ness to part with the spoils of their sacrilege. On their revolt from Spain, the mitre had been sent to the mint, to keep the new exchequer in cash; and a staff had been provided instead of the crosier. A cheap religion, and a poor clergy, is well known to be the sure way to check the freedom of the pulpits; and to prevent all disquietude to the frauds of merchandise and the vices of luxury*. James commissioned Calvinist divines to attend this synod, not as being himself a Calvinist, but as swayed by reasons of state; and chiefly by personal friendship towards Prince Maurice, who had put himself at the head of the counter-remon strants. Yet Neale has the impudence to call the synod of Dort a candid and venerable body; and affirms that James's sending bishops where a presbyter " *Collier, in alluding to Bishop Pearson's proof of the genuineness of Ignatius's letters, asks, would that martyr, who accounts the episcopal office so necessary to the Church, have attended this irregular synod? Would those bishops who drew up the thirty-seventh and thirty-ninth apostolical canons, have allowed a conciliatory capacity to a company of presbyters? "A parity of ministry," he adds, "is a revolt from the practice of 1500 years; nor have the words Protestant and Reformed any authority to turn spiritual legislation into a new channel." In this synod the English were four court divines, instructed by the King and as they had no delegation from the bishops, they were no representatives of the church; can what was there done affect the English communion. not presided, was an acknowledgment of the validity of ordination by mere presbyters *. While Calvinists were loud in their praises of this synod, the Arminian party ridiculed it in the following distich:→→ Dordrechti synodus, nodus; chorus integer, æger; On the extent of Christ's redemption, the British divines omitted the received and orthodox distinction betwixt its sufficiency and its efficacy; and adverted not to the art of confining the phrase, "He died for the whole world," to the world of the elect: Davenant and Ward in fact were Semi-arminians on this head. They secretly maintained the certainty of the salvation of God's elect; but believed that offers of pardon were sent to all who heard the Gospel; and that sufficient grace was imparted, to convince and persuade the disobedient, so as to throw the blame of their impenitence upon themselves. They considered that Christ's merits were applicable to these; and, consequently, that their salvation was possible and contingent. Nevertheless, they generally complied with the synod of Dort; and declared the confession, in the main, agreeable to the word of God. Hence * See Lewis de Moulin, Womack, Heylin, and Brandt. a report arose some years after, that they had deserted the doctrine of the Church of England *. › XVI. 1621. In the year 1621 James assembled a parliament, from whom he solicited money, avowedly for the support of his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, recently elected king of Bohemia; nor were aids destined to support the Protestant cause, refused, or reluctantly bestowed. Two very different orders, the enemies of arbitrary power, and the Calvinistic objectors to ceremonies, had now coalesced, and were together dis tinguished by the name of Puritans. To oppose this formidable party, the King, whose Calvinistic prejudices (if he ever entertained them) had yielded to a sound theology, united the Arminians and those Church Papists, who inculcated the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. In these parties and their mutual animosities, we observe the germ of the distinctions, Whig and 1619. Frederic, the Electot Palatine, and James's son in-law, received, without that monarch's advice, the crown of Bohemia, from the Protestant electors, who were Calvinists but James refused to acknowledge his title, since elective kingdoms were established on Puritan principles. Abbot, however, being inclined to Calvinism, supported Frederie in his claims: James was not disposed to make religion a cause of dethroning kings; and he therefore permitted a voluntary sub scription to secure the preservation of the Palatinate. As the Elector Palatine projected the confederacy of Calvinistic princes, James's coldness, while it gratified the Lutherans, was received by the Puritans with disgust. Tory, High and Low Church, and court and country party, which so long prevailed; preserv ing, by their opposite forces, the constitution in equilibrio between privilege and prerogative., James, in his opening speech, acquainted this parliament, that he would suffer neither the Puritans, nor the Jesuits to range at discretion. Now broke out those unhappy differences betwixt the King and Commons, relative to the extent of the prerogative, which led, in the succeeding reign, to so fatal an issue. It is the anxious wish, of the writer of this history, whose ambition is general utility, to abstain, as much as is possible, from political questions, concerning which the suffrages of men are divided. It seems, however, impracticable to draw up an ecclesiastical narrative of transactions under the Stewart dynasty, without touching slightly on the character and conduct of the several princes composing it; and with respect to James, the present opportunity may be seized, of observing, that, previous to his reign, the English constitution had never been accurately defined; and that, if he stretched his notions of the royal prerogative further than was strictly consistent with the liberty of the subject, we must regard him as conceiving it his duty to transmit to his heirs, a sceptre, not divested of any of that power with which it had been swayed by his predecessors, the arbitrary family of Tudor. There seems no necessary connexion be twixt Calvinism and civil liberty, or between the doctrines of Arminius and despotical maxims : these two partnerships, however, happened to be entered into at this juncture. It has been affirmed, that political liberty derived benefit from its union with Puritanism; but it is just as likely that the cause of Puritanism gained ground by being linked, for the time, with the growing and popu lar rage for encroaching on the power of the mo narch. १ It is extremely difficult for a writer, who seeks to preserve his narrative untainted by party-spirit, and undebased by misrepresentation, to ascertain the truth amidst the contending accounts of historians, whom he consults and compares as authorities, and to refrain from imbibing their preju dices. If Mr. Collier be found half a Catholic in the latter part of his History, Dr. Warner becomes an outrageous advocate of the Puritans; and Neale himself has not, and could not have, written a more partial and distorted account of the affairs of this period. It is, indeed, ridiculous to hear him insisting so strongly and so repeatedly on James's secret attachments, and avowed hostility, to the Papists; an inconsistency for which no satisfactory motive or reason can be assigned. The truth seems to be, that James, in the beginning of his reign, entertained an equal jealousy of the Jesuits and the Puritans, and was determined to stand equally aloof from both; but that the increasing |