(e) "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."

The words, "working in due season (in the Latin Article, "opportuno tempore operanti "), are not precisely the words which would be used to express an irresistible act of the Spirit working at a predetermined time. Here again, as in truth everywhere, the statement falls short of the Calvinistic requirement, and, by so falling short, fails to express it. It cannot "frame to pronounce the shibboleth "right." It will not come up to the out-and-out

statement.

Moreover, as they stand connected with the preceding clauseand they may not be severed from it and its meaning words, ex hominum genere--they describe "not the election of men, preferred one before another on account of their personal qualities, but of Christians, distinguished as an aggregate from the remainder of the human race, by a characteristical discrimination, by being called, justified, and sanctified, through Christianity."

II. THE TWO CAUTIONS.

We proceed to the two cautions of the second paragraph of the Article, which reads as follows:

"As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation."

(a) The first caution relates to the basis, the ground, the stand

point from which we may properly and usefully consider "Predestination and our Election; the Article still, we must observe, refusing to make the Calvinistic distinction between these two, and by the insertion of the word our, calling our thoughts off from the individualism of Calvinism, and directing them to Christians collectively.

That stand-point is declared to be the finding in ourselves "the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things;" in other words, the knowledge, which it is within the power of each one of us to attain, that we are living in obedience to the Law of God. Here, and here only, in a present and actual godly life, can we take our stand, and find a basis for our hopes.

And more than this is necessarily involved in the words. For, since no such godly life can be lived by any who, being able to be admitted into the Body of Christ and "grafted into the Church," are not so admitted and grafted, it follows that membership in the Church of God must enter into the qualifications necessary for "the godly consideration of Predestination." A member, then, of Christ's Church, and he a living member, living a godly life, is the only one who has any right to find comfort in meditating on this doctrine.

And this is no far-fetched idea imported into the Article. It comes necessarily out of it, when we remember that it must be so interpreted as to reconcile it with what other Articles-as has been shown above-teach concerning the universality of the redemption effected by the death of Christ. "God's predestination is bestowed on every baptized Christian. . . . The fact of God bringing men to baptism is synonymous with His choosing them in Christ out of mankind,—with His calling them according to His purpose by His special working in due season. The Article says, "in exact opposition to Calvinism, that God will not act in a tyrannical, arbitrary way, but according to His mingled justice and mercy; that we may comfort ourselves in the thought of His predestination for us, His preparation of good things in store for us, with full assurance and trust, only never leaving out of sight that, as a result of our free will, we may make vain all that He has put in our power." 1

The caution precisely agrees with what Bancroft urged in the Conference at Hampton Court: "The Bishop of London took occasion to signifie to his Majesty, how very many in these daies,

1

Bishop of Brechin on the Articles, vol. i. p. 254. O si sic omnia!

neglecting holinesse of life, presumed too much of persisting of grace, laying all their religion upon predestination. If I shall be saved, I shall be saved; which he termed a desperate doctrine, shewing it to be contrary to good divinity, and the true doctrine. of predestination, wherein we should reason rather ascendendo than descendendo, thus: 'I live in obedience to God, in love with my neighbor, I follow my vocation, etc., therefore, I trust that God hath elected me, and predestinated me to salvation;' not thus, which is the usual course of argument: God hath predestinated and chosen me to life, therefore, though I sin never so grievously, yet I shall not be damned; for whom He once loveth, He loveth to the end.'" 1

(b) As the first caution brings before us those who are in a condition to undertake the "godly consideration of Predestination," so the second declares who they are that have no right to consider it at all; and points out the two opposite, but equally wretched, results, to one or the other of which, if they do dwell upon it, they will be

sure to come.

The persons to whom this consideration is forbidden as full of danger, if they are members of Christ's Church at all, are in nowise living members of it. They "lack the Spirit of Christ," and cannot find in themselves its "workings" unto godliness. They are "curious" persons; that is, persons who, instead of regulating their lives, through Divine grace, by the clearly-revealed law of God, take to speculating about His decrees and His secret purposes as bearing on themselves; reasoning descendendo, and not ascendendo; prying where they have no possible right to; and so becoming the victims of notions which "unsettle all principle, and perplex but never convince." They are "carnal persons;" that is, persons of. "debauched morals" and evil lives, "wholly alien from the Spirit of Christ."

And these are led, the caution asserts, by their prying speculations and questionings, to utter despair on the one hand, or, on the other, to careless, unconcerned persistence in ungodliness, as something which predestination prevents from being of any practical importance to themselves."

Now, there can be no doubt that the practical effect of these cautions must be to discourage just that line of speculation which Calvinism encourages and delights in. So far forth, then, their drift

'Cardwell's "Conferences," pp. 180, 181.

It is worthy of remark that Calvin seems to recognize only the latter of

is away from Calvinism. They do not come up even to St. Augustine's idea of the usefulness of preaching on predestination, though they do fall in with other words of his in which a Catholic belief and temper triumph over the requirements of a speculative system.. "In this matter, let not the Church wait for laborious disputations, but pay heed to her daily prayers. She prays that unbelievers may believe; it is God then that converts to the faith. She prays that believers may persevere; it is God then that grants perseverance unto the end.”1

III. THE TWO CANONS OF INTERPRETATION.

What settles, however, beyond cavil or question (and that apart from all a priori probabilities derived from the Articles themselves, and all a posteriori historical arguments), the true interpretation of Article XVII. is found in its third and concluding paragraph.

"Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God."

Here are two clearly enunciated canons of interpretation; first, God's promises are to be received "as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture;" and, secondly, in our doings we are to follow the "expressly declared will of God.”

(a) What, precisely, does the first clause mean? Many persons, no doubt, are misled by a false definition of the word generally. They take it to mean ordinarily, commonly, usually, or sometimes, perhaps, what men call "in a general way," lacking definiteness and distinctness. Scholars do not need to be told that the word means nothing of the kind. In the Latin Article it reads, "generaliter propositae sunt." It is a dialectic, scholastic word. It is synonymous with universaliter, generi humano, and it signifies universally, to the whole human race.

Now, this is squarely opposed to the Calvinistic idea, which takes into account not what God has promised, universally, to all men, but what He wills to do in the case of each segregated and separated individual of the race; "de unoquoque homine," as Calvin himself says, in a passage already quoted. This canon of interpreta

these dangers, and says nothing of the former (Inst. lib. iii. c. xxiii. 10). "Was it," says Abp. Laurence, "because he could not, consistently with his principles, refute the objection by urging the universality of grace, and a serious disposition on God's part to promote the salvation of all men?". 'Bampt. Lectures," p. 177, note. 1 Works, vol. x. p. 829 (Bened. ed.).

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tion, then, is a death-blow to Calvinistic individualism. That theory cannot stand before it for an instant. It sends it at once to its own place," the region of abstract, presumptuous, and profitless speculation.

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(b) The second canon looks in the same direction. Whatever "secret counsels" there may be with God, whatsoever mysteries of will that man can never fathom, there is a clearly-revealed will and purpose of our Heavenly Father set forth to us in His Holy Word. And that will is that "all men should be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth;" "that the Gospel should be preached to every creature ;" "that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved;" and that "the grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men." This "expressly-declared" will is set forth in the clear statement of Article VII., that "everlasting life is offered to mankind in Christ;" offered, not in an unconditional decree, but in conditional promises.1

We may sum up our two canons in the words of Archbishop Laurence: "Assuming God's universal promises as the groundwork of predestination, it requires us to embrace them, not as confined to certain favorites. previously ordained to bliss, but as general to the whole human species, to whom our Church elsewhere considers eternal life as offered without discrimination, and not to indulge every evil propensity of our nature, under the pretence of being overruled by a secret will of heaven, which we can neither promote nor resist; but to act in conformity with that will, which is clearly revealed to us in Holy Scripture; a disposition in the common parent of all men to effect the salvation of all who obstruct not his operations on their part, discarding the means of grace, and the hope of glory.'

2

We cannot refrain from adding Bishop Pearson's keen and searching comment: "The Seventeenth Article of Religion established in our Church, orders the doctrine of predestination to be so delivered, as that we shall embrace the Divine promises as they are generaliter set forth to us in Holy Scripture, and in our actions follow that will of God which is expressly revealed to us in His Word. That is, unless I am mistaken, that we confess all promises made in the Gospel to the entire human race to be

We refer nowhere in this analysis to the language of the Prayer Book, not because it is not in entire harmony with the Article as analyzed and interpreted, but simply because we are just now dealing with the Articles alone.