholding it from another, so that the ministry of reconciliation was only an appendix to a deeper and more dominant ministry, in which the Almighty appeared simply as a sovereign without any moral attribute, and man was dealt with as a mere creature of necessity without any real responsibility. He relates that he was wont to rebuke the doubt of his heart by appealing to the words of Scripture, and especially by the consideration that the finite understanding of man was incapable of comprehending the infinite mind of God. But still he remained unsatisfied, because he met with passages in the Bible in which God invites and calls upon men to judge of the equality and righteousness of his ways, placing himself, as it were, at the bar of their consciences, and claiming from them a judgment testifying to his righteousness and clearing him of all inequality, and that, not on the ground that his righteousness is above their understanding, far less on the ground that he has a sovereign right to do as he pleases, but on the ground that his righteousness is such as men can judge of, and because it is clear and plain to that principle of judgment within them by which they approve or condemn their own actings and the actings of their fellow men.

Had Mr. Erskine, in this state of mind, been qualified, like Mr. Faber, to ascend to the high fountains of Christian antiquity, and to draw from them the pure and living water of truth, his anxiety would have vanished and all his difficulties would have been removed. He would have discovered that the irrational and unscrip