pelled, by the fervour of the time, to breathe the sultry atmosphere of controversy, we occasionally felt ourselves refreshed with the hope, that whatever might be settled relative to the points in dispute, the belligerants themselves would retire from the field, not to temper their arms for new encounters, but to employ a long interval of peace, if to no better purpose, yet in gaining a competent acquaintance with the merits of the general question, by ascertaining the actual tenets of the personage from whom their controversy derived its appellation. This hope, it is presumed, was very far from being unreasonable; for if in the most obscure and transient dissentions of familiar life it be unjust, on the one side, to criminate an arraigned party without soliciting and weigh ing his own explanations; and, on the other, to assume his perfect innocence, without canvassing the evidence of his accusers; how indispensable must it be in questions affecting our everlasting salvation, and amidst the thousand temptations of religious hostility, to exact of every writer in every controversy, that he should search directly into the avowed and authorized creed of the individual or community, whose principles he wishes either to refute, or to establish.

This equitable method of proceeding, though demanded by the common sense of mankind, in the usual transactions of the world, appears, in many instances, to have fallen into almost entire disuse, in the arrangements of modern theo logical controversy. Not that we accuse the managers of abstaining from all reference to the creed which forms the basis of their discussions; but we charge them with too often selecting such detached articles only as square with the disputant's present purpose, by furnishing materials for praise or censure, in disjunction from the immediate context, or general tenor of the confession.

It is impossible for any human or even inspired composition to be proof against the cavils of men who thus avail themselves of the petty stratagems of religious war; for if we direct the observation to the volume of Revelation itself, we shall readily perceive with what apparently irresistible success the selecting process might have been applied, in the first age of Christianity, by an objector to the doctrine of St. Paul's Epistles. The Jew or the Gentile philosopher, for example, might have urged against the Christian apologist of that period some such scholastic sophistry as the following:- -" In reference to the hypothesis, that the Founder of the rising sect did ́ by a certain course of voluntary pain, issuing in dissolution, contribute to the happiness of his adherents; or rather, (if I correctly interpret the Epistles containing the system recommended to my adoption,) that by his sufferings and death was secured to them what you emphatically term redemption from the penalty otherwise annexed to the perpetration of guilt in the present life, and the actual possession of eternal pleasures;-you must forgive me if I feel incredulous with regard to this novel hypothesis, not from any suspicion of your own sincerity, but solely because I read in your prophet, that your Founder died for the ungodly. (Rom. v. 6.) For surely, if there be any meaning in language, here is an undisguised avowal that the abettors of a system professedly destined to enlighten, refine, and beatify the nations, are themselves classed by their own reporter among the worthless of mankind. It was for persons thus avowedly stigmatized that a sacrifice so costly was effected ;-[ term it costly, because I cannot be otherwise than struck by the severe grandeur of the effort. Had, indeed, this last pledge of your Master's sincerity been offered for the sons and daughters of innocence,

or of virtue bleeding under the scourge of unmerited calamity; I should so far at least have applauded the consistency of your faith, in the provision it made for the future and durable remuneration of the good ; but, if its mysteries, thus disclosed to the populace by the imprudent unreservedness of the Pauline letters, not merely invite those already depraved to remain so, but give out an intelligible intimation, that such as have retained their original purity must degrade into guilt, in order to qualify themselves for the reception of your Gospel ;-if this licentious doctrine be the blossom and fruit of the new philosophy, I must on my own part, as personally involved in the reigning controversy of the day, and on the part of all the patrons of public order, request that no Christian apologist will continue to declaim against the darkness and profligacy of the world; but, on the contrary, honestly review his own system; impart to it, if not the substance, yet the show of goodness; and, in any event, banish from his creed that pernicious article which, by confining its benefits to the ungodly, erects the triumphant banners of wickedness on the ruins of virtue."

To representations of this sort the merest novice in theology might, of course, easily reply, that had not the objector unfairly adopt ed the selecting process, no such deduction from some four or five words in the Epistle to the Romans could possibly have been gathered by a reasoning creature; for that, although most truly the Son of God died for the ungodly," and although, further, his death is not only formally recognised in the creed of his followers, as one article among many, but regarded by them as a circumstance "first, and last, and midst," in the wide circle of their hopes, and as constituting the only meritorious plea of their acceptance with the Father;-yet that as truly does the Son require

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from his redeemed church a practical similitude to his own spotless example; nay, that the self-same Epistles which supplied the objector with the ground of his antiChristian sophistry supply also incontrovertible proofs, that the Gospel, though on the one hand it may be termed, what it certainly is, in its remedial character, the religion of sinners, is. in its reception and permanent influence, the religion also of saints. In a word, if St. Paul in one place declares the effect of the death of Jesus Christ to be the deliverance of believers from the penalty of sin, in another be equally announces it to be deliverance from its pollution; and in addition to this merely negative consequence, he deduces a positive one,-for Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Titus ii. 14.) Here, then, the Christian respondent opposes text to text, and the argument properly terminates. How the assertion of the Apostle to the Romans may be consistent with his assertion to Titus, is quite another inquiry. It is sufficient, for the present purpose, to prove that the man who characterizes an extensive system by exhibiting a minute part of it— like the pedant of antiquity who, wishing to sell his house, carried about him a single brick as a specimen-has no claim to a reply till he learns to come to the contest with more candour and sincerity.

The disappointment of the pacific hope, that men would read an author before either they condemn or embrace his views, induces us to offer to our readers, in general, and specifically to any persons who may be actually involved in this controversy, a limited examination of the works placed at the head of this article. We intend simply to refer to a few of such parts of Calvin's personal character and writ

ings, as illustrate his own views of the practical nature of his divinity; in order to demonstrate equally to the patrons and opponents of his doctrinal hypothesis, that whether his theory of Christianity be correct or erroneous, the deductions thence obtained by the theorist himself, together with the general strain of his hortatory theology, uniformly require from his disciples the denial of ungodliness and worldly lusts, and a life of sobriety, righteousness, and godliness. Nothing can be more remote from our plan than an endeavour either to establish or disprove abstractedly the relation between his doctrinal and preceptive modes of instruction. Our inquiry, defined by the boundary line of practical utility, will leave the grand controversy precisely where it was found; and will thus, we trust, consist with the neutrality professed in our publication.

We proceed then to remind the students of ecclesiastical history, that was in the year 1536 that Calvin published at Basle his Institutes of the Christian Religion.* He addressed them to his sovereign, Francis the First of France, in a Preliminary Dedication which has been ever since pronounced by the oracles of criticism, throughout all divisions of Christendom, to be one of the most happy efforts in its own department of literature. A recent perusal of this apology, in Mr. Allen's translation, impels us to add,

* It may be necessary, once for all, to apologize to our literary readers for having introduced from Mr. Mackenzie's digest of the various Memoirs of Calvin, details which must have been long familiarized to them in original works; but they will perceive that the review, as far as those works are concerned, was prepared for readers professing to derive their knowledge of the topics examined in the text, exclusively from English literature. Mr. Mackenzie's performance may be recommended as a narrative compiled with moderation, skill, and a competent acquaintance with his subject.

in addition to the applauses which have been so generally lavished upon it, that it contains a fine illustration of the union of independence of mind in the writer, with the respect due from a subject to his king; that it exhibits vivid illustrations of the irreconcileableness of scriptural religion with the world in every age, and of the intolerance of mankind towards Christianity itself; (for whatever Calvinism may be found in the Institutes, there is not a trace of it in the Dedication;)and that although it discovers evident marks of a period when all parties outreasoned their opponents by contumelious logic, such blemishes show themselves only as blemishes, and are far from disturbing the general effect of a performance which deserved to meet the eye of a monarch fully able to appreciate the labours of learning, however disposed to blame their connexion with the re

formed faith. Had Francis perused the dedication with an independence of thinking commensurate with even the political importance of its topics, he would surely without hesitation have signed the preliminaries of peace with his Protestant subjects; and had he pursued a similar course with regard to the Institutes, a definitive treaty might have resulted, containing articles of infinite utility to the interests both of the sovereign and of the non-catholic class of his people. It appears, however, either that his majesty never read the work at all, or that he too availed himself of the selecting process; and if the latter were the case, he certainly might have deciphered the threatening characters of rebellion and anarchy, in the pages of the Exile of Bâsle, with the same facility as our supposed sophist of the primitive age detected an immoral tendency in the Apostolic Epistles.

With regard to the Institutes themselves, they were modified and enlarged by the compiler, in various successive editions, from the first, in 1536, to the last, published by

Calvin himself in 1559, (a space of three-and-twenty years.) when they received his final corrections, and appeared as we now find them. It is a sufficiently curious circumstance to be under the necessity of informing certain divinity students of the nineteenth century, respecting a book, which, as Heylin himself tells us, was a kind of second Bible, (at least, the accredited interpreter of the first.) to the aspirants after ordination in the Church of England, during the early part of the seventeenth century. Without stopping to inquire into the causes of this ignorance or forgetfulness, it shall be our endeavour, in some succeeding paragraph, to give a brief statement a statement so brief that it may be borne without irritation of the contents of the Genevese body of divinity; premi, sing, that our report is founded upon a straight-forward perusal of every page and section in the Institutes of Calvin. Whether we came to the task with prejudices favourable or hostile, we profess to have completed it with a full conviction, that our author, in common with other masters of theological science, has many human excellencies and many human defects; that he deserves neither to be canonized as an inspired instructor, nor to be viewed as the evil genius of religious anarchy; but that unquestionably he occupies a station in the very first rank among the learned, industrious, and devout teachers of mankind,and that (giving such average credit to the representations of biography as is required by the courtesy of the lettered world) he illustrated by his own example the strength and purity of his faith, exacting from his opponents a concession that his life was at least equal in practical godliness to the lives of any who have dissented from the peculiarities of his creed. Most unequivocally did this great man display to his professed adherents such a pattern of consistent holiness as, by their concurrence with his princi

ples, they surely bind themselves to imitate, and to hold up to the imitation of their associates in the field of controversy, and to all in their families or churches who acknowledge their domestic or pastoral influence.

If, in obedience to the impression made by a recent study of the life and writings of Calvin, we have sketched a too-flattering outline of his moral lineaments, the dissatisfied spectator may wander from our exhibition to examine a portrait drawn by a Raphael of the Anglican Church, in the sixteenth century, ―a portrait familiar to all who have walked and studied in the galleries and schools of that church; and, whether faithful or otherwise, deriving every claim to patient and impartial criticism from its having proceeded from the pencil of the great and accredited apologist of our Ecclesiastical Polity.

"A founder it had," (referring to the Genevese discipline established by Calvin,) "whom, for mine own part, I' think incomparably the wisest man that ever the French church did enjoy, since the hour it enjoyed him. His bringing up was in the study of the civil law. Divine knowledge he gathered not by hearing or reading, so much as by teaching others. For though thousands were debtors to him, as touching knowledge in that kind, yet he to none, but only fountain, the book of life, and of the to God, the Author of that most blessed admirable dexterity of wit, together with the helps of other learning which were his guides." "Two things of which principal moment there are throughout the world; the one, his exhave deservedly procured him honour ceeding pains in composing the Institution of Christian Religion; the other, his no less industrious travels for exposition of holy Scripture, according to the same institutions. In which two things, whosoever they were that after him bestowed their labour, he gained the advantage of prejudice against them, if they gainsayed; and of glory above them, if they consented. Of what ac

count the master of sentences was in the Church of Rome, the same and more amongst the preachers of reformed churches, Calvin had purchased; so that the perfectest divines were judged they