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from the Old Testament, some of the learned have justified persecution, and others disproved it, from the very same texts. It may be sufficient for our purpose here to state, that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and other sects among the Jews, did not persecute each other on account of any difference of belief; and that BAD MEN HAVE ALWAYS PERSECUTED THE GOOD. I can never consent, that this poor creature shall be hurried to the Hague, and shut up in prison, to the utter ruin of his five small children, and of his wife who is now far advanced in pregnancy. I remember how the late Burgomaster Dr. Martin Koster in a very serious and moving manner, acquainted the Senate, in a speech which he delivered before them eleven years ago, that the King of Denmark and other Potentates had, according to the best information, entered into a resolution to offer their mediation for terminating the war between Spain and these provinces,-but with this preliminary condition, that as they and other princes compelled their subjects to ⚫ embrace such a religion as they thought proper, we likewise, "the inhabitants of this country, should receive such a form of ' religion as the King of Spain might think fit to impose upon 'us.' Against which unreasonable condition, that gentleman arged the following position with many just arguments, that

NEITHER PRINCES NOR MAGISTRATES HAVE ANY AUTHORITY OVER THE CONSCIENCES OF THEIR SUBJECTS IN MATTERS OF

RELIGION; and he exhorted them never to depart on any account from that correct sentiment." The spirit of the Calvinistic Clergy when in power, may be perceived from this extract; and the sequel of this affair will not be uninteresting to the pious reader: The mild measures recommended by the Heer Hooght, were pursued towards the person then under accusation, who, instead of being burnt at the stake, was banished from the city. This lenient course produced a salųtary effect on the mind of the poor heretic, who, in a short time, abjured the most noxious of his errors, and, after an absence of a few months, obtained permission from the magistrates to return to Amsterdam, where he resided as a reclaimed character and lived in union with the Church of Christ in that city.

As an appropriate close to this long article, we shall present our readers with the following extract from JACKSON's Life of John Goodwin, an able work now in the press, which contains a most interesting history of the agitated period in which that redoubtable English Arminian lived.

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After noticing the change which Goodwin experienced, with the steps which led to it, and the well-known change in the opinions of Arminius, Dr. C. Potter, Mr. John Hales, Archbishop Usher, and Dr. D. Whitby,-Mr. JACKSON produces the following list of eminent Divines who were induced to adopt milder sentiments about Predestination than those in which they had been educated:

The celebrated MELANCTHON, Luther's friend and coadjutor, was at first Luther's scholar, and drew from him his earliest religious opinions. But being a learned and dispassionate man, pursuing truth, he saw his errors and abandoned them; and espoused sentiments concerning the respectiveness of God's decrees, widely different from those he had formerly held.-PIERCE'S Divine Philanthropy Defended, p. 14, Edit.

1657.

LUTHER also went on long as he at first set out, with so little disguise, that whereas all parties had always pretended that they asserted the freedom of the will; he plainly spoke out, and said the will was not free, but enslaved. Yet, before he died, he is reported to have changed his mind: for though he never owned that, yet Melancthon, who had been of the same opinion, did freely retract it; for which he was never blamed by Luther.-BURNET on the Seventeenth Article.

DANIEL TILENUS, Professor of Divinity at Sedan, a man not less acute in judgment, than versed in all kinds of learning, distinguished himself by decided hostility to the sentiments of Arminius. Convinced at length by the arguments of his opponents, he changed sides, and proved the genuineness of his conversion by submitting to share with the Remonstrants in those severe persecutions which were inflicted upon them by the Dutch Calvinists.-BRANDT's History of the Reformation, Vol. II. p. 137, Edit. 1721.

Of Dr. THOMAS JACKSON, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Prynne has given the following account: "Dr. Jackson is a man of great abilities, and of a plausible, affable, courteous deportment.-Of late he hath been transported beyond himself, with metaphysical contemplations.— The University of Oxford grieves for his defection" [from the doctrine of absolute predestination.]—Anti-Arminianism, p270, Edit. 1630.

BISHOP ANDREWs is generally allowed to have been one of the most learned and pious men of the age in which he lived. Concerning him, Dr. Pierce observes, "That that inestimable Bishop, in his most mature and ripest years, was

very severe to those doctrines which are commonly called Calvinistical, is a thing so known, that I cannot think it will be denied."-Divine Purity Defended, p. 125, Edit. 1657

Dr. THOMAS PIERCE, one of the ablest opponents of Calvinism that system has ever had, states concerning himself: “I was, in my childhood, of the opinions [concerning Election, Reprobation, &c.] Mr. Barlee doth now contend for. But, through the infinite mercy of God, I have obtained conversion: and being converted from the practice, as well as from the opinion, which I was of, I will, to my poor utmost, endeavour to confirm or convert my brethren."-Divine Philanthropy Defended, p. 15.

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Mr. SAMUEL HOARD, author of a very able work entitled, "God's Love to Mankind Manifested," a work which produced a considerable effect among the national Clergy, in the early part of the seventeenth century, says, "I have sent you here my reasons which have moved me to change my opinion in some controversies, of late debated between the Remonstrants and their opponents."-See the tract itself, p. 1, Edit. 1633. WHISTON's Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 10, Edit. 1749.

Dr. THOMAS GOAD was a person every way eminent, having the repute of a great and general scholar, exact critic and historian, a poet, orator, schoolman, and divine. He was a member of the Synod of Dort, and acquitted himself there with great applause, in opposition to the opinions of the Remonstrants. He at length saw cause to alter his judgment; and, in defence of those principles he had formerly opposed, wrote a very able work entitled, "A Disputation concerning the Necessity and Contingency of Events."-ECHARD'S History of England, Vol. II. p. 122, Edit. 1718. Collection of Tracts on Predestination, Preface.

Dr. ROBERT SANDERSON, Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, has given an interesting account of the progress of his mind, from the sublapsarian scheme, to the mild sentiments of Melancthon and Arminius.-HAMMOND'S Pacific Discourse concerning God's Grace and Decrees, p. 8, Edit. 1660.

Mr. RICHARD BAXTER, at the commencement of his Theological career, was eager in his attachment to the peculiar doctrines of Calvin. But when his judgment was more matured, though he still maintained the absolute Election of some men to Life Eternal, he contended strenuously for General Redemption, and for Universal Grace.-BAXTER'S Catholic Theologie, Preface.

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: BISHOP DAVENANT appears to have undergone a change of sentiment similar to that of Baxter. For Archbishop Usher “freely declared himself for the doctrine of General Redemption, and owned that he was the person who brought both Bishop Davenant and Dr. Preston to acknowledge it."CALAMY's Abridgment of Baxter's Life and Times p, 405, Edit. 1713.

CALVIN himself, according to Dr. Watts, is entitled to a place among those divines whose attachment to the doctrines of limited mercy and partial redemption abated as they advanced in years. After noticing the difference between his sentiments. as expressed in his Institutions and in his Commentaries, the. Doctor says, "It may be proper to observe, that the most rigid and narrow limitations of grace to men, are to be found chiefly in his Institutions, which were written in his youth. But his Comments on Scripture were the labour of his riper years, and maturer judgment."-Works, Vol. III. p. 472. Edit. 1800.

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The truly evangelical system of religious belief which is known in modern days under the name of ARMINIANISM, has acquired that appellation, not because ARMINIUS was the sole author of it, but, (as I have shewn in the Preface to this work,) because he collected those scattered and often incidental observations of the Christian Fathers, and of the early Protestant Divines, which have a collateral relation to the doctrines of General Redemption, and because he condensed and applied. them in such a manner as to make them combine in one grand and harmonious scheme, in which all the attributes and perfections of the Deity are secured to him in a clearer and more obvious manner than by Calvinism, and in which man is still left in possession of his free-will, which alone places him in the condition of an accountable being. The high rank which it is entitled to hold among the great pacificatory plans of the Reformers and more recent Divines, I have demonstrated in another place; and the judicious reader, after a careful perusal of the works of Arminius, will consider the pre-eminence there assigned it, to be, in strict justice, only that which its unobtrusive excellences demand. It is not to be denied, that upon this scriptural foundation some individuals do not hesitate to declare, that they have reared a grand edifice of their own; but this, on examination, proves to be only a flimsy structure of

"wood, hay, stubble,'-doctrines which lose all that decidedly gracious aspect which, in conformity with the scriptures, Arminius had communicated to them. These men are therefore much mistaken in the alliance which they have thus preposterously claimed: for it is not the evangelical system of Arminius upon which they have ventured to build, but it is the legal and pharisaic foundation of Pelagius, which, though extremely slight, is sufficiently stable to sustain the Jumber of their inventions; and the fabric of their erection has accordingly obtained the very appropriate appellation of "Semi-Pelagianism."-The reflection, however, is a pleasant one, that the great majority of our English Divines, and especially of our national clergy, have, as it became the most learned and enlightened body of Theologians in the world, built upon the noble foundation of Arminianism a goodly fabric of gold, silver, and precious stones,-doctrines which hold "the golden mean" between the extremes of CALVINISM and PELAGIANISM, and between the two intermediate and milder contradictions of SEMI-PELAGIANISM and BAXTERIANISM.Those ministers of the truth as it is in Jesus' who allow to scriptural PRIVILEGES and to scriptural DUTIES their respective provinces, are the only men who can conscientiously delight to propagate Arminian doctrines in their native purity, as they came from the hands of the most eminent Professor that ever adorned the chair of Divinity in the University of Leyden.

The reader will derive much information, about the state of these doctrines previous to the days of Arminius, from the following abridgment of Dr. Heylin's very accurate remarks in his HISTORIA QUINQUARTICULARIS, or A Declaration of the Judg ment of the Western Churches, and more particularly of the Church of England in the controverted Points reproached in these last times by the name of ARMINIANISM.

He observes, in his preface, that if "Tertullian's rule be good, that those opinions have most truth which have most authentic Antiquity, (id verum est, quod primum, as his own words are,) the truth must certainly run most clearly in that part of the controversy which has least in it of the Zuinglian or Calvinian doctrines." About the year 180, Florinus, and some others at home, had expressly affirmed, that God was the Author of sin; which assertion was immediately attacked by St. Irenæus, who published a discourse intitled,* "GOD, not the Author of Sin." This doctrine was afterwards proposed in * Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib.v, cap. 20.

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