N CALVINISM.

PART I.

GENERAL REMARKS.

To St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in Africa, belongs the equivocal
distinction of having originated in the Christian Church a
controversy respecting the Divine decrees, a controversy which dates
its origin from the fifth century, and which, after the lapse of
thirteen hundred years, exhibits no symptoms of approaching to its
end. In the Roman Communion, it was the source of those bitter
animosities, which reciprocally exasperated the Jesuits and
Jansenists. The Protestant Churches, in the early days of the
Reformation, were disturbed by the agitation of this perplexed and
perilous subject. And when Calvin appeared as the vindicator of the
Divine sovereignty in predetermining the fates of men, he only
introduced to the Churches of the Reformation a doctrine which had
been transmitted from earlier times, but which, perhaps, he defined
with more precision, expounded with more fearless consistency, and
invested with the authority of his own great and illustrious name.
In the present discussion the word _Calvinism_ is used, not to
signify those doctrines of the Church which Calvin held in common
with the fathers of the Reformation, but those only which relate to
his extreme views of the Divine decrees, to his predestinarian
theology, and to his modification of other scripture truths to
render them harmonious with his principal tenets.

Whatever therefore may be the merits or the final result of this
grave and earnest controversy, it leaves untouched the corruption of
human nature, the deity and atonement of Christ, justification by
faith, the necessity of Divine influence to renew and purify the
heart, and the scriptural doctrine of predestination, according to
the fore-knowledge of God. This distinction is important; since, if
it be overlooked, the rejectors of Calvinism may be supposed to have
also rejected the capital doctrines of the Reformed faith. Fuller
has unwarrantably, perhaps undesignedly, given his sanction to this
imputation in his "Calvinistic and Socinian Systems compared[1]."
But the rejectors of _Calvinistic_ predestination may be not less
remote from Socinianism, and much nearer to genuine Christianity,
than the most rigid disciple of that eminent Reformer, who, in the
protestant city of Geneva, committed Servetus to the flames. The
Socinian controversy relates to doctrines, which are the common
faith of the Catholic Church; with the peculiarities of Calvin