3. Highly as I respect the memory of Mr. Milner, and much as in many points I deem his Ecclesiastical History valuable; still I feel it only an act of justice thus to vindicate a pious primitive martyr from the charge of having been the first to introduce into christian ground the foreign plant of independent pelagianising Free Will: Free Will, that is to say, so essentially and so inherently good, as to require

with him in the exercise of that Free Good Will: how came he to fall away from a Good Will to a Bad Will; a circumstance, which must have occurred, when, at the time of the fall, he freely preferred the evil to the good?

I merely offer this reply to shew, that A matter may, in itself, be perfectly true, though we may be unable either to explain or to comprehend its rationale.

Certainly, in point of fact, the primitive Church held conjointly, the doctrine of Man's Free though Bad Will, and the doctrine of The Need of God's Grace to make that Bad Free Will a Good Free Will: yet the doctrine of Election as explained by Augustine and Calvin was totally unknown in the primitive Church anterior to the fifth century.

My object, however, is purely An Historical Inquiry, not The achievement of a Metaphysical Solution of difficulties. For the former, industry and accuracy may sufficiently qualify any man to the latter, I presume not to deem myself equal.

I subjoin the excellent Helvetic Statement of Free Will, as it exists in man after the Fall.

Considerandum est qualis fuerit homo post lapsum. Non sublatus est quidem homini intellectus; non erepta est ei voluntas; et prorsus in lapidem vel truncum est commutatus: cæterum illa ita sunt immutata et imminuta in homine, ut non possint amplius quod potuerunt ante lapsum. Intellectus enim obscuratus est: voluntas vero, ex libera, facta est voluntas serva.

no communication of Divine Grace to make it good and no concurrence of Divine Grace aidingly to work with it when it is good.

Purely, then, under the aspect of a FACT established by competent evidence, Free Will, in the reprehensible and unscriptural form of A denial of our need both of God's Preventing Grace and of God's Assisting Grace, Justin, I believe, held no more than Augustine.

Nam servit peccato, non nolens, sed volens. Etenim voluntas, non noluntas, dicitur. Ergo, quoad malum sive peccatum, homo non coactus vel a Deo vel a Diabolo, sed sua sponte, malum facit; et, hac parte, liberrimi est arbitrii. Quod vero non raro cernimus pessima hominis facinora et consilia impediri a Deo, ne finem suum consequantur, non tollit homini libertatem in malo; sed Deus potentia sua prævenit, quod homo alias liberè instituit. -In regeneratione, intellectus illuminatur per Spiritum Sanctum, ut et mysteria et voluntatem Dei intelligat. Et voluntas ipsa non tantum mutatur per Spiritum, sed etiam instruitur facultatibus, ut sponte velit et possit bonum.-Damnamus in hac causa Manichæos, qui negant homini bono, ex libero arbitrio, fuisse initium mali. Confess. Helvet. sect. ix. Syllog. Confess. p. 31, 32, 33.

The whole question of God's Foreknowledge and Man's Free Will is very well discussed by Augustine in his Work de Civit. Dei. lib. v. c. 9, 10. Oper. vol. v. p. 53, 54.

CHAPTER XII.

GENERAL RESULT AND CONCLUSION.

I HAVE now, purely in the way of historical testimony, come to the result: that The several doctrinal Systems, usually denominated Arminianism and Nationalism and Calvinism, were alike unknown to that earliest Church Catholic, which conversed either with the Apostles or with the disciples of the Apostles, and which by them personally was instructed in the real articles of the Christian Faith.

But, from this result, unless I greatly mistake, the inevitable conclusion will be: that Neither the Arminian System nor the Nationalising System nor the Calvinistic System exhibits the mind of the sincere Gospel.

I. In revealed religion, by the very nature and necessity of things, as Tertullian well teaches us: Whatever is first, is true; whatever is later, is adulterate.

If a doctrine, totally unknown to the Primitive Church which received her Theology immediately

from the hands of the Apostles and which continued long to receive it from the hands of the disciples of the Apostles, springs up in a subsequent age, let that age be the fifth century or let it be the tenth century or let it be the sixteenth century: such doctrine stands, on its very front impressed with the brand of mere human invention.

:

Hence, in the language of Tertullian, it is adulterate and hence, with whatever ingenuity it may be abstractedly defended, and with whatever plausibility it may be fetched out of a particular interpretation of Scripture, and with whatever practical piety on the part of its advocates it may be attended; we cannot, evidentially, admit it to be part and parcel of the divine revelation of Christianity.

So

The bare innocence, or even the eminent holiness, of a new doctrine, is no proof of its truth. On the contrary, the very circumstance of its newness stamps it with the reprobating mark of falsehood. In strictness of speech, a doctrine, thus delivered, is nothing better, than the mere unauthorised opinion of a certain individual or of certain individuals. far from resting upon any tangible evidence, the decisive testimony of Ecclesiastical Antiquity is directly against it. If it were indeed a genuine apostolical doctrine, it would have been held and maintained and delivered by the Catholic Church from the very beginning: nor would it have been left for the late discovery of some insulated indivi

dual, who flourished at an era long posterior. But it is convicted of Novelty: and, THEREFORE, it is adulterate. Those, who advocate it, may, indeed, devoutly believe it to be true: but some one or other mere uninspired and thence mere unauthoritative individual is, after all, its quite unsatisfactory

inventor.

II. Among unread or halfread persons of our present somewhat confident age, it is a not uncommon saying that THEY disregard the early Fathers and that THEY will abide by nothing save the decision of Scripture alone.

1. If, by A disregard of the early Fathers, they mean, that they allow them not individually that personal authority in exposition which the Romanists claim for them; they certainly will not have me, at least, for an opponent: and, accordingly, I have shewn, that, in the interpretation of the scriptural terms Election and Predestination, I regard the insulated individual authority of Augustine just as little, as I regard the insulated individual authority of Calvin * *.

* On this point, nothing can be more absurd, than the second of the supplementary articles, appended to the Nicene Creed in the Profession of the Tridentine Faith sanctioned by the Bull of Pope Pius IV.

The unfortunate subscriber is required to declare, that He will never receive and interpret Scripture, save according to the UNANIMOUS consent of the Fathers.

Now, if, by the term Fathers, we understand, with the Romanists, those numerous ecclesiastical writers, of whom the