Has God given to us in the after history of the Church anything to guide us as to whether this be so or not?

The great difference between Primitive and Puritan Theology is, beyond all doubt, the different position assigned to the two Sacraments in the one and in the other.

Now let the reader mark and ponder well this fact.

It took one thousand years to corrupt Primitive Christianity into Popery, whereas it did not take one hundred years to corrupt Calvinism into Socinianism.

It took, I repeat, one thousand years to corrupt Primitive Christianity, with its high view of the Church, its ministry and sacraments, into Popery; and the Christianity so corrupted contained, even in the view of its adversaries, all the essentials of the faith. This Christianity, though incrusted with superstition, held fast to the Godhead of our Lord, and to His Incarnation, and to the truth of His Atoning Sacrifice, and could apply these truths to the consolation of the sinner with as much power as the Reformation or Post-Reformation Theology could possibly do.

The practical works of such a writer as Anselm1 show

1 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 1100, wrote a tract for the consolation of the dying who were alarmed on account of sin. The following is an extract from it :

Question. Dost thou believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for thee?

Answer. I believe it.

Question. Dost thou thank Him for His passion and death?
Answer. I do thank Him.

Question. Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved except by His death?

Answer. I believe it.

Come, then, while life remaineth in thee, in His death alone place thy whole trust in nought else place any trust; to His

as firm a hold on Christ by faith as the writings of any divine since Luther's time. Even on such matters as Predestination and Election his statements are as strong and as unqualified as those of Calvin or Bradford, or any other Predestinarian writer who is willing to believe that the Bible teaches something besides Predestination. And ha was but one of the many who, shortly before and after his time, thought and taught as he did.

It took one thousand years, then, to corrupt Primitive Christianity, with its sacramental teaching, into Popery,' whereas it did not take one hundred years to corrupt Puritanism, or Ultra-Protestantism, with its anti-sacramental teaching, into the rankest Socinianism-a Socinianism utterly denying all that makes Christ and His doctrine of value to lost souls.

Within half a century from the time of the Reformation, the evil was fully developed, and in less than two centuries (that is, by about 1750) the evil spirit of unbelief had subdued, or all but subdued, to itself the

death commit thyself wholly; with this alone cover thyself wholly in this enwrap thyself wholly; and if the Lord thy God will to judge thee, say, "Lord, between Thy judgment and me I present the death of our Lord Jesus Christ; no otherwise can I contend with Thee." And if He shall say that thou art a sinner, say thou, "Lord, I interpose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my sins and Thee." If He say that thou hast deserved condemnation, say, "Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between my evil deserts and Thee; and His merits I offer for those which I ought to have, and have not." If He say that He is wroth with thee, say, "Lord, I oppose the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between Thy wrath and me." And when thou hast completed this, say again, "Lord, I set the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between Thee and me."

Transubstantiation, for instance, was not forced upon the Church as a dogma, till Christianity had been above a thousand years in existence.

Reformed communions in Poland, in France, in Holland, in Switzerland.

By this time (1750) it had wholly subdued the descendants of those who seceded from the Church of this country at the time of the Restoration, and had taken firm root amongst the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England.

The reader will find unimpeachable evidence of the state of Socinianism into which the Protestantism of Geneva had fallen, in the eighteenth chapter of the "Life of Robert Haldane," a pious Scotch Congregationalist, who in 1816 undertook a journey to Geneva, and spent some years in endeavouring to revive Calvinistic Religion in the city of Calvin. His efforts produced no effect whatsoever on the consistory of ministers, except to bring into stronger relief their profession of rampant Socinianism.1

The reader will also find unanswerable testimony to the state of Socinianism into which the rest of Switzerland has fallen, in a work entitled "Lectures on Foreign

'The crowning proof of their apostasy is to be found in the fact that, twenty years before that period (i. e., before 1777), the infidel D'Alembert complimented the venerable company (i. e., the Presbyterian Consistory), in the French Encyclopædia, in an article in which he observes, "To say all in one word, many of the Pastors of Geneva have no other religion but a perfect Socinianism, rejecting all that they call mysteries.' The writer of the Life of Haldane proceeds to give another astounding testimony to this state of things from an extract of a letter of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which is too long for insertion here. (Fifth Edition, p. 395.)

It is, however, most melancholy to see one who truly loved his Saviour as Haldane did, throwing all his strength into reviving a form of Christianity which had so miserably failed to keep up even the semblance of belief in such truths as the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ. It never seems to have struck him that there must be some radical defect in a system which so rapidly and irremediably declined from the faith once delivered to the saints.

Churches," published by Ministers of the Free Church of Scotland in 1845. From vol. i. p. 380, it appears that the two principal cantons, Zurich and Vaud, renounced publicly the Helvetic Confession, because of its testimony to the divinity of the Saviour.

From pages 382 and 383 of the same book we learn that the Established Protestantism of Holland is in the same state.

Respecting the religious state of Holland, the reader will find much interesting information in an article in the "Colonial Church Chronicle" for October, 1862; the writer of which informs us that "the reality of miracles, the inspiration of the Bible, the propitiatory character of the Death on the Cross, the Personality of the Holy Ghost, the doctrines of original sin and of eternal punishment, are all denied, not only by the Unitarian, but also by the Groningen, or Liberal party, to which the great bulk of the influence and learning of the nation belongs."

But by far the most rapid decline of Continental Protestantism took place in Poland.

From a notice of the Racovian brethren, which I have now before me, it appears that an Italian, named George Blandrata, who became a Zuinglian or Calvinist, but who went further than his masters, and on that account was compelled to leave Geneva, went to Poland in 1555, and shortly afterwards to Transylvania, where he was active in sowing Socinian error in a soil so well prepared to receive it, that the Socinians were speedily able to hold Synods of large numbers of ministers, nobles, and commoners; and as early as 1565 they had attained a complete and extensive ecclesiastical organization over Poland and Lithuania.

"In 1559, a nobleman of Podolia, not one of themselves, but of the Genevan communion, built the Socinians,

Arians, &c. a town at Racow, near Sandomir, which eventually became a seat of commerce and of general literature, as its printing facilities were good. Its college sometimes numbered 1,000 students of all nations, creeds, and classes, including the noblest families; and all who were there left it enemies of the doctrine of the Trinity."

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So far for Poland. Let us now turn for a moment to the Puritanism which, in 1662, seceded from the Church of England mainly on Zuinglian grounds. We are told. by a Dissenting authority, that, in 1832, out of 258 Presbyterian congregations, all but twenty-three had lapsed into Socinianism.2

The same declension took place in New England.

This rapid declension of anti-sacramental Christianity into Socinianism is to me the most extraordinary fact in the history of Christian opinion.

It is not a merely religious declension, to which any Church or body of men may be subject.

Let it be remembered that the Protestant bodies which thus lapsed into the denial of Christ's Godhead and Atonement separated from the Church of Rome in order to bear witness to the all-sufficiency of the work of Christ, which they conceive that that corrupt Church obscured by the doctrine of human merit.

How was it that bodies which commenced their carecr with setting forth Christ alone as the sinner's hope, were not preserved from so extraordinary a lapse-a lapse so apparently contrary to the principle of Christ's allsufficiency, which was their watchword?

It is not, I think, to be accounted for by their rejection of Episcopacy, for there have existed in the Church for ages heretical bodies preserving both Episcopal regimen 1 From Rev. A. W. Brown's "Manual on Romanism,” p. 48. "Eclectic Review," February, 1832.