here show
themselves in her documents, "and all which is most valuable in the
Church of England would still remain"; whereas those schemes are the
very life and substance of Puritanism and the Puritan bodies. "It is
the positive Protestantism of Puritanism with which we are here
concerned, as distinguished from the negative Protestantism of the
Church of England." Leaving, then, the Church of England on one side, we
fix our gaze on Puritanism, and we see that "the conception of the ways
of God to man which Puritanism has formed for itself" has for its
cardinal points the terms _Election_ and _Justification_. "Puritanism's
very reason for existing depends on the worth of this its vital
conception"; and, when we are told that St. Paul is a Protestant doctor
whose reign is ending, "we in England can best try the assertion by
fixing our eyes on our own Puritans, and comparing their doctrine and
their hold on vital truth with St. Paul's."

Entering upon this endeavour, he divides Puritanism into Calvinism, and
Arminianism or Methodism. The foremost place in Calvinistic theology
belongs to Predestination; in Methodist theology to Justification by
Faith. Calvinism relies most on man's fears; Methodism most on his
hopes. Both Calvinism and Methodism appeal to the Bible, and above all
to St. Paul, for the proof of what they teach. Very well then, says
Arnold, we will enquire what Paul's account of God's proceedings with
man really is, and whether it tallies with the various representations
of the same subject which Puritanism, in its two main divisions, has
given. We will also, he says, follow Puritanism's example and take the
Epistle to the Romans as the chief place for finding what Paul really
thought on the points in question.

He illustrates his argument freely by citations from the other
undoubtedly Pauline epistles, but he characteristically attributes the
Epistle to the Hebrews to Apollos, as being "just such a performance as
might naturally have come from 'an eloquent man and mighty in the
Scriptures,' and in whom the intelligence, and the powers of combining,
type-finding, and expounding somewhat dominated the religious
perceptions." While he thus appeals unreservedly to St. Paul, he is
careful to point out that we must retranslate him for ourselves if we
wish to get rid of the preconceived doctrines of Election and
Justification which the translators have read into him. A strong example
of their method was to be foun