ture*. Unhappily, the ignorance of Barret, had the Archbishop lived in the present day, would have been found to have crossed the Atlantic!! In order to suppress effectually every attempt at innovation, and to maintain the Calvinism of the Church, the "Articles of Lambeth" were drawn up. These articles, which are purely Calvinistic, were signed by Archbishop Whitgift, the Bishops of London, and Bangor, the Archbishop of York, and several other learned divines; and they are declared to be, not new laws, but explications of the doctrine professed in Church of England, and already established by the laws of the land. These articles are the Church of England's own explanation of her own doctrines. We shall now exhibit in one view the agreement of the Articles with the Confession. Agreement in Doctrine between the Articles and the Confession. Confession of Faith. Chap. VI. 1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtilty and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. They, being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity. 6. Every sin, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, where by he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal. * The 39 Articles Illustrated. IX. Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam, but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil; so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore, in every person, born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. X. The condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such, that Heyl. Laud lib. 1. Heyl. Presb. p. 343. IX. It is not in every one's will and power to be saved. VIII. No person can come to Christ, unless it be given him, and Neal vol. 1. p. 497. Chap. III. 1. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby, neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures. 3. By the decree of God for the manifestation of his own glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others fore-ordained to everlasting death. 6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eter nal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. 7. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, to pass by; The 39 Articles he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God: wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God, by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. XVII. Predestination to life, is the everlasting purpose ofGod, 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, vessels made to hon our. as Wherefore they who 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 call 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 By the Articles of unless the Father draw him; and all men are not drawn by the Father that they may come to Christ. VII. Saving grace is not communicated to all men. I. That God from eternity has predestinated some persons to life, and reprobated others to death. II. The moving, or efficient cause of predestination to life, is not foreseen faith or good works, or any other commendable quality in the persons predestinated, but the good will and pleasure of God. III. The number of the predestinate is fixed, and cannot be lessened or increased. IV. They who are not predestinated to salvation shall be necessarily condemned for their sins. V. A true, lively, and justifying faith, and the sanctifying influence of the spirit, is not extinguished, nor does it fail, or go off either finally or totally. By the Articles of Lambeth. Confession of Faith. and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sins to the praise of his glorious justice. The 39 Articles, mercy, they attain to The reader must now judge for himself. We feel no apprehensions from the result. If we are reproached for believing the doctrines of grace, those who take delight in holding them up to scorn, ought to recollect, that in so doing, they revile the Fathers of the Church of England, as well as the Presbyterians. If it be calumny to represent the Church of England as Calvinistic in her doctrine, it is a calumny to be imputed to the whole body of the Protestant clergy, at the accession of Queen Elizabeth; to the very convocation which formed the 39 Articles; to both the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and to the archbishops and bishops of the Church, who declared her doctrine in the Lambeth Articles. And if it be a salvo to the consciences of modern Episcopalians, when they subscribe the 39 Articles, to bring home the charge of slander upon these dignitaries of the Church, for calling the Articles Calvinistic, why should we disturb them? We do not expect to make Dr. Hobart a Calvinist, but we admire the confidence with which he asserts that the Fathers of the Church of England avoided the expressions of Augustine and Calvin. If it is his principle, let him continue an Arminian confessor of Calvinistic Articles: let him be Vicar of Bray*. * The Vicar of Bray, a true Churchman, being a Roman Catholic in the reign of Henry VIII.; and a Protestant under Edward VI.; a Papist again under Queen Mary; and a Protestant in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; was reproached for paying so little respect to the solemnities of the religious profession. "Whatever be my religion," replied the vicar, "I have never changed my principle," which is, "to be the Vicar of Bray." [To be continued.] ART. V. A Collection of Essays on the subject of Episcopacy, which originally appeared in the Albany Centinel, and which are ascribed principally to the Rev. Dr. Linn, the Rev. Mr. Beasley, and Thomas Y. How, Esq. New-York, T. & J. Swords, 1806. pp. 210. (Continued from p. 394.) THE sentiment that Prelates are superiour to Presbyters, not by any divine appointment, but mere. ly by the prevalence of custom, extended, among the Latins of the fourth century, much further than Father JEROME. He himself tells us, that the Presbyters of his day not only thought so, but knew so; and, assuming this as an incontrovertible fact, he grounds upon it an admonition to the Bishops to re. collect their origin. "Let them know," says he, "that they are above the Presbyters more by the "custom of the Church, than by any institution of "Christ." Considering him as an honest witness, which is all we ask, and our Episcopal friends will not deny it, he asserts, without qualification, that the NOTE. In the last part of our review of these Essays, we very heedlessly fell into a chronological errour, of some moment. We stated, that in the fifth century, when Jerome was dead, the Presbyters cowed, &c. Epiphanius did bluster at no ordinary rate, concerning the divine right of Episcopacy. The fact is, that Epiphanius died before Jerome. Of course, our remarks, which are founded upon a contrary supposition, are out of place. The correction of our errour is more material to the reader, than any explanation of the manner in which we came to commit it. Presbyters, i. e. the mass of Christian clergy, in his time, were convinced, upon satisfactory proof, that the authority exercised over them by the prelates, limited, as it then was, and nothing like what they now claim, had no warrant whatever, either in the word of God, or even in apostolical tradition! We repeat it; the great body of the Christian clergy, according to JEROME, were aware of this!! Here, since they call for facts, here is a fact more ponderous than all the facts of Episcopacy put together; a fact which there is no frittering away, not even by the force of that vigorous criticism which inverts persons and tenses; transmutes Hebrew verbs into others with which they have no affinity; and changes the very letters of the Hebrew alphabet; so that a: (zain,) is charmed into a¡ (nun,) and, by this happy metamorphosis, the throat of an ill-conditioned argument escapes from suffocation* ! The testimony of JEROME is corroborated by a contemporary writer of high renown, and an unexceptionable witness in this case, as being himself a Prelate; we mean AUGUSTIN, the celebrated Bishop of Hippo. In a letter to JEROME, he has these remarkable words : "Although, according to the names of honour "which the usage of the Church has Now acquired, "the office of a Bishop is greater than that of a Pres"byter, yet in many things Augustin is inferiour to "Jeromet." The sense of this acknowledgment is thus given by a distinguished Prelate of the Church of England, as quoted by Ayton:-"The office of * Churchman's Magazine for May and June, 1810. on Exod. xxxiii. 19. P. 178. + Quanquam secundum honorum vocabula quæ jam Ecclesiæ usus obtinuit, episcopatus presbyterio major sit; tamen in multis rebus Augustinus Hieronymo minor est. Ep. 19. ad HIERON. |