thout difficulty form an alliance[5].

IV.--CALVINISM IS PRODUCTIVE OF POSITIVELY INJURIOUS EFFECTS ON
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, AND ON SOCIAL HAPPINESS.

When Lord Chatham taunted the Church with having "a Calvinistic
creed, a popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy," that illustrious
person was the author of a libel on this holy and apostolical
institution. Her creed is not Calvinistic, for it says nothing about
absolute predestination; her liturgy it not popish, for there is no
worship of saints or of the Virgin; her clergy are not Arminian, for
their moderation has preserved them, as a body, from all extremes in
doctrine, and _that_, as well as their unrivalled erudition and
intellectual power, has been the admiration of the most eminent
protestant divines and men of letters in Europe. And to her truly
scriptural character, especially her rejection of the Calvinistic
theology, with its gloomy, turbulent, and intolerant spirit, may be
traced the high tone of moral feeling and practical reverence of
religion which have honourably distinguished the people of England.
Happily, Calvinism in its palmy days was confined to the Puritanical
party, which made comparatively small progress within the pale of
the Church; while the most influential of her clergy, and the great
majority of her well educated laity, embraced the doctrines of a
more generous and scriptural theology. Without falling into
Pelagianism, a charge made by Calvinists on all who reject the
system improperly called "the doctrines of grace," they held the
great evangelic truth that Christ "_died for all_," and its
correspondent views of the benevolence of God, and the moral dignity
of human nature, impaired, but not destroyed, by the fall.

The principles of the remonstrants, without being servilely
embraced, influenced and modified the religious opinions of the
people of England, who were never generally favourable, either to
the dogmas or the discipline of the Genevan reformer, and to this
circumstance are we largely indebted for the manly and the moral
character of our country.

This statement, founded on the history of the Reformation and the
times which followed, is not intended as an indiscriminate attack on
the moral character of Calvinists. Many of them are to be classed
with the holiest of men; not because they are Calvinists, but
because their erroneous notions are rendered innoxious, by the
prevalence of a sincere piety, and by a secret and prac