council, or against the
true sense or meaning of any letters patent, commissions or prohibitions
under the great seal of England."[***] James extended the same penalties
to the importing of such books from abroad.[****]

* See Cicero de Legibus.

** 28th of Elizabeth. See State Trials Sir Robert Knightly,
vol vii. 1st edit.

*** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 522.

**** Rymer, tom. xvii. p. 522.

And to render these edicts more effectual, he afterwards inhibited
the printing of any book without a license from the archbishop of
Canterbury, the archbishop of York, the bishop of London, or the
vice-chancellor of one of the universities, or of some person appointed
by them.[*]

In tracing the coherence among the systems of modern theology, we may
observe, that the doctrine of absolute decrees has ever been intimately
connected with the enthusiastic spirit, as that doctrine affords the
highest subject of joy, triumph, and security to the supposed elect, and
exalts them by infinite degrees above the rest of mankind. All the first
reformers adopted these principles; and the Jansenists too, a fanatical
sect in France, not to mention the Mahometans in Asia, have ever
embraced them. As the Lutheran establishments were subjected to
Episcopal jurisdiction, their enthusiastic genius gradually decayed; and
men had leisure to perceive the absurdity of supposing God to punish
by infinite torments what he himself from all eternity had unchangeably
decreed. The king, though at this time his Calvinistic education had
rivetted him in the doctrine of absolute decrees, yet, being a zealous
partisan of Episcopacy, was insensibly engaged, towards the end of his
reign, to favor the milder theology of Arminius. Even in so great
a doctor, the genius of the religion prevailed over its speculative
tenets; and with him, the whole clergy gradually dropped the more rigid
principles of absolute reprobation and unconditional decrees. Some noise
was at first made about these innovations; but being drowned in the fury
of factions and civil wars which ensued, the scholastic arguments made
an insignificant figure amidst those violent disputes about civil and
ecclesiastical power with which the nation was agitated. And at the
restoration, the church, though she still retained her old subscriptions
and articles of faith, was found to have totally changed her speculative
doctrines, and to have embraced tenets more suitable to the genius