wer to believe and
Convert itself than a dead man to restore himself to life, in order to
make them blessed through Christ; while He passes by the rest through His
righteous judgment, and leaves them lying in their sins.

II. Children of believing parents, as well as full-grown believers, are
to be considered as elect so long as they with action do not prove the
contrary.

III. God in His election has not looked at the belief and the repentance
of the elect; but, on the contrary, in His eternal and unchangeable
design, has resolved to give to the elect faith and stedfastness, and
thus to make them blessed.

IV. He, to this end, in the first place, presented to them His only
begotten Son, whose sufferings, although sufficient for the expiation of
all men's sins, nevertheless, according to God's decree, serves alone to
the reconciliation of the elect.

V. God causest he Gospel to be preached to them, making the same through
the Holy Ghost, of strength upon their minds; so that they not merely
obtain power to repent and to believe, but also actually and voluntarily
do repent and believe.

VI. Such elect, through the same power of the Holy Ghost through which
they have once become repentant and believing, are kept in such wise that
they indeed through weakness fall into heavy sins; but can never wholly
and for always lose the true faith.

VII. True believers from this, however, draw no reason for fleshly quiet,
it being impossible that they who through a true faith were planted in
Christ should bring forth no fruits of thankfulness; the promises of
God's help and the warnings of Scripture tending to make their salvation
work in them in fear and trembling, and to cause them more earnestly to
desire help from that spirit without which they can do nothing.

There shall be no more setting forth of these subtle and finely wrought
abstractions in our pages. We aspire not to the lofty heights of
theological and supernatural contemplation, where the atmosphere becomes
too rarefied for ordinary constitutions. Rather we attempt an objective
and level survey of remarkable phenomena manifesting themselves on the
earth; direct or secondary emanations from those distant spheres.

For in those days, and in that land especially, theology and politics
were one. It may be questioned at least whether this practical fusion of
elements, which may with more safety to the Commonwealth be kept
separate, did not tend quite as much to lower