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THE ARTICLES NOT CALVINISTICAL

acts of the impossibility of any particular man, as an individual, being sinless-of the nature of repentance, as applying to the conscious acts done after Baptism-of the duty of each man to refer his personal life and holiness to the will and purpose of the Father in Christ-of the name of Christ, and not any set of opinions or notions being the ground of salvation. All these facts, we cheerfully acknowledge, are asserted in our articles, just as formally and explicitly as in any Reformed Confession. What more does Lord Chatham want fully to justify his assertion? A little more yet: The name Calvinistic articles ought to mean something more than that we assert certain facts which the Calvinists assert; it ought to mean that we adopt the Calvinistic method; that the relation which these facts bear to the rest of our theology, is the same which they bear in these systems, which are confessedly Calvinistic. Now, by way of bringing the question to a test, whether this position be true or not,-place our Articles side by side with the Confession which the Scotch preachers, in the time of Knox, drew up for the use of their church. No one doubts that this Confession is Calvinistic; no one who reads it can doubt that the men who compiled it were able, as well as honest men. There is a spirit and a life in it, which distinguishes it strikingly from the hard dogmatism of the Westminster Assembly, and all the formularies of the next age. Now what is the method of this document? The first article corresponds with the first in ours. Both

IN THEIR METHOD.

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are on faith in the Holy Trinity. But look at the second. In the English scheme it is on the Word made flesh; in the Scotch it is on the fall of Adam. Here is the key to the whole difference of the systems. The Incarnation of Christ,Christ becoming perfect man,-is the central point of ours; this is the ground of our idea of humanity; this is the foundation of our church. Sin, evil, apostacy, are the foundation of theirs. What is the necessary consequence? The articles which follow immediately in their Confession are on Election and the Kirk. In ours the Catholic doctrines,

the truths of Revelation, the authority of the Scriptures wherein they are evolved historically, of the Creeds wherein they are enunciated absolutely,

-are set out in the first eight titles; and it is not till the ninth that we enter upon the Fall, and that series of experimental facts which constitute almost the whole Calvinistic theology. And it is not till we have finished these two portions, - that I mean, which sets out the transcendant parts of theology, (that which, strictly and purely, is thelogy), and that which deals with the actual condition of men, that we proceed (from the nineteenth article to the end), to develope the idea of a church as founded in these Catholic truths, and implying these human conditions, as being an exhibition of the true form of redeemed and regenerate humanity, as having its power and life in Sacraments, a pure Word and an Apostolic ministry, and as being intended to enter into relation with the kingdoms of the earth. After what I have said on the Sa

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DUTCH NATION.

cramental idea of a holy constitution, and of all evil as a departure from it, you will not be at a loss to perceive, that this difference must be a most radical one, even if you did not reflect that as articles are intended expressly to develope a theological method, their order becomes part of their very substance. And, (what is far more important than the blunting of Lord Chatham's point), you will acknowledge, I hope, that the Scotch or Calvinistic dogmatic system is a system merely; that the English dogmatic system is one which all along presumes and recognises Sacraments as the full enunciation of those truths which it can only prevent from being confused or counterfeited.

But this dominion of Sacraments over dogmas was not to be maintained without a desperate struggle. There was one nation on the Continent which was circumstanced somewhat differently from all its neighbours. Holland had not, like Switzerland and Bohemia, been merely quickened by the Reformation: it was born of the Reformation. It had no past to rest upon,—no discipline of centuries to prepare it for the shock of this age; its inhabitants dated the commencement of their political and moral being from the shock,all behind was dreariness and desolation. But the infant was no feeble and shivering bantling; it put forth gigantic powers while it was yet in its cradle. And if these powers had been exerted only in strangling the serpents of Spain, a wise bystander might have rejoiced and trem

bled. But when the young republic threw its arms across the seas, when it became, at the very dawn of its existence, a great commercial potentate, who could consider without dismay what might be the consequence of such precocity upon those principles which give strength and heart to a nation? With thankfulness we own, that the dark auguries which a thoughtful statesman might have formed from such observations, as to the permanence of this state, have not been accomplished; that the series of troubles and calamities which it was appointed to endure from the conflicts of its hereditary chieftains with the able champions of mere democracy, and subsequently, from the ambition of Louis, seasoned and disciplined the character of its institutions and inhabitants, and enabled it to assume and retain a great and honourable position among the Continental governments. But the immediate effects of the singular rise and education of this people, upon their theological views, which is the only point that we are concerned with, was not one whit less disastrous than the most gloomy seer would have foretold. It was scarcely possible that a country, starting into life, when struggles concerning the intellectual part of Christianity were at their height, and owing its deliverance to their struggles, should not have produced men full of speculative zeal and activity. It could not be a very wonderful circumstance, if even its princes felt it no departure from their province to enter with ardour into these discussions. Nor should we,.

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HOW IT BECAME IMPORTANT.

perhaps, have had any difficulty in predicting what direction the speculations both of one class and the other would have taken. It was tolerably certain, that the questions which interested that age, not the truths on which former ages had dwelt, would engage the greatest part of their attention. It was tolerably certain, that that which bore upon the actual condition of man would become uppermost in their minds, and that all the more transcendant truths would be considered only in their relation to these. Nor need you wonder that, while the practical part of Christianity was nearly forgotten in these disputes, they should have seemed to assume a peculiarly practical character, a much more practical character than theology had ever taken before,-for these Dutch divines were also Jurists; they could talk as learnedly about commercial law as about divine law. Every thing in the circumstances of the time and in their position, tended to give the writers and the controversies in this new country a prominence to which, when we look back upon them from a distance, we cannot conceive how they were entitled. And thus it came to pass, that the link between the old Catholic Church and the Protestant bodies, which Luther had wished to preserve, which Calvin had not wished wholly to break, was in Holland snapped violently assunder; and at the same time, Holland being quieter than the German states, more conveniently situated than Sweden, and more important than