be traced some of the evils, over which, as a church, we have been called to mourn.

1. The first we mention is the prevalence and boldness of doctrinal error. Man is naturally ignorant of the truth as it is in Jesus, and inclined to error, and when left without instruction, will follow that inclination. His heart is opposed to the humbling doctrines of grace, and strongly leans to those which foster pride, cherish self-esteem, and minister to self-confidence and exaltation.

Even with the most faithful indoctrination, it is difficult to stem the current of these popular and self-flattering errors. It is a mournful reflection that so many of our people have been ignorant of the distinctive doctrines of our venerable and truly apostolical church. This is a chief reason why errors have abounded in our midst. The hedges of our vineyard were neglected, and the enemy came in like a flood, and for a time, threatened to lay waste our heritage. But the Lord, we trust, has lifted up a standard against him. Had we been faithful to "fill the bushel with wheat, we might, in God's name, have defied the devil to fill it with tares." Had the minds of the past and present generations been thoroughly pre-occupied with sound doctrine, we might now have been rejoicing in the unclouded prospects of the church.

Errors have ever abounded in the church of Christ, just in proportion as doctrinal and instructive preaching has been neglected. Public teaching is the ordained means of building up and extending the church; and as God is pleased to work by means, it is idle to expect that the end may be reached, while the appointed means are neglected. The church will decline, unless her cause be advanced in God's approved way. This has ever been the case; and the pages of her history abound with proof on this point, and afford humbling but instructive lessons to all who are set for her defence. The thick moral darkness which had for ages, prior to the Reformation, covered, as with a funeral pall, the bosom of the church, was the result of gross neglect on the part of those who bore the office of Christian pastors. A false philosophy, with its useless refinements, seldom appealing to the Bible, because deriving no real countenance from it, gradually displaced the more simple and scriptural ministrations of the pulpit. This prepared the way for the influence of neighbouring heathenism to operate in blending. mythological sentiments and rites with the Christian religion. This, together with metropolitan influence, an occasional alliance with the civil authority, and the growing

worldliness and corruption of the clergy, soon excluded from most of the Christian pulpits, that style of doctrinal and instructive preaching, which so eminently characterized the preachers of the primitive church.

In most places where the Romish faith exclusively prevails, no preaching at all is heard at the present day. The mere ceremonies of the church occupy exclusively the religious attention of both priests and people.

During the dark ages, those pastors who professed to preach, taught for doctrines, the commandments of men, until ignorance became the mother of devotion.

The voice of wisdom was no longer heard in the streets. The harps of holy praise were hung upon the willows, and the remnant of Israel sat down and wept, or fled before the sword of relentless persecution. And it was not until the reformed pulpits of Germany and the neighbouring states, in defiance of priestly domination, thundered forth the doctrines of the cross into the ears of the people, that the light of the Gospel shone into their hearts, delivering them from the power of Satan. It then seemed as if the spark of Christianity, which still lingered and languished in the breasts of a few, had been rekindled at the altar of God, and shed forth its light and heat, until other kingdoms caught the flame, which has since spread over nearly every civilized nation, carrying with it peace, and joy, and eternal life.

Under the doctrinal preaching of her reformers, the church arose from the long, dark night of spiritual death, like the giant from his slumbers, and shook from her a cumbrous mass of excrescent dogmas and rites, and stood forth redeemed, disenthralled, and renovated; and in the name and strength of her Lord and Head, marched onward conquering and to conquer.

The history of the reformed church in England, teaches the same lesson. The reformed doctrines were held and preached by her clergy, with but few exceptions, till the time of James I. He was a vain-glorious and arbitrary prince; and although he advocated, in the character of an author, the doctrines of the Reformation, yet he sacrificed his religion at the shrine of ambition. His interests were in conflict with his principles, and from political motives, he favoured the false teachers of his day. The politico-ecclesiastical game was well played. He favoured the religious views of those who favoured his pretensions to undue authority and power in the kingdom.

"Soon after the accession of King James, the canons of

the church were confirmed by the king and convocation. Things were in this state, when a great turn happened in the doctrines of the church. The Arminian, or remonstrant tenets, which had been condemned by the Synod at Dort, began to spread in England. The Calvinistical sense of the XXXIX articles was discouraged; and injunctions were published against preaching upon predestination, election, efficacy of grace, &c., while the Arminians were suffered to inculcate their doctrines" without control." *

These injunctions were drawn up through the instrumentality of Bishop Laud, and were entitled, Directions concerning preachers. The third article of these directions enjoined, "that no preacher of what title soever, under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do, from henceforth, presume to preach, in any popular auditory, the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, or the universality, efficacy, resistibility, or irresistibility of God's grace; but leave those themes rather to be handled by the learned men (in the two universities:) and that moderately and modestly, by way of use and application, rather than by way of positive doctrines; being fitter for the schools, than for simple auditories." "This," says Toplady, "was the first blow, given by royal authority, to the doctrinal Calvinism of the established church, since the death of Mary the bloody. For, though it primâ facie, seemed to muzzle the Arminians, no less than the Calvinistic clergy, yet its design was to bridle the latter, and leave the former at liberty to spread their new princiciples without restraint. The above paper of directions was dated from Windsor, 4th August, 1622."

Charles I., son of James I., followed in the footsteps, and laboured to carry out the principles, of his father.

"All the emotions of his zeal," says Mosheim, "and the whole tenor of his administration, were directed towards the three following objects:

1. The extending the royal prerogative, and raising the power of the crown above the authority of law.

2. The reduction of all the churches in Great Britain and Ireland, under the jurisdiction of bishops.

3. The suppression of the opinions and institutions peculiar to Calvinism.

"The person whom the king chiefly intrusted with the execution of this arduous plan, was William Laud, Bishop of London. This haughty prelate executed the plans of his royal master, and fulfilled the views of his own ambition,

* Tindal's Cont. of Rapin, Vol. III. p. 279, 280, 8vo.

without using those mild and moderate methods, which prudence employs, to make unpopular schemes go down. He carried matters with a high hand. When he found the laws opposing his views, he treated them with contempt, and violated them without hesitation. He loaded the Puritans with injuries and vexations, and aimed at nothing less than their total extinction. He rejected the Calvinistical doctrine of predestination publicly, in the year 1625, (viz. in the first year of Charles' reign:) and notwithstanding the opposition and remonstrances of (Archbishop) Abbot, substituted the Arminian system in its place."*

Thus it appears that one of the three objects which Charles I. proposed to himself, on his accession to the throne, was the extermination of Calvinism from the English church. This determination was formed from political and selfish motives, rather than from any conviction that Calvinism was unscriptural. The Calvinists, both in England and on the continent, were, and ever have been, the most formidable and uncompromising foes to political tyranny and despotism. They composed the liberal party in the politics of England, and had opposed the reachings of James I. after unlimited and arbitrary power, and were no less obnoxious to his son, on account of their firm stand against his high pretensions.

William Laud, as we have already seen, was the man whom Charles selected as a fit agent to carry into effect his selfish and wicked purposes. And by his elevation to the See of Canterbury, the king attempted virtually to close the pulpits of England against the advocates of sound doctrine, and threw them wide open to those errorists who had played the part of sycophants at his and his father's feet.

"The directions concerning preachers," says Toplady, "issued by James I. (as already noted,) in the year 1622, forbad every clergyman, under the degree of a bishop, or of a dean, to preach, in public, either for or against such of the doctrines of grace as were specified in those directions. But as this prohibition was very unpleasing to the public in general, so was it far from producing universal obedience. The king, perceiving how much offence his directions had given to the nation, thought proper to publish a subsequent apology for his conduct in that matter: which discreet step, conduced both to calm the minds of the people, and to blunt the force of the directions themselves. This was not the first time that James had been drawn into a scrape by Laud; 312 * Mosheim's Ecc. Hist. Vol. IV. p. 518.

nor the first time of his majesty's receding from the imprudent measures into which he had been hurried by that warm and forward ecclesiastic.

But Charles had very little of his father's King-craft.' In June, 1626, (i. e. hardly more than four months after his coronation,) Laud got him to revive the unpopular directions concerning preachers; of which a new edition appeared, in the form of a proclamation, extending the prohibition to bishops and deans themselves; who were by this ill-judged stretch of royal supremacy, commanded to forbear from treating of predestination in their sermons and writings.*

* Some considerable time, says Toplady, after the said proclamation, or royal edict,' had been issued, Dr. Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, preached before the king at Whitehall. His text, as he himself acquaints us, was Rom. vi. 23.- The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."- -"Here," says his lordship, "I expounded the three-fold happiness of the godly:

"1. Happy in the Lord, whom they serve; God, or Jesus Christ. "2. Happy in the reward of their service: eternal life.

"3. Happy in the manner of their reward: agua or gratuitum donum in Christo, (i. e. the reward is God's free, unmerited gift in Christ.)

The two former points were not excepted against.

"In the third and last, I considered eternal life in three divers instances.

(1.) In the eternal destination thereunto, which we call election. "(2.) In our conversion, regeneration, or manifestive justification: which I term the embryo of eternal life.

"(3.) And, last of all, in our coronation, when full possession of eternal life is given us.

"In all these I showed it to be agua, or the free gift of God, through Christ; and not procured, or pre-merited by any special acts depending upon the free will of men.

"The last point, wherein I opposed the popish doctrines of merit, was not disliked. The second, wherein I showed that effectual vocation, or regeneration, whereby we have eternal life inchoated and begun in us, is a free gift; was not expressly taxed. Only the first was it which bred the offence: not in regard of the doctrine itself, but because, as my lord's grace, (i. e. Harsenet, archbishop of York said,) the king had prohibited the debating thereof." (Bishop Davenant's Letter to Dr. Ward, extant in Fuller's Ch. Hist. Book xi. p. 140.)

What was the consequence of the excellent bishop's presuming to assert predestination to the face of the Arminian king, and his whole court? "Presently." continues the bishop, "after my sermon was ended, it was signified unto me, by my lord of York, my lord of Winchester, and my lord Chamberlain, that his majesty was much displeased that I had stirred this question, which he had forbidden to be meddled withal, one way or the other. My answer was, that I had delivered nothing but the received doctrine of our church, esta. blished in the seventeenth article: and that I was ready to justify