wide as possible, it still remains as narrow and the way to it as straight, as our Saviour describes them to be in the Gospel, Matt. vii. 14. Thus they lull men into a fatal indifference about the truths of revelation, and a false security of their salvation. Genuine Catholics, on the other hand, are persuaded that, as there is but one God, one faith, and one baptism, Ephes. iv. 5, so there is but ONE SHEEPFOLD, namely ONE CHURCH. Hence they omit no opportunity of alarming their wandering brethren, on the danger they are in, and of bringing them into this one fold of the one Shepherd, John, x. 16. Το form a right judgment in this case, we need but ask: Is it charitable or uncharitable in the physician to warn his patient of his danger in eating unwholesome food? Again, is it charitable or uncharitable in the watchman, who sees the sword coming, to sound the trumpet of alarm? Ezech. xxxiii. 6.

But to conclude, the reverend prebendary may continue, with most modern Protestants, to assign his latitudinarianism, which admits all religions to be right, as a mark of the truth of his sect; thus dividing truth, which is essentially indivisible: yet will the Catholic Church continue to maintain, as she ever has maintained, that there is only one faith and one true church; and that this her uncompromising firmness, in retaining and professing this unity, is the first mark of her being this church. The subject admits of being illustrated by the wellknown judgment of the wisest of men.-Two women dwelt together, each of whom had an infant son; but, one of these dying, they both contended for possession of the living child, and carried their cause to the tribunal of Solomon. He, finding them equally contentious, ordered the infant they disputed about to be cut in two, and one half of it to be given to each of them; which order the pretended mother agreed to, exclaiming: "Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then spake the woman, whose the living child was, unto the king; for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said: O, my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. Then the king answered and said: Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: SHE IS THE MOTHER THEREOF!" 1 Kings, iii. 26, 27. I am, dear sir, &c.

JOHN MILNER.

DEAR SIR

LETTER XIX.-TO JAMES BROWN, ESQ., &c.

ON SANCTITY OF DOCTRINE.

THE second mark by which you, as well as I, describe the church in which you profess to believe, when you repeat the Apostles' Creed, is that of SANCTITY. We, each of us, say; I believe in the HOLY Catholic Church. Reason itself tells us, that the God of purity and sanctity could not institute a religion destitute of this character, and the inspired apostle assures us that "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it, with the washing of water, by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle." Ephes. v. 25, 27.-The comparison which I am going to institute between the Catholic Church and the leading Protestant societies on the article of sanctity or holiness, will be made on these four heads: 1st, the doctrine of holiness;-2dly, the means of holiness;-3dly, the fruits of holiness;-and lastly, the divine testimony of holiness. To consider, first, the doctrine of the chief Protestant communions: this is well known to have been originally grounded in the pernicious and impious principles, that God is the author and necessitating cause, as well as the everlasting punisher of sin; that man has no free-will to avoid it ;-and that justification and salvation are the effects of an enthusiastic persuasion, under the name of faith, that a person is actually justified and saved, independently of any real belief in the revealed truths, independently of hope, charity, repentance for sin, benevolence to our fellow-creatures, loyalty to our king and country, or any other virtue; all which were censured by the first reformers as they are by the strict Methodists still, under the name of works, and by many of them declared to be even hurtful to salvation. It is asserted in The Harmony of Confessions, a celebrated work, published in the early times of the Reformation, that "all the confessions of the Protestant churches teach this primary article (of justification) with a holy consent;" which seems to imply, says Archdeacon Blackburn, "that this was the single article in which they all did agree."* Bishop Warburton expressly declares, that "Protestantism was built upon it :"+ and yet, what impiety can be more execrable," we may justly exclaim with Dr. Balguy, "than to make God a tyrant!' And what lessons can be taught more immoral, than that men are not required to repent of their sins to obtain their forgive

66

*Archdeacon Blackburn's Confessional, p. 16.

+ Doctrine of Grace, cited by Overton, p. 31.

Discourses, p. 59.

ness, nor to love either God or man to be sure of their salvation!

To begin with the father of the Reformation: Luther teaches that "God works the evil in us as well as the good, and that the great perfection of faith consists in believing God to be just, although, by his own will, he necessarily renders us worthy of damnation, so as to seem to take pleasure in the torments of the miserable."* Again he says, and repeats it, in his work De Servo Arbitrio, and his other works, that "free-will is an empty name;" adding, "if God foresaw that Judas would be a traitor, Judas necessarily became a traitor; nor was it in his power to be otherwise."t "Man's will is like a horse: if God sit upon it, it goes as God would have it; if the devil ride it, it goes as the devil would have it. Nor can the will choose its rider, but each of them strives which shall get possession of it." Conformably to this system of necessity he teaches: "Let this be your rule in interpreting the Scriptures-wherever they com mand any good work, do you understand that they forbid it; because you cannot perform it."§ "Unless faith be without the least good work, it does not justify; it is not faith."|| "See how rich a Christian is, since he cannot lose his soul, do what he will, unless he refuse to believe; for no sin can damn him but unbelief." Luther's favorite disciple and bottle-companion, Amsdorf, whom he made Bishop of Nauburgh, wrote a book expressly to prove that good works are not only unnecessary, but that they are hurtful to salvation, for which doctrine he quotes his master's works at large.** Luther himself made so

great account of this part of his system, which denies free-will, and the utility and possibility of good works, that, writing against Erasmus upon it, he affirms it to be the hinge on which the whole turns; declaring the questions about the pope's suprema. cy, purgatory, and indulgences, to be trifles, rather than subjects of controversy.†† In a former letter, I quoted a remarkable passage from this patriarch of Protestantism, in which he pretends to prophesy, that this article of his shall subsist for ever in spite of all the emperors, popes, kings, and devils, concluding thus: "If they attempt to weaken this article, may hell-fire be their reward. Let this be taken for an inspiration of the Holy Ghost, made to me, Martin Luther."

*Luth. Opera, ed. Wittemb. tom. ii. fol. 437. † De Serv. Arbit. fol. 450. Ibid. tom. ii. § Ibid. tom. iii. fol. 171.

Ibid. tom. i. fol. 361.

De Captiv. Babyl. tom. ii. fol. 74. ** See Brierley's Protest. Apol. 393. See also Mosheim and Maclaine, Eccles. Hist. vol. vi. pp. 324, 328.

++ See the passage extracted from the work De Servo Arbitrio, in Letters to a Prebendary, letter v,

However, in spite of these prophecies and curses of their father, the Lutherans in general, as I have before noticed, shocked at the impiety of this his primary principle, soon abandoned it, and even went over to the opposite impiety of semiPelagianism, which attributes to man the first motion, or cause of conversion and sanctification. Still, it will always be true to say, that Lutheranism itself originated in the impious doctrine described above.* As to the second branch of the Reformation, Calvinism, where it has not sunk into latitudinarianism or Socinianism, it is still distinguished by this impious system. To give a few passages from the works of this second patriarch of Protestants: Calvin says, "God requires nothing of us but faith; he asks nothing of us, but that we believe." I do not hesitate to assert that the will of God makes all things necessary."§ "It is plainly wrong to seek for any other cause of damnation than the hidden councils of God."|| "Men, by the free will of God, without any demerit of their own, are predestinated to eternal death." It is useless to cite the disciples of Calvin, Beza, Zanchius, &c., as they all adhere closely to the doctrine of their master; still I will give them the following remarkable passage from the works of the renowned Beza: "Faith is peculiar to the elect, and consists in an absolute dependence each one has on the certainty of his election, which implies an assurance of his perseverance. Hence we have it in our power to know whether we be predestinated to salvation, not by fancy, but by conclusions as certain as if we had ascended into heaven to hear it from the mouth of God himself."** And is there a man that, having been worked up by such dogmatizing, or by his own fancy, to this full assurance of his indefeasible predestination and impeccability, can, under any violent temptation to break the laws of God or man, be expected to resist it!

After all the pains which have been taken of late by Bishop Marsh, and other modern divines of the Church of England, to clear her from this stain of Calvinism, nothing is more certain than that she was, at first, deeply infected with it. The 42 Articles of Edward VI., and the 39 Articles of Elizabeth, are evidently grounded in that doctrine ;tt which, however, is more expressly inculcated in the Lambeth Articles,‡‡ approved of by * Bossuet's Variat. f. viii. pp. 23, 54, &c. Mosheim and Maclaine, vol. v. p. 446. + Ibid. p. 458. Calv. in Joan. vi. Rom. i. Galat. ii. Ibid. l. iii. c. 23.

Instit. l. iii. c. 23. Il Ibid. **Exposit, cited by Bossuet, Variat. 1. xiv. pp. 6, 7.

†† Particularly the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 17th, of the 39 Articles. By the tenor of the 13th among the 39, it would appear that the patience of Socrates, the integrity of Aristides, the continence of Scipio, and the patriotism of Cato, "had the nature of sin," because they were "works done before the grace of Christ." Fuller's Church History, p. 230.

the two archbishops, the Bishop of London, &c., in 1595, "whose testimony," says the renowned Fuller, "is an infallible evidence what was the general and received doctrine of the Church of England in that age about the fore-named controversies.”* In the History of the University of Cambridge, by this author, a strict churchman, we have evident proof that no other doctrine but that of Calvin was so much as tolerated by the Established Church, at the time I have been speaking of. "One W. Barret, fellow of Gonville and Caius College, preached ad Clerum for his degree of bachelor in divinity, wherein he vented such doctrines, for which he was summoned, six days after, before the Consistory of Doctors, and there enjoined the following retractation:-1st, I said that, No man is so strongly underpropped by the certainty of faith, as to be assured of his salvation: but now, I protest, before God, that they which are justified by faith, are assured of their salvation with the certainty of faith.-3dly, I said that, Certainty concerning the time to come is proud: but now I protest that justified faith can never be rooted out of the minds of the faithful.-6thly; These words escaped me in my sermon : I believe against Calvin, Peter Martyr, &c., that sin is the true, proper, and first cause of reprobation: but now, being better instructed, I say, that the reprobation of the wicked is from everlasting; and I am of the same mind concerning election, as the Church of England teacheth in the articles of faith.-Last of all, I uttered these words rashly against Calvin, a man that hath very well deserved of the church of God: that he durst presume to lift himself above the High God: by which words I have done great injury to that learned and right-godly man. I have also uttered many bitter words against Peter Martyr, Theodore Beza, &c., being the lights and ornaments of our church, calling them by the odious name of Calvinists," &c.† Another proof of the former intolerance of the Church of England, with respect to the moderate system, which all her present dignitaries hold, is the order drawn up by the archbishops and bishops in 1566, for government to act upon; namely, that "All incorrigible freewill men, &c., should be sent into some castle in North Wales, or at Wallingford, there to live on their own labor, and no one to be suffered to resort to them, but their keepers, until they be found to repent their errors." A still stronger, as well as

* Fuller, p. 232.-N. B. On the point in question, Dr. Hey, vol. iv. p. 6, quotes the well-known speech of the great Lord Chatham in parliament: "We have a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy."

+ Fuller's Hist. of the Univ. of Cambridge, p. 150.-N. B. It will be evident to the reader that I have greatly abridged this curious recantation, which was too long to be quoted in full.

Strype's Annals of Reform. vol. i. p. 214.