Paris, sent for a copy of it, that he might examine it more carefully, after which he declared to the directors, “that the more he read it, the better he liked it," and he especially wrote to Episcopius, after the Latin edition was published, saying, "I hope the Confession will do us service with reasonable people; indeed, I find already many persons who are especially well satisfied with it, for which reason I wish you to send me several copies, that I may distribute them to such as I think worthy of them." In France, England, Denmark, and Germany, it was bought with avidity; and in the space of one month, two thousand eight hundred copies of it were sold, the profits of which amounted to one thousand seven hundred guilders.* Independently of this extensive sale making known the sentiments of the Remonstrants, and contradicting the slanders of their enemies, who charged them with entertaining the foulest heresies, the proceeds were extremely acceptable to men who had nothing to depend upon but the benefactions of their suffering people, who, in contributing to their support, did it under liabilities to heavy fines and imprisonment.

The design of the Remonstrants in publishing this work was known some time before its appearance, and it was anxiously looked for by two classes of persons—those who advised and adopted persecution against them, and others

* In the year following, Grotius contributed to the funds of the Remonstrant clergy, by giving them the profits of his Apology, which amounted to five hundred guilders. This work "is one of the most eloquent and unanswerable productions of its kind." It is divided into twenty chapters, and contains a vindication of himself, his brother magistrates, and the Remonstrants in general, with a refutation of the calumnies raised against them, and proves the injustice of the proceedings instituted against himself and Barneveldt. When first read by Prince Maurice, it greatly agitated him, and undoubtedly contributed to produce that mental anguish which operated to bring down "a robust and indefatigable man into a feeble, languishing state," which speedily terminated in death. This work contains the following testimony in favour of the Arminian ministers: "That he had been very well acquainted with several of the Remonstrant clergy, who, as well as he, were forced to quit their country for the sake of their religion, or else to prac tise it in great privacy, at the peril of perpetual imprisonment, and that he had found them to be men of piety and learning, and well affected to their governors."-Brandt, Nichols, Grattan, and De Burigny's Life of Grotius.

who witnessed and sympathized with them under it. The former had to make out a case in justification of their conduct, and for this purpose publicly and daily asserted that they were foul heretics. When the Confession appeared, the rage of many of these persons knew no bounds; for, instead of its being what they had hoped, full of heresies and blasphemies, they were forced to admit that “it contained sound and orthodox doctrines on the subject of the Trinity;" and even the Calvinistic professors of Leyden, who wrote against it, declared that, "with respect to the Divinity of the Son and Holy Spirit, the sentiments it contained perfectly agreed with the analogy of faith;" while others who had wickedly and unjustly, because without evidence, charged them with leaning to the opinions of Socinus on these important subjects, were covered with shame and confusion.

To the friends of the Remonstrants it was highly satisfactory, and they spoke of it in the strongest terms of approval. In various parts of Europe testimonies in favour of it were published by the most eminent divines and professors, especially those of the Lutheran Church. All this was deeply mortifying to the High Calvinistic party in Holland, many of whom, though they could not denounce it as heretical, yet, as in the case of the Leyden professors, they attempted to destroy its effects in favour of the Remonstrants, by basely insinuating, as Festus Hommius had done before of Episcopius, that "though the public declarations of the Remonstrants were orthodox, yet the thoughts they entertained were directly the opposite." It was this iniquitous proceeding that gave severity to Episcopius' pen, when attacking the conduct of such men, who dared to usurp the place of the Divinity, in professing to understand the undeclared thoughts of individuals, and pronounce them as being heretical. In allusion to the conduct of these gentleman, Bayle archly says, "It was absolutely necessary they should charge the Remonstrants with being guilty of gross errors; and because the world began to say that the five famous points were not sufficient reason for persecuting this people, they must therefore assert that, when they found nothing in the Confession that could be branded as grossly heretical, they should declare that though they used the language of

orthodoxy, yet they concealed the poison of heresy in their hearts." On the iniquity of these proceedings we need offer no comment, only would add that on such unjustifiable grounds they did not scruple to persecute the Remonstrants as heretics.

There is one circumstance in the conduct of these Arminian clergymen, relative to this Confession, which we must notice, because it has been adverted to in the way of disapproval by some persons who had no quarrel with them on the points of doctrine it contains; that is, the fact of its not being made binding upon the members of their community by oaths and subscriptions. Hence the following declaration-certainly designed to be understood as a censure "No person, not even a pastor, was obliged by any form to adhere strictly to it, but every one was left entirely at liberty to interpret its language in the manner that was most agreeable to his private sentiments."* We have already said that we are not surprised that these men, suffering under the violent attempts of the Calvinists to make them subscribe articles at which their consciences revolted, should hesitate, under such circumstances, to adopt measures which might subsequently render others liable to sufferings which they themselves were then enduring. And it should be understood that between the act of subscribing, or swearing, and that of giving in either a written or vivâ voce approval of the Confession, which was done by all these ministers, there was no middle path. And when the reader is reminded

* It has been again and again stated, in the form of a charge against the authors of this Confession, "that it is expressed chiefly in the words and phrases of Scripture," and asserted that "every one was of course left at liberty to annex his own meaning to them."* How far this is correct the reader will judge for himself, if he will examine our translation of it appended to these memoirs, in which every word and phrase of Scripture contained therein is marked in italics. But suppose the statement to be true, still we should concur with the Rev. Tobias Conyers, who, in 1657, said "that orthodoxy would be better proved by a subscription to a known confession of faith, drawn up in Scripture terms and phrases, according to which the preachers of the Gospel might and ought to frame their judgments and doctrines, than by the resolves of some particular men."-See Nichols' Arminianism, p. 14.

See Edinburgh Cyclopædia, as quoted by Watson in his Biblical and Theological Dictionary; article, Arminianism.

that these men, in openly declaring their approval of sentiments, for the maintenance of which they had previously suffered the loss of office in the national Church, were many of them, at the time they made it, in dungeons and prisons, or wandering from place to place under the cover of darkness, to communicate spiritual instruction to their flocks, in doing which they were constantly liable to be taken, and made subject to perpetual imprisonment; we ask him, Can their sincerity be doubted, or was it necessary to test it, while these heroic and faithful pastors were thus labouring to inculcate the doctrines this Confession contained, amid perils, poverty, and persecution? And - peremptorily to have insisted upon an oath, to prove the =reality of their attachment to it under such circumstances, would, we think, have been little less than insult and a mockery of their sufferings. And yet the fact of their not imposing subscriptions on each other as the test of fidelity in their declarations, has been, to say the least of it, unguardedly attributed to something like laxity of principle and feeling in them, on the high and orthodox statements contained in their Confession. This implied censure is attempted to be vindicated on the alleged ground that some of the succeeding pastors did not evince the same regard for orthodox principles as did the original framers and approvers of it; while an intimation is also given that this would have been prevented, if admission into their communion had been guarded by oaths and subscription to the Confession.*

*The extended circulation of this Confession is adverted to, even at the present day, by the Remonstrants in Holland with great pleasure, while their attachment to the sentiments it contains, and the interest that is felt by some of them in the anticipation of a wider spread of the doctrines it embodies, may be seen from the following circumstance. The writer, wishing to collate his translation of it from the Latin edition with the one published in Dutch, was ena. bled to obtain a copy of it in the latter language from an Arminian clergyman, through the medium of Thomas Walker, Esq., of Stock. ton-on-Tees, only on the following condition, that a copy of the English translation, when published, should be forwarded to him in Holland. This minister, in giving up the only copy of this work that he had in his library, sent with it a beautifully written note, expressive of his satisfaction at the extensive sale the work had had, with a high encomium upon the sentiments it contained, and his pleasure at the prospect of its appearing in an English dress. We

The utility of a confession as documentary evidence of a Church being the depository of orthodox sentiments, we of course fully admit; but that the possession of such an instrument is absolutely necessary to secure the orthodoxy of any religious community, or that subscriptions to it invariably serve as a safeguard against the admission of heterodox ministers into its bosom, is proved not to be the case by the undisputed testimony of facts. If we look to the Protestant Churches of the continent, they had their confessions and subscriptions, yet the history of those of Geneva, France, Germany, &c., during the last century, shows the strange anomaly of such Churches having a written orthodox creed, while their ministers, subscribing such an instrument, were publicly avowing and preaching doctrines, not merely heterodox, but scarcely one remove from semi-infidelity. Such a state of things can be accounted for on the avowed conduct of a celebrated English divine, who, though heterodox in sentiment, signed the orthodox articles of his Church, not as articles of faith, but as articles of peace and unity. And thus it is seen, that whatever value confessions and subscriptions may have, yet it is possible for them to be awfully injurious, in being made instrumental in fostering deception and fraud in matters where such vices assume the darkest forms, or being regarded only as the means of keeping up the semblance and rites of Christianity, and binding the members of a Church under one form of ecclesiastical government, while those principles instinct with holy life, generating faith, piety, and devotedness to God, which form the great bond of spiritual union among saints, are lost sight of by those who become the nominal members of a Church by merely assenting to the documentary tes timony of truth, as found in its acknowledged confession.

In proof that the principles of orthodoxy may be maintained unimpaired in a religious community without a written declaration of faith, take the case of the Wesleyan body,* which, from its numbers, unity, and the spread of

have thought it right to make this statement to show the estimation in which it is held by a successor of those ministers who originally drew it up or approved of it.

It is true, the Wesleyan ministers are examined on the points of orthodoxy both before and after their admission into the office of