to him, of triumphantly spreading his opinions through his Diocese, by annoying his beneficed Clergy, and by either wantonly withdrawing the licenses of officiating Curates, or refusing to issue them to others, who preached the doctrine of the Church, that he fell himself a victim to his error, having died of a nervous fever, the consequence of a depression of spirits, produced by the King's mandate for his prosecution. Yet his Heterodoxy, which was impeached, and which terminated so fatally for himself, is chosen as an apt illustration of open, violent, fearless, unrestrained, unrestrainable, and successful exertions to overthrow the doctrines of our Establishment. Yet this solitary instance of Episcopal Heresy in the annals of the Irish Church, is tricked out in all the parade of extravagant amplification, and rendered still more terrific by affixing to it a multiplying property of propagating its portentous brood-for what purpose? Not to be the Historian of former evils for the benefit of the present generation, for they never existed; not, surely, to indulge the reveries of a sick brain, in conjuring up phantoms of remotely future assaults upon the form of sound doctrine, accredited by our Church. For what purpose, then? Is it carefully disguised? "Now, should any Bishop act, with respect to these doctrines of the Church which we have been advocating, in a manner similar to that which has been above described, viz.-Annoying any of the beneficed Clergy, refusing to issue licenses, &c. We leave it to our Reader's ingenuity to discover such one or more of our Prelates as, concurring with the great body of the Clergy, in combining in their sentiments the operations of Grace, with the "co-agency of man's free will ;" and, in "considering man's Election and Perseverance as conditional,"(n) dis (n) Inquiry, Part 2d. p. 247. countenance the progress of the pernicious doctrines advocated by the Inquiry, and he will find the man or men, who are said to denounce those doctrines as "novel, sectarian, and opposed to the principles of the Established Church;"(o) whose criminality falls little short of that of the Arian Bishop, who await a judgment of God, confirmatory of that of man, and who are to render a tremendous account, at the day of judgment, of the numbers of the people of their respective Dioceses, who, deluded by the errors which they countenanced, perished in their sins, and whose blood God will require at their hands. Let him who is not yet infected with the contagion of the leprosy of party zeal, as he reads the revolting preamble to an extract from a prayer, that "supplicatés grace for all Bishops and Curates, that they may, both by their life and doctrine, set forth his true and lively word, and for all his people meekness of heart,"(p)-shudder at the re-appearance of these doctrines, which, in their progress, threaten the revival of those inauspicious times, when zeal was turned into rage, and piety into profaneness. (0) Inquiry, Preface, p. 4. CHAPTER II. The doctrines of Redemption and Grace, witnessed by the Liturgy of the United Church of England and Ireland, are incompatible with the interpretations affixed to her tenets by the abettors of the absolute Predestination scheme. IN the sweeping conclusions deduced from the laboriously collected premisses of the Inquiry, the Clergy and Laity of the Established Church are equally comprehended; for she "requires, from all her members, the unfeigned belief of these doctrines, as necessary to salvation ;"(a) and "the Layman who withholds it, rejects as false what she teaches as the truth of God, and the only way to salvation."(b) The belief of "gratuitous, unconditional Election," we are thus taught, is essential to Church Membership-indeed, essential to salvation. To justify so strict and rigorous an assertion, the Author of the Inquiry has made an appeal to our admirable Liturgy; for, as she binds her Clergy by a formal subscription to Articles, she commands the assent of all her children who are not thus formally restricted by a set form of worship; it is (a) Inquiry, Part ii. p. 252. (b) Ibid, p. 249. "that furnishes the most satisfactory evidence concerning the doctrines of our Church-here, if any where, we might hope to find the real doctrines of the Church."(c) "In the Liturgy these principles of Divine Truth are brought before us again and again, in every page, in every prayer, and under such varied forms of expression, as can leave no uncertainty respecting the sense in which they are to be understood." In the Liturgy, then, we are assured that these tenets are unequivocally inculcated in the most explicit manner. If they be, we are unquestionably bound to recognize them as the doctrines of our Church, but so far are we from assenting to this declaration, that, in this appeal to our admirable Liturgy, we once more join issue with the Inquiry, and shall be ready to admit the truth of the flagrant guilt of the Clergy, and the perilous situation of the Laity in the use of its offices, if the doctrine of absolute decrees, and their concomitants, can, by any fair and natural interpretation, be affixed to her services. To enable our Readers to compare the Liturgy of our Church with the disputed doctrines, we shall here transcribe the nine Articles agreed upon at Lambeth on the one hand, and the five Articles maintained by the Arminians on the other : LAMBETH. ARMINIAN. I. God from eternity I. God, from all eterhath predestinated cer-nity, determined to betain men unto life; cer- stow salvation on those tain men he hath repro- whom he foresaw would bated.(d) persevere unto the end in II. The moving or ef- their faith in Christ Jesus, (c) Inquiry, p. 187. (d) Fuller's Church History, Cent. xvi. Book ix. p. 230. LAMBETH. ARMINIAN. ficient cause of Predesti- and to inflict everlasting nation unto life, is not punishment on those who the foresight of faith, or should continue in their of perseverance, or of unbelief, and resist unto good works, or of any the end his divine sucthing that is in the person cours. predestinated, but only II. That Jesus Christ the good will and pleasure by his death and sufferof God. ings, made an atonement III. There is predeter- for the sins of all mankind mined a certain number in general, and of every of the predestinate, which can neither be augmented nor diminished. individual in particular; that, however, none but those who believe in him can be partakers of their divine benefit. IV. Those who are not predestinated to salvation, shall be necessarily III. That they who are damned for their sins. united to Christ by faith, V. A true living and are thereby furnished justifying faith, and the with abundant strength, Spirit of God justifying, and with succours suffiis not extinguished, fall- cient to enable them to eth not away in the Elect, triumph over the seduceither finally or totally. tion of Satan, and the VI. A man truly faith-allurements of sin and ful, that is, such an one temptation, but that the who is endued with a jus-Saints may fall from a tifying faith, is certain, state of grace. with the full assurance of IV. That true faith faith, of the remission of his sins, and of his everlasting salvation by Christ. cannot proceed from the exercise of our natural faculties and powers, nor from the force and operation of Free-will; since man, in consequence of M |