be left to interpret them. He enjoins habitual prayer; but without determining its exact seasons or expressions. He enjoins habitual charity; but leaves the precise proportion it should bear to other expenses, to be settled by prudence and feeling; and has sufficiently declared on what its real value depends, by his preference of the widow's mite to the rich man's gold. He does not specify the acts of kindness by which the love of our neighbour is displayed; but has left the duty as general as the relation is extensive, by the nature of the injunction "Do unto all men, as ye would they should do unto you." So no man can doubt that the excess of worldly attachments is forbidden, when the Christian is taught not to lay up treasure on earth, but in heaven: or of worldly cares, when he is referred to the fowls of the air for an example of providential superintendence, or to the lilies of the field for a lesson against vanity. The reasons for this mode of legislation are scarcely less evident than the fact: so much is left to the determination of each man's own heart, in order that Christianity might be only known as a spiritual religion.

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But it is a necessary consequence of the general, and even figurative terms in which the precepts are conveyed, that different minds must judge differently as to their extent and interpretation. "Show me a church on earth," says Bishop Hall," without these wrinkles of division, and I will never seek for it in heaven." Our Church, most certainly, if we except the primitive times, has not been the most pure when it has been least divided. And even in the earliest periods of the Church this tendency to differ about the application of general precepts did not fail to manifest itself. We are told to "take no thought for the morrow:" nor to lay up treasure on earth." These maxims against worldly care the Thessalonians interpreted so strictly, as to abstain from the necessary business of civilized life, and incur the censure of the Apostle for their error. It had been declared by our Saviour, that no man, "having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven." Fortified, as they thought, by the letter of this declaration, the Novatians, in a subsequent age, attached so great a degree of sanctity to the baptismal vow, as to exclude perpetually, from their communion, as many as had once lapsed, even in those iron times, from the obligations it imposed. That most valuable relic of antiquity, the collection of Cyprian's Letters, affords many examples of similar doubts and questions: as whether a clergyman might undertake the guardianship of orphans, which had been forbidden as a secular office: whether a player by profession might become a member of the Christian

communion. All these were differences, which naturally arose out of the method in which the precepts of our law were originally delivered; but what hinders, except human perverseness, that persons who doubt on points like these, and disagree on points like these, should nevertheless unite in loving one another, as well as the religion to which both parties belong? We regret to say, however, that these differences have been too uniformly treated as crimes. What, for instance, would appear more probable, than that Christians should dissent from one another on the lawfulness of stage-playing, or the degree of strictness with which the Sabbath ought to be observed? As soon as the Reformation set the minds of the people free from thraldom, these became early subjects of dispute; nor can we see any thing in them unbefitting a Christian man's inquiry. Yet Bound, and Greenhall, and their party were proscribed, and persecuted, because they condemned shooting, fencing, morice-dancing, interludes, and the like, on Sunday: too rigorously perhaps, but as such things were practised, no one will now think too zealously; and by exactly the same course of argument which Bishop Horsley has so well applied to prove the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath. The progress of time alters the objects of controversy: but its spirit remains the same. Every age has its parties; and every party its criteria, to the test of which it brings the rest of the world. One man's supposed laxity, and worldly compliances, and secular pursuits, excommunicate him from the pale of Christianity: another's apparent strictness and scruples, and substitution of the Bible for cards, betray him as at heart an enemy of the Church: no allowance is made for the weak, or the young, or the timorous, or the erring Christian: all must think as we think ourselves, or they are none of ours.

In all this there is much presumption, and little candour: there is none of that charity which "hopeth all things, believeth all things;" but there is a great deal of that arrogant self-sufficiency which weighs right and wrong in the scale of private judgment, and of that malignity which sets down every questionable action to the worst possible motives. But if it is true, as we have endeavoured to show, that discrepancy of opinion on many practical points grows naturally out of a religion framed like ours; and that a religion can scarcely be so framed as to influence and exhibit the heart which does not leave room for such discrepancy: then it follows, that to condemn another for a practice which may be lawful, or may be expedient, or may be necessary according to his judgment, is a much greater depar ture from the spirit of our faith than the practice itself can be. He may be accepted, who on principle, and in the sincerity of his heart, has pursued a wrong course; but he must be in dan

1

ger of exclusion himself, who, in violation of charity, has passed bitter sentence upon his brother in things indifferent.

What we have hitherto said of practice, holds also true with regard to some non-essential points of doctrine. To doctrine the Letters before us principally relate and as might be expected, in the review of disputable questions, the first place is assigned to the Calvinistic controversies. In the remarks on this subject it is easy to trace some indications of that bias which an author can hardly avoid, whose own opinions on the matter he is discussing are not absolutely neutral. By the Calvinistic doctrines, Mr. Cooper takes it for granted that his correspondent "means those which are strictly so called, and which exclusively belong to that peculiar system which the term Calvinism implies: (p. 44)-an observation which in an age of ignorance and misnomers is certainly not superfluous. A late learned Bishop gave this excellent advice: "Before you attack Calvinism, be quite sure that you understand what Calvinism is." The term has been for many years applied in a loose and indefinite way, to those who were no further Calvinists than so far as the Lutherans, and the Arminians, and the Church of England, agree with Calvin. But there is sometimes room to answer, on the other hand, that the defender of Calvinism, as well as the assailant, should bear in mind what Calvinism is. Mr. Cooper seems to confine it to the doctrines of Personal election and Final perseverance, and more generally to the sentiments of Hooker, Beveridge, Leighton, and Usher. May not the advocate of Calvinism, he asks, appeal to the examples of such divines as these, and say, "If men so eminent for their learning and piety, with minds so replete with Scriptural knowledge, so imbued with evangelical truth-if they admitted the doctrines under discussion, if they believe that personal election and final perseverance are truths revealed and maintained in Scripture; it surely was not on light and trifling grounds that such men came to these conclusions." (P. 51.)

Now it is quite certain, we imagine, that if Calvinism were nothing else than the doctrines of divines like these, a reasoner would not only be very ill employed in disputing it, but would hardly fail to err in differing from it. When Beveridge, in considering how it comes to pass that of the many which are called, there are but few chosen; when he argues thus: "Shall we ascribe it to the will and pleasure of Almighty God, as if he delighted in the ruin of his creatures, and therefore, although he calls them, he would not have them come to him? no, that cannot be; for in his revealed will, which is the only rule that we are to walk by, he has told us the contrary in plain terms, and has confirmed it too by an oath: (Ezek. xxxiii. 11. 1 Tim. ii. 4.).

and therefore if we believe what God saith, nay, if we believe what he hath sworn, we must needs acknowledge that it is his will and pleasure, that as many as are called, should be all chosen, and saved: "* when this excellent man thus argues, what has he in common with Calvin? Prædestinationem vocamus æternum Dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enim pari conditione creantur omnes; sed aliis vita æterna, aliis damnatio eterna præordinatur. Leighton, in a single passage of his full commentary on Peter, approaches nearer Calvin: but how different the conclusion of Calvin and Leighton! The one urges, Electio nostra non gratuita erit, si in suis eligendis Deus ipse qualia sint futura cujusque opera reputat. The other presses this truth upon his hearers: "Holiness is no less necessary to salvation, than if it were the meriting cause of it; it is as inseparably tied to it in the purpose of God. And in the order of performance, godliness is as certainly before salvation, as if salvation did wholly and altogether depend upon it, and were in point of justice decreed by it."§ If some of our rash, and headstrong, and half-educated preachers of the Divine decrees would study such Calvinism as this, they might better understand not only what is Calvinism, but what is Christianity.

or the

It is not this nor that tenet of Calvin, brought forward to prove the unsearchableness of the Divine counsels power of grace, which is either dreaded in the pulpit, or controverted in the closet; it is the whole system taken connected and entire, and exhibited as a plan of the will of the Almighty in the creation of mankind. A preacher may believe in personal election, without ever misleading his hearers into a conviction that they are either securely elect or irreversibly reprobate: nay, to a certain extent, every reader of the Bible must acknowledge personal election; he must acknowledge that the Scripture holds out numerous examples of individuals who were selected from the rest of mankind for the great purposes of the Creator, not less decidedly than the apostles themselves; of whom Christ explicitly declares, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." (John xv. 16.) The private history of Christians might also furnish many instances of persons rescued from imminent danger, suddenly pricked in conscience, reclaimed from wicked courses, and made acquainted with the truth, in such a manner as might warrant the belief of their personal election. For these reasons it is well known that this Calvinistic tenet is still held by many as it was by Baxter, who have deliberately disclaimed Calvinism as a system. And no doubt it may be very consistently so

* Beveridge's Thoughts on Call and Election. + Calv. Instit. lib. iii. c. xxi. 5, Calv. Instit. lib. iii. c. xxii. 3. §. Commentary on 1 Peter, i. 1.

maintained, because it is only when extended to the whole race of mankind, and followed up by the very unnecessary consequence of such occasional election, quos præterit reprobat, that becomes equivalent to absolute predestination.

We may fairly extend these observations to the other tenet selected by our author in his description of Calvinism-final perseverance. Separate this doctrine from the system to which it belongs, and it becomes harmless, useful, experimental, and Scriptural. There is a wide difference between arguing that an、 individual in a state of grace must be ultimately secure, because he has been specially chosen of God from among the mass of reprobates, then effectually called, then indefectibly justified:

and the consolatory doctrine that Christ takes an affectionate interest in those who have once left the world to follow him, that he knows them, is touched with their infirmities, dwells with them, and has promised never to leave nor forsake them. Whoever has read or heard a sermon of the high Calvinists on this point, and compares it with Hooker's discourse on "the perpetuity of faith in the elect," will be at once aware of the difference we insist upon. In the one, heinous sins are usually enumerated, as those of Noah, David, Manasseh, Peter; and adduced as proofs that the adopted child of God cannot by any wickedness separate himself from the Father's love; and why? because the object is not to effect any salutary purpose; is not to strengthen, console, assure; but to urge and prove an abstract point of mysterious theology:-whereas in Hooker's inquiry "whether the prophet Habakkuk, by admitting this cogitation into his mind, the law doth fail, did thereby show himself an unbeliever;" the object is really to establish and settle a sincere but scrupulous soul, either harassed by some partial declension, or dissatisfied with a slow and uncertain progress." There are for whose sakes I dare not deal slightly in this cause, sparing that labour which must be bestowed to make it plain. Men in like agonies unto this of the prophet Habakkuk's are, through the extremity of grief, many times in judgment so confounded, that they find not themselves in themselves. For that which dwelleth in their hearts they seek; they make diligent search and inquiry. It abideth, it worketh in them: yet still they ask, where ?”*

It follows, that the same doctrine in the one case has the effect of producing, under Divine influence, the truest Christianity; in the other of cherishing a bigoted love of controversial and abstruse divinity, accompanied by no slight degree of spiritual pride.

But while we think on the one hand, that Mr. Cooper has too * Hooker's Works, vol. iii. p, 526.