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Duke Charles heads the Opposition.

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parties who are really unreconciled to each other meet upon a half-way territory which purblind mediators call that of peace and reconcilement, but which, for one or both of them, is rather that of falsehood and hypocrisy,-meet for a single hour, to be severed the next, with increased bitterness of feeling, so much the farther from each other." On the 27th February the bishops left Stockholm, in order, as their several feelings prompted them, either to advance or impede the introduction of the liturgy into their different dioceses. Archbishop Laurentius Petri was especially zealous in forwarding the wishes of his sovereign. He would tolerate no disobedience to the mandate compelling the employment of the new prayer-book, and declared that whoever of the clergy should refuse to receive it before the following 18th of May, would thereby forfeit his office-a declaration reduced to practice in the case of some, who remained firm in their opposition to the hated manual. In the diocese of Skara a similar intolerant course was pursued. Within the bishoprics of Linköping and Strengnäs, however, the enforcement of the liturgy had to encounter much greater difficulties, arising partly with the occupiers of the two sees themselves. Bishop Martin of Linköping, after his return from Stockholm, did nothing to further the adoption of the prayer-book, but, on the other hand, emitted, along with his chapter, a declaration, in which they stated that it was unadvisable either by command or compulsion to introduce its use. Bishop Nils of Strengnäs, while the Stockholm Synod was still in progress, despatched messengers to ascertain from his sovereign prince, Duke Charles, the opinion of the latter with regard to the new liturgy. Charles replied that "he did not know of any other church ritual or missal than that which had been so long employed in Sweden, and had no desire to try anything novel,-however fair-seeming the reasons might be for its adoption,-until it was clearly proved to him that the old ritual was wrong, and that the grounds of its employment were untenable." Within Charles's dukedom no subsequent step was taken which denoted the slightest approval of the new ecclesiastical change. Its ruler was as stubborn in his determination as was King John himself; and when, in the August of 1577, he set out on a foreign journey, he strictly enjoined his unmarried sister Elizabeth to continue firm in the doctrine which had been adopted during their father's lifetime. While absent on this journey, he more than once exhorted the bishop to refuse his sanction to any change in divine service while he was away from his dominions. He publicly assumed the position which he occupied ever afterwards, as the great supporter of the opponents of the liturgy, and began to open a place of refuge in his territories for the Swedish clergy who

were deposed from their charges on account of their refusal to receive it. But all this had no weight with John, who, prompted by his wife, and strengthened by the proselytising efforts now strongly put forth by Rome, urged forward his favourite scheme with an indomitable energy worthy of a better cause. He had at last openly called the Jesuits to his kingdom, and all the former rumours of his conversion to the Catholic faith were alarmingly revived and circulated. The Vatican, in truth, cherished strong hopes of the final realisation of its wishes, and beheld in prospect the Swedish sovereign and his people once more prostrate at the feet of the supreme pontiff, and devoted children of the Romish Church. A time of heavy trial came for those who remained faithful among the Lutheran clergy of Sweden; and high honour is due to the firm and constant sufferers who, at the risk of losing their every temporal possession, refused to bow down before the man-made semipopish Dagon which John, in his obstinate infatuation, had constructed and commanded them, under the severest penalties, to worship. To the fact that so many were faithful is mainly owing, under the providence of God, the rescue of the Swedish Church from re-immersion in the ancient spiritual darkness, a darkness that would have been all the drearier after the brief preceding years of comparative gospel radi

ance.

Meanwhile, we cannot more appropriately conclude than by quoting the weighty and suggestive words of Bishop Anjou, in which, referring to the whole of the great liturgical conflict, he remarks as follows:-"The severity with which King John endeavoured to compel the introduction of his prayer book, was the testing-fire which purified the Swedish Church to a clear conviction of the Protestant principles which formed its basis. Besides what we have already mentioned, many cases are recorded of the ecclesiastical confusion which it caused, and of the sore soul-trouble occasioned to each Swedish pastor by the question forced upon him, whether his conscience approved or rejected this novel liturgy; and the names of many are given, who partly on their death-beds lamented in the deepest penitence that they had been seduced to sanction the fatal prayer book, partly ended their sorrowing lives in madness,-narratives of which incidents were sometimes carefully drawn up and attested by the members of the congregations so sadly tried. Of the people's inclination to the liturgy no evidence remains, except the petitions referred to by King John in 1577, and what Possevin says on the same subject; no dissatisfaction, such as appeared in the time of King Gustavus, when the superfluous ecclesiastical ceremonies were removed, was now expressed towards the clergy who-declined

Scoto-Calvinism and Anglo-Puritanism.

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to reintroduce them. But, on the other hand, it is recorded that many persons absented themselves from public worship in the churches where it was conducted according to the new form, and attended those only where it was not employed; and that many also, at the point of death, refused to receive the sacrament when it could solely be administered to them by the hands of a liturgic minister; while not a few parents recalled their sons from their schools and studies, to withdraw them from the storms of an uncertain future." So unpalatable were King John's Romanising innovations to the majority of his Swedish subjects. J. J.

ART. II.-Scoto-Calvinism and Anglo-Puritanism.
An Irenicum.

HOSE of our readers who have dipped, even sparingly, into the history of Christian doctrine, must have remarked how often churches and sects which agree with each other on the main points of religion, assume, in course of time, shades of diversity which distinguish them from each other, as decidedly as the different species of animals which belong to the same genus in natural history. If they happen to have burst asunder in deadly strife, the two parties retain for ages after the colour of the dogma for which they respectively contended. But even when the parting has been friendly, like that of Abraham and Lot, each taking its own way, mutual distance will often produce all the effects of alienation. Time, which works its changes on societies as well as on the human frame, seldom fails to leave the marks of its finger on the two churches; and if they should chance to meet each other in conference with a view to reunion, they may be hardly able to recognise each other as members of the same family, so many are the small points on which they are found to disagree. To trace the minute shades that distinguish churches known as evangelical, is a delicate task, demanding an amount of impartiality which it may be deemed presumption, perhaps, for us to claim. We can only say that in attempting this task, we feel conscious of no other motive than that of a sincere desire to effect a hearty reconciliation between parties who, we are persuaded, substantially agree in the grand vital doctrines of the cross. We confine ourselves at present to two of these parties who may be said to have existed in Scotland for nearly a century and a half, and whom, for the sake of distinction, we have named the Scoto-Calvinistic and the Anglo-Puritan. To

explain the differences to which those terms refer, it may be neccessary to take a brief historical retrospect.

Our first reformers expressed themselves on the leading doctrines of the gospel with singular boldness and freedom. While zealously contending for the doctrine of predestination, they were not the less strenuous in preaching the free gospel of the grace of God. Obviously they were quite unconscious of any antagonism between these two things. Both of them they found taught with equal plainness in the Word of God. Both of them they found fraught with edification and comfort to the believer; and both of them, without attempting a metaphysical adjustment between them, they urged on the unquestioning reception of all true Christians. Calvin and Knox, so well known as advocates of the divine decrees, frequently employ language, when speaking of the love of God and the duty of man, which would be accepted by many in the present day, who are partial to the views of Arminius.

"Therefore (says Calvin) has Christ brought in life because our heavenly Father was unwilling that the human race (genus humanum) which he loved should perish."

"Nothing else can be seen in Christ than this, that from his infinite goodness, God was willing to help us, that he might save the perishing; and as often as our sins oppress us, as often as Satan would drive us to despair, let us hold up this shield, God is not willing that we should be consigned to eternal destruction, because he has ordained his Son to be the salvation of the world."--(Calvin on John iii. 16.)

"The common solution of this passage (He is the propitiation not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world), given by the schoolmen, is, that Christ suffered sufficiently for the whole world, but efficaciously only for the elect, pro toto mundo passum esse Christum, sed pro electis tantum efficaciter. I grant that this is true, but it does not apply to the words of the apostle, whose meaning simply is, that the death of Christ was the common benefit of the whole church; it embraces not the reprobate, but all who should afterwards believe; for then is the grace of Christ duly set forth when he is preached as the only salvation of the world."-(Calvin on 1st John ii. 2.)

The following, taken from a beautiful prayer in what has been called Knox's liturgy, runs in the same strain :

"O Father of mercy and God of all consolation, seeing all creatures do acknowledge and confess thee as Governor and Lord, it becometh us, the workmanship of thine own hand, at all times to reverence and magnify thy godly majesty; first, for that thou hast created us in thine own image and similitude, but chiefly because thou hast delivered us from that everlasting death and damnation, into the which Satan drew mankind by the means of sin, from the bondage whereof neither man nor angel was able to make us free; but thou, O Lord, rich in mercy, and infinite in goodness, has provided our redemption to stand in

Scottish Theology in the 17th Century.

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thine only and well-beloved Son, whom of very love thou didst give to be made man like unto to us in all things, sin excepted, that in his body he might receive the punishment of our transgression, by his death to make satisfaction to thy justice, and by his resurrection to destroy him that was author of death, and so to bring again life to the world, from which all the whole offspring of Adam most justly was exiled.”

Again, in another prayer used in the French church in Geneva, and included in the same book, we read as follows:—

"We make our prayers unto thee, O Lord God most merciful Father, for all men in general, that as thou wilt be known to be the Saviour of all the world by the redemption purchased by thine only Son Jesus Christ, even so that such as have been hitherto holden captive in darkness and ignorance for lack of the knowledge of thy gospel, may through the preaching thereof, and the clear light of thine Holy Spirit, be brought into the right way of salvation."

A change, however, may be observed in the tone of their immediate successors. Under the chilling breath of controversy, the waters of life, which flowed and sparkled so freely in the morning of the Reformation, were congealed into the propositions of a cold and rigid orthodoxy. It is well known that during the 17th century our Scottish ministers studied on the continent, and borrowed most of their theological ideas from the writings of the Dutch and Belgium divines. After the Synod of Dort, they partook largely of the Anti-Arminian spirit; and their theology, owing to this antagonism, became more formal, more guarded, and more one-sided than that of the early reformers. The efforts of Laud to introduce along with Romanism, a species of Pelagianism into the Church of England, tended still more to intensify the opposition of our Scottish divines to every thing that savoured of Arminianism. The Westminster Confession bears sufficient evidence to the prevalence of this spirit; but in the eyes of some of our Scottish theologians, it does not seem to have gone far enough in that direction. To this feeling, perhaps, we owe the "Sum of saving knowledge," said to have been the joint production of Mr James Durham and Mr David Dickson, a document, which, though not recognised as part of our standards, is generally bound up with our Confession of Faith, and was no doubt intended to pronounce the mind of the Church of Scotland upon the Arminian points, more decisively than the Confession had done. This treatise brings out very clearly the contrast between what we have called the Scoto-Calvinistic and the Anglo-Puritan schools of theology. In the first place, it proceeds on the assumption that there are two covenants connected with man's salvation: the covenant of redemption between God the

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