and smash cabinets" until their points are carried. They have given
to the nation a significant announcement of their claims to power,
by their politico-religious synod of Manchester. The imperial
parliament of these realms is, in future, it seems, to make its
fiscal arrangements, and legislate on points of purely political
economy, under the dictation of the Calvinistic divines of the
nineteenth century[7]. Doubtless, our future Chancellors of the
Exchequer will be selected from this body of sacred financiers.

While it produces effects so remote from those of true Christianity
in the _religious_ professors of Calvinism, on the mass of ignorant,
sordid, unreflecting, and worldly-minded persons, who are taught
these doctrines, its worst influences are seen to operate; and, as
the country was notoriously demoralized at the close of the
Cromwellian dictatorship, when Calvinistic divines had enjoyed a
long and signal triumph, so is the present age marked by a
degeneracy in the public morals, which has kept pace with the
progress of opinions of similar character and tendency. The rude
multitude is taught that there is no grace but _special_ grace, and
this produces recklessness and indifference, since no efforts will
avail if they are not to be partakers of these, to them, forbidden
streams of the river of the water of life. Or, perhaps, this gloomy
doctrine produces a sullen suspicion, vague and undefined, of the
rectitude of God, and thus alienates still more those hearts which
are already adverse to the Divine government.

Of all the mischievous extravagances of opinion, none has produced
more fatal consequences, than the notion, that God takes particular
delight in selecting the vilest of men for the object of his
electing love; and that the gross sinner is better prepared for the
grace of Christ, than they who have walked in the paths of virtue.

It is a melancholy but instructive fact, that in Calvinistic
families, the puritanical order and discipline which are often
highly commendable, have proved insufficient to counteract the
malignant effects of the doctrines inculcated on the minds of the
young. Instead of being taught that grace is given to all, and that
all are responsible for its use, they are instructed that this
blessing may perhaps be withholden. And no families have sent forth
into the world more affecting examples of worthless and unprincipled
young men, who have brought down the grey hairs of their