man died, in all appearance, a speculative Calvinist. I wish Mr. Hickman had less respectable authority, than that of Dr. Featly, for assuring us, that “ king James called the Arminians, heretics, not many weeks before his death (t)."

SECTION XX.

The Introduction of Arminianism by archbishop Laud.-Short Review of the Calvinism of our Bishops and Universities, antecedently to that ara. -Objections answered:-And the Whole Concluded.

KING Charles the First ascended the throne, at a very unfavourable time, and under circumstances of peculiar disadvantage; a consideration, which should never be forgot, amidst the just censures wherewith impartial posterity must always brand the calamitous maxims by which he steered.

To develope the intricate complication of untoward co-incidents, or the political situation of things, which marked the æra of Charles' accession, does not fall within the province of my present undertaking. It shall, therefore, suffice, to observe, that had Laud possessed any degree of common prudence, the civil complexion of the times would, alone, have taught him, how necessary it was for him to restrain his own restless spirit from raising a storm in the church, when the symptoms of approaching convulsion had already began to endanger the state. But, on the death of James, the prelate, who had been kept in considerable awe by

(t) Hickman against Heylyn, p. ult.-Edit. 1674.

that prince, was over-joyed to find himself in a state of perfect liberty under Charles, whose favour he had cultivated with success, and into whose ear he continually distilled the most pernicious poison a prince can imbibe.

Indeed, Laud found no great difficulty in bringing the new monarch to his lure. He did but sow in ground already ploughed to his hands. Charles was imperious, by nature; and tyrannic, by education. With the crown, he inherited all the arbitrary principles of his father. The plan of despotism, rudely sketched by James, was hurried into an absolute system by Charles; who adopted it with more settled obstinacy of determination, and pursued it with more daring boldness of execution.

If Heylyn may be credited, Laud had formed a design so far back as the (u) year 1600, of endeavouring to pervert the church of England from her Calvinistic doctrines. A very extraordinary object, for so raw a youth, as he, at that time, was! or, as Heylyn himself expresses it, "a desperate attempt, for a single man, unseconded, and not well befriended, to oppose himself against an army, to strive against so strong a stream, and cross the current of the times!" He was then about twenty-five years of age; a young master of arts; no more than Fellow of St. John's college, Oxford; not many years emancipated from school; in deacon's orders only; his finances very moderate; without any ecclesiastical preferment; and with hardly a friend in the university, to countenance him amidst that torrent of general and public odium, which his haughty behaviour and his papistical bias had drawn upon him from every side! for a man, under those circumstances, and in so early a part of life, to project a scheme of such consequence and difficulty, as the divorcing of the established church from her own

(u) Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 48.

essential principles, exhibits an instance of wild selfsufficiency, and of audacious restlessness, scarcely to be exceeded in the whole compass of history.

No wonder that a person, stimulated by this outrageous enthusiasm for innovation, drove so furiously when Charles intrusted him with the reins. Mosheim shall give us a concise view of the plan adopted both by the sovereign and the prelate.

"All the emotions of his [i. e. of king Charles'] zeal, and the whole tenor of his administation, were directed towards the three following objects:

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

66

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

66

[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 Wil. liam Laud" [who, in July, 1628, became] “bishop of London. This haughty prelate executed the plans of his royal master, and fulfilled the views of his own ambition, 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" [and not them only, but all who avowed the doctrinal system of the church, though ever so zealous for the hierarchy and ceremonies] "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 op

position and remonstrances of [archbishop] Abbot, substituted the Arminian system in its place (a).”

The Arminians, therefore, were no losers, by the death of king James. On the contrary, their influence continually encreased, from the moment Charles began to wield the sceptre. Being the avowed enemies of limited monarchy, this unhappy prince entered as warmly into their religious principles, as they did, into his political views. Between eight and nine years after his accession, the court credit of the Arminian faction arrived to its meridian; when, on the decease of good archbishop Abbot, Laud was lifted to the see of Canterbury, and the reformed world, with indignation and concern, saw Lambeth palace become the head quarters of Arminianism, A. D. 1633.-There had been six protestant metropolitans, from the reformation, to the advancement of Laud: viz. Cranmer, Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, Bancroft, and Abbot. Not one of these was tainted with Arminianism. Laud was the first Arminian primate of England, who made profession of the reformed religion. Nor is it unworthy of notice, that Arminius himself, whose doctrines the high flying Laud so fiercely adopted, was neither more nor less than a Dutch presbyterian and republican.

I shall confine myself to two remarkable instances of the force and fraud, with which this grand corrupter of our established church laboured to debauch her purity of faith.

I. The directions concerning preachers, issued by James the first (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 pro

(x) Mosheim's Eccles. History, vol. iv. p. 518, 519. Octavo,

hibition was (y) 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 (2) 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; 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 (a).

But Charles had very little of his father's "kingcraft." 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 (b).

One immediate design of this proclamation was, to shelter Richard Montagu (who had lately written

(y) Among the remarks, to which James' absurd injunction had given occasion, were the following. Some observed, that "in prohibiting the preaching of predestination, man makes that the forbidden fruit, which God appointed for the tree of life: so cordial [are] the comforts contained therein [i. e. contained in the scripture doctrine of predestination], to a distressed conscience."- -Others seasoned their complaints with sarcasm and invective: saying, "bishops and deans, forsooth, and none under their dignity, may preach of predestination. What is this, but to have the word of God in respect of persons? As if all discretion were confined to cathedral men! and they best able to preach, who use it the least!" Fuller's Church Hist. book x. p. 110.

(a) See, for example, part i. p. 64. Folio,

(2) Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 94. bishop Hacket's Life of archbishop Williams, 1693. (b) Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 147, 148.