t few are competent
to detect its fallacies, or to trace its evil consequences.

They are to be found chiefly among the lower ranks of life, or the
uneducated portions of the middle and the higher classes. If there
are any whose minds have been disciplined by sound instruction, and
expanded by liberal acquirements, they are, for the most part, the
children of Calvinistic families, who, having been taught to
reverence these opinions in their childhood, have not had energy of
mind to rise above their early impressions. That multitudes of
persons piously disposed, but without the requisite knowledge, or
intellectual culture, should be influenced by the arguments of men
skilful in dialectics, and zealous to make proselytes, cannot be
deemed matter of wonderment. Especially let it be noticed, that
these teachers and preachers know well how to appeal to ignorant
timidity and to sincere but unguarded piety.

They are told, that to reject these doctrines shows "a heart
secretly disaffected to the government of God," and daring to oppose
presumption and ignorance to the wisdom of the Eternal. As if it
were not the fact, that Calvinism has been viewed with abhorrence by
men of the humblest and the purest piety, by men of seraphic minds
and of the sublimest intellect.

They are also instructed to believe, that the grace of the Redeemer
is magnified by degrading human nature to the utmost, and making the
redeemed passive recipients of predestinated and exclusive grace.
But they do not perceive that Calvinism destroys all ideas of
_grace_, by making God the author of the misery which He affects to
pity, and by tracing the divine conduct to mere motiveless caprice,
to blind and arbitrary choice or rejection.

These distinctions are lost upon the superficial minds of the
multitude. And when they are told that Calvinism honours the
sovereignty of God, and exalts the grace of Christ, their religious
and holy feelings are enlisted in a cause which little deserves
these high and evangelic eulogies. While the love of God in Christ,
to themselves in particular, is made the prevailing topic, the
gloomy and suspicious parts of the system are kept in the back
ground, or positively denied.

If there be truth in the preceding remarks, the degree of popularity
which attaches to this view of religion, far from yielding a
presumptive argument in its favour, is, at least, a reason for
regarding it with suspicion. It has not the recommendation