VII. learn, that is, to apprehend the promise, not oppose our- SECT. selves, or indulge in hesitation or doubt." Bishop Hooper, a little after the last passage quoted from him, gives precisely the same explanation. "John saith, 'No man cometh to Me, except My Father draw him.' Many men understand these words in a wrong sense, as though God required in a reasonable man no more than in a dead post, and do not attend to the words that follow; 'Every man that hath heard and hath learned of the Father, cometh to Me.' God draweth with His Word and the Holy Ghost, but man's duty is to hear and learn, that is to say, receive the grace offered, consent to the promise, and not repugn the God that calleth." These quotations, though by the way, have not been I trust in vain. iii. p. 213. § 30. We now come to our other witness, the pious Latimer. He too, like his associate Hooper, supports and defends the teaching of Melancthon in many passages; a few of which I will now quote. In his Sermon preached on Lat. SerSeptuagesima Sunday, we read: "But when we are about mons, part this matter, (namely election,) and are troubled within ourselves whether wee bee elect or no: we must ever have this maxime or principall rule before our eyes, namely, that God beareth a good will towards us. But you will say, how shall I know that? or how shall I believe that? we may know God's will towards us through Christ, God hath opened Himself unto us by His Sonne Christ. For so saith St. John the Evangelist: Filius qui est in sinu Patris ipse revelavit, that is, 'The Sonne which is in the bosome of the Father, He hath revealed.' Therefore we may perceive His good will and love towards us, He hath sent the same His Son into this world, which hath suffered most painfull death for us. Shall I now think that God hateth me? Or shall I doubt of His love towards me? Heere you see how you shall avoyd the scrupulous and most dangerous question of the predestination of God. For if thou wilt enquire His counsailes, and enter into His consistory, thy wit will deceive thee, for thou shalt not be able to search the counsailes of God. But if thou begin with Christ and consider His coming into the world, and dost believe that God hath sent Him for thy sake, to suffer for thee, and deliver thee from Ps. 19. 4. Rom. 10. 18. p. 207. 340 God would have all men saved. SECT. sin, death, the devill, and hell, then when thou art so armed VII. with the knowledge of Christ, this simple question cannot hurt thee; For thou art in the book of life which is Christ Himself. Also we learne by this sentence, Multi sunt vocati: 'that many are called:' that the preaching of the Gospel is universall, that it pertaineth to all mankind: That it is written, In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, 'Through the whole earth their sound is heard.' Now seeing that the Gospel is universall, it appeareth He would have all mankind saved, and that the fault is not in Him if we be damned. For it is written thus. Deus vult Omnes homines salvos fieri, 'God would have all men to be saved.' The remainder of the sermon should be read, which for brevity sake is now omitted. In the sermon also on the first Sunday after Part iii. Epiphany we read, "For if the most part be damned, the fault is not in God but in themselves; for it is written, Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri, God would that all men should be saved.' But they themselves procure their owne damnation." And again in the same sermon, "Think that God hath chosen those that believe in Christ, and that Christ is the booke of life: If thou believest in Him, then thou art written in the booke of life, and shalt be saved. So we need not go about to trouble ourselves with curious questions of the predestination of God." Where he says, "If thou believest in Him, then thou art written in the book of life," we must understand a persevering faith; and that this is his meaning is plain, from what he says immediately after: "So we may be in the booke one time, and afterward when we forget God and His Word, and doe wickedly, we come out of the booke," which words have been already quoted on the subject of perseverance. Lastly, (to omit many passages of the same purport,) the holy Father in his sixth sermon on the Lord's Prayer, when speaking against the Novatian heresy, says, "Christ alone, and none else, hath merited remission, justification, and so eternal blessedness for all those who will believe this; they who will not believe it, will not enjoy them. For Christ poured forth no less a portion of His blood for Judas than for Peter; Peter believed and was saved, Judas would not believe and therefore was he damned, and he himself the sole author of his damnation." Part ii. p. 92. English Reformation not Calvinistic. 341 Good Lord! for what times hast Thou reserved us! If this SECT. VII. holy Martyr were now alive, and were either to write or preach these same doctrines, how would the zealots of these days exclaim against him, as one accursed! how would they not bespatter him with the name of heretic, Pelagian, Arminian, and the like reproaches! Forsooth these gentlemen boast about their agreement with the first movers of our Reformation, and yet meanwhile they defame in the ears of the unlearned as innovators, and endeavour in every way to oppress, those who teach nothing but what those holy men taught before them. But I forbear. § 31. From what has already been said concerning the doctrine of our Church, the reader will perceive with what judgment Dr. Tully attributed the following words to those Justif. whom he calls innovators: namely, that "the Fathers of our Paul.p.26. Reformation were good men, but savoured somewhat of Calvinism or fanaticism." Here certainly Dr. Tully is altogether mistaken: no one of these innovators in his senses would have said this. For allowing, as we do, that Calvin was a man of great ability, and in many points of much service in the Reformation, still it must be quite clear that the first movers of the Reformation were entirely opposed to him as well in discipline as in doctrine, in so far as he differed both from Melancthon and other more ancient teachers of a restored and purer Christianity. For granting these two positions, 1st, that Christ has truly redeemed even those who perish: 2ndly, that it is possible for those who really believe in Christ, and have been justified by Him, thoroughly to fall away through their own fault, from faith and justification, and to perish everlastingly, (and these are plain and undoubted doctrines of our Church,) the whole system and machinery of what is called Calvinism falls to the ground: and this will presently be plain to any one who shall pay the least attention to the subject. Now it is of no use to refer here to the article on predestination: nor shall I enter into a controversy with any one on any predestination of God so maintained as not to overturn these two fundamental points clearly laid down by our Church. I contend for this one thing only that on account of the uncertain and various ideas and speculations of God's secret predestination, we VII. 342 Our Church forbids speculations. SECT. must not deny such clear and established doctrines both of Scripture and of our own and the Catholic Church as these are, but rather believe that these secret things are so to be explained by what is revealed and plain to us, that the one may be consistent with the other: which a learned prelate some time since recommended. Our Church in her seventeenth article has so cautiously given the doctrine of predestination, that no Catholic can have any cause for rejecting the article, especially if Hooper (who took a leading part in the Synod which first sent forth our Articles), or Bishop Latimer his contemporary, be considered a competent interpreter of its words. But even after our Church had so prudently and cautiously explained this doctrine, she altogether draws away her sons from any speculation respecting it, and disallows that our life was to be directed by any conception concerning predestination, as by a rule: on the contrary, she teaches that "God's promises must be received in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture and in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared to us in the Word of God." Art. 17. : This also the Augsburg divines had done before. "There is no need here" (say they, when treating of faith)" of disputations about predestination, and the like: for the promise is universal." In truth, for the first four centuries no Catholic ever dreamed about that predestination which many at this day consider the basis and foundation of the whole Christian religion: those excellent Christians, glorious both in their lives and death, lived and died relying on such grounds as these: that Christ is the common Saviour of mankind: that no one to whom the Gospel of Christ was known could possibly attain unto heavenly blessedness without obedience to the Gospel commands: that without grace and the Spirit of Christ, it was impossible to keep those commands: that the grace of God did not effect the salvation of man without his own diligence co-operating with it: that such grace was withheld from no man: that he who had been put into a state of salvation through the grace of God, might by his own fault fall therefrom, and perish everlastingly and thence, that it was his duty who stood to : Opinion of antiquity on predestination. 343 VII. take heed lest he fall. Such axioms, I say, as these, and SECT. the like, were the rule of their lives. Touching the providence of God, they were satisfied in believing that God knows beforehand all the actions of all men, and that He also rules and disposes the same as seemeth best to His wisdom, justice, and goodness, saving always that liberty which He has given to man, ever continuing unencroached upon. Whether from those more minute definitions of the predestination of God, which were made in the heated controversy of St. Augustine with Pelagius, any gain accrued to Catholic truth, Christian piety, and the peace of the Church: or whether we have not rather thence to lament over schism and very grievous errors, (as those of the Predestinarians,) and a falling off in the morals of men, let those well taught in the history of the Church decide. To conclude, then, let us heartily embrace and reverence that most wise decree of our King prefixed to the Articles. "That, therefore, in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years in different times and places exercised the Church of Christ, We will that all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises, as they be generally set forth to us in the Holy n "Ancient opinions on this matter being reviewed, nearly all were found to agree upon the way in which they should understand the purpose and predestination of God according to His foreknowledge: namely, that God had made some vessels to honour, some to dishonour, for this reason, because He foresaw the end of each, and foreknew what would be his will and actions under the help of His grace."-Prosper, Epistle to Augustine on the remains of the Pelagian heresy, near the end. Hilary (of Arles or Syracuse) in his Epistle to Augustine, ' de Massilensium Sententia,' says that there were those amongst the Catholics who though they dare not say that the dogma of Augustine on absolute predestination was entirely false, yet did say, both that it was new, and that it might be kept silent without any danger to the more confirmed, and that it would be taught with great peril to the weaker brethren. His words are (see Cassander's Works, Paris, 1616. p. 648): "In short, when we were all worn out, their pleading or rather complaint was |