The author of Miscellanies has been pleased to observe, in one of his numbers, that he believed Episcopalians in general were ignorant that the tenets of Episcopacy were so seriously and solemnly propagated. Perhaps it may with equal truth be asserted, that the great body of Presbyterians are not aware that the tenets of election and reprobation are thus explicitly and solemnly set forth in the Confession of Faith of their Church.

Now that the articles of the Church of England, and of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, maintain these peculiar tenets of Calvinism, is absolutely and positively denied.

The fifteenth article of the Church declares, that "Christ, by the sacrifice of himself took away the sins of the world." The sixteenth article declares, that "after we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin, and, by the grace of God, we may arise and amend our lives." The thirtyfirst article declares, that "the offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone." In perfect conformity with these declarations are her liturgy, offices, and homilies; all which contain numerous declarations absolutely irreconcileable with the peculiar tenets of Calvinism. There are none of the articles of the Church of England which contain language or sentiments similar to those contained in the Confessions of Faith of the Calvinistic churches.

The only article that can be adduced in proof of the Calvinism of the Church of England is the seventeenth article.

Now, let it be remembered, that this article is entirely silent on the tenet of reprobation. It says nothing in respect to those among mankind, whom God" hath passed by, and ordained to dishonour and wrath." This is an important doctrine of Calvinism, to which the Church of England is utterly a stranger. And when the author of Miscellanics talks of "the article of the Church which respects election and reprobation," he talks of an article which has no existence. The part of the article which respects "predestination and election," is as follows:-" Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed, by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation, those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore they, which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be 'made Sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and, at length, by God's mercy they attain to everlasting felicity. Now the article simply maintains the doctrine of "predestination unto life." That there is such a predestination, all denominations of Christians acknowledge. The point in dispute between Calvinists and their opponents is in respect to the characteristics or the foundation of this predestination. Is it arbitrary and unconditional, or the contrary? Is it founded on the divine foreknowledge of those who

would accept the means of grace; or is it independent of this foreknowledge? Are a certain number predestinated unto life without any foreknowledge of their faith, &c. or are their faith, their good works, wrought through grace, and accepted for the merits of Christ, the conditions of this predestination? This last is the predestination maintained by anti-Calvinists, and expressly disclaimed by Calvinists; who all maintain that this predestination iş "without any foreknowledge of faith, of good works, of perseverance, or any other cause in the creature moving thereunto." The seventeenth article of the Church makes no such declaration, holds no such sentiment. We are therefore to construe the article in a different sense; and to believe with the Apostle, Rom. viii. 28, that those are "chosen in Christ," whom God "foreknew" would believe and obey the Gospel. These are they who are called, who are justified, &c.

In no other article is the subject of election mentioned. But it runs through almost every chapter of the Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic churches. It is the corner stone of Calvinism. It is the spirit which extends its sullen reign through every part of the gloomy edifice which Calvin erected. The Elect, uncondi tionally elected, without any " foreknowledge of their faith, or any other cause in them moving thereunto," are alone the objects of those "good tidings," which, it was declared, should be for all mankind. They alone are "the seed" whom that blessed Saviour, who shed his blood as 66 a propitiation for the sins of the world," ❝redeems, calls, justifies, sanctifies and glorifies." Well might the acute and learned JORTIN characterize Calvinism as a system of "human creatures without liberty, faith without reason, and a God without mercy!" This character of the system is justified by its natural and necessary consequences, though it is but justice to acknowledge that these consequences are disclaimed by its advo cates.

The above strictures are dictated by no sentiment of disrespect for those denominations who, in the exercise of an acknowledged right, maintain the tenets of Calvinism. With many individuals of these denominations the writer is in habits of intimate acquaintance and friendship. The strictures are purely defensive. They are imperiously called forth by the charge of the author of Miscellanies, that the articles of the Church of England are Calvinistic; by the charge, assiduously propagated, that, while the articles of this Church, and of the Episcopal Church in America, maintain the tenets of Calvinism, the Clergy of those churches maintain opposite doctrines, and are, therefore, guilty of opposing the standards of their Churches. This charge, so materially affecting the consistency, the reputation, and the character of the Episcopal Clergy, could in no other way be refuted, than by comparing the Confessions of Faith of the Calvinistic Churches with the articles of the Episcopal Church, and thus ascertaining their dissimilarity and opposition.

If the Articles of the Church of England were Calvinistic, would the Calvinistic Clergy have thought it necessary to substitute others in their place? Now, it is a well known fact, that, in the reign of Elizabeth, the Calvinists were anxious to substitute in the place

of these articles, what are called "the Lambeth Articles," in which the tenets of Calvinism are couched in nearly the same language in which they are exhibited in the institutes of Calvin and the public confessions of the churches modelled on his system. In addition to the direct evidence before exhibited, here is strong presumptive proof that the articles of the Church of England do not merit the charge of Calvinism.

That the Protestant Episcopal Church in America does not consider the articles as sanctioning the peculiar tenets of Calvinism, will not admit of a doubt. Articles were proposed for consideration by the General Convention of that Church, in 1799; but were not acted upon, in consequence of a determination to adopt the articles of the Church of England, as they were, in toto. The Con vention of 1801 unanimously adopted these articles; and all the members of this Convention were decidedly anti-Calvinistic. What stronger proof of the sense in which they received these articles? The Convention possessed full power to model the articles as they pleased. They would have all agreed in opposing the distinguish ing tenets of Calvinism. Had they believed that the articles were Calvinistic, it is absurd, and in the highest degree dishonourable to them, to suppose that they would have adopted articles contrary to their sentiments. There could have been no apprehension of opposi tion from the great body of the Laity. For it is a fact, that a large proportion of the Laity, even of the Calvinistic churches, do not believe the doctrine of election and reprobation as stated in their Confessions of Faith. Among Episcopalians, these tenets have scarcely any advocates. Thanks to God, these doctrines, which re present him not as a just and gracious Father, the character in which he delights we should behold him, but as a stern and inexorable Sovereign, are fast hastening into disrepute. No; the Convention believed that the imputation of Calvinism cast upon the articles was wholly unfounded. And not being disposed to meddle with those who are given to change," they adopted, without alteration, the articles which they had received from their venerable parent, the Church of England, and which the Reformers of that Church had sealed with their blood. Ed.

I

SIR,

For the Albany Centinel.

AN EPISCOPALIAN. No. II.

To the Author of the "MISCELLANIES."

HAVE seen your letter to me, in the Albany Centinel of the 8th October, and am pleased at finding that our correspondence is not likely to be embittered by asperity or incivility.

The first matter which I wish to notice in it, is your declaration of your never having meant to say, that the author of the pamph let pleaded for parity. I avail myself of this as of what I trust

will be the ground of our future agreement. But, while I hope that your declaration will be as decisive with others as it is with me, you must permit me to think that there is apparently, in your exhibition of some passages of the pamphlet, the meaning of which you have discharged yourself.

You have done away that apparent meaning of the first passage, noticed by me, by printing the whole of it. I allude to the proposal of keeping in view, under a temporary departure from the suc→ cession, the obtaining of it as soon as conveniently might be. Although you now give the proposal entire, you are not willing to admit that injustice was done the author by omitting it. Of designed injustice I have made no charge. But its tendency to mislead, however unintended by you, I inferred from the circumstances, that you had been engaged in a controversy, wherein Episcopacy on one side, and parity on the other, had been the points maintained; that your first mention of the pamphlet was with the declaration, that you had considered it as releasing you from the necessity of exposing arguments of your opponents in favour of Episcopacy; that you represented the author as making a voyage for a purpose which he was convinced might be accomplished as well at home; and that, according to your opinion, the reasonings of the pamphlet applied as forcibly for a final as for a temporary departure. Now it is nothing to the present point, that, in the expressions the last quoted from you, the author may have been supposed not to have intended to serve the cause of parity. I deny all tendency of the pamphlet that way; and, under these circumstances, I submit to the impartial, whether the express proposal of keeping the succession in view were not necessary for the giving a correct idea of the plan proposed.

You would not, I think, have charged me with what "looks like an evasion," if you had apprehended the sense of the part of my letter to which that expression is applied. I intended to state your meaning to be (but I may have sacrificed perspicuity to brevity), that the reasoning of the pamphlet went to the point of dispensing with Episcopal ordination in all cases; as had been done in Elizabeth's time in some. My understanding of you thus was, I think, natural; because the former was the purpose to which you had applied yourself in your controversy with Cyprian and others. You had not been pleading for the dispensing with Episcopal ordination in any case of exigency. But you might have judged that the doing of this could only have been on such ground as applied generally. This is what I understand to be your purpose; and what I do not find supported by any reasonings in the pamphlet.

Your application of the term, "as some conceive," to Episcopalians, instead of to their opponents, has been corrected by you in such a manner as, in my opinion, more than balances the mistake.

In regard to your quotation from Bishop Hoadly, and your representing of him as distinctly saying, what you now contend for as only a fair inference from him; I should not have taken advantage of this circumstance were it not, that, in the course of my reading and my conversation, I have occasionally perceived an ambiguity in the use of the words " of divine appointment.' That the Apostles appointed a ministry in three different degrees, is

what would have been contended for by Bishop Hoadly; and he has said nothing to the contrary in the passage in question. But if, under these terms, it be understood that the appointment was accompanied by any thing declaratory of perpetual and unalterable obligation in every exigency and necessity whatsoever, the contrary to this is, I confess, a fair inference from his words, and from the citation of them in the pamphlet.

You complain, that after printing a certain paragraph from the pamphlet, I did not subjoin other paragraphs which follow; meaning principally, as I suppose, what has just now been referred to from Bishop Hoadly. I began with an acknowledgment that you had done the author no injustice, as to the point to which that passage applies; and I afterwards observed that it makes a distinction between apostolic practice, and a matter of indispensable requisition. But you think I should have given the paragraphs, because they were necessary for the understanding of the pamphlet. The object of my letter was not to explain the pamphlet generally, but to rescue some parts of it from inadvertent misrepresentation. And when I printed one paragraph at large, it was because it had been printed by you in part only, although the whole was necessary to the sense. The other you had given entire.

My incidental mention of the object of my letter reminds me to request of you, that if there are some matters in yours not necessarily connected with that object, you will not think it disrespectful in me, that I pass them by in silence.

AN EPISCOPALIAN.

SIR,

For the Albany Centinel.

AN EPISCOPALIAN. No. III.

To the Author of the "MISCELLANIES.”

HAVING now before me your letter in the Centinel of the 11th October, I readily admit your acknowledgment of the mistake of the quotation from Neal's history. And, indeed, I have been confident, that a second attention to the passage would bring the true intent to view: especially as it would occur to you, how improbable it is, that a professed Episcopalian, addressing the Episcopal Church for a purpose which interfered with the prejudices of many, should have quoted the opinion of the Smectymnuan Divines, however personally respectable, as authority with that body. It would not have been surprising if the supposed evidence of meaning had made the author of the paragraph somewhat negligent in his manner of quoting Mr. Neal. This, however, in my judgment, is not the case; the note being connected by an asterisk, with a fact said to be acknowledged by both parties. Of the acknowledgment of it by one