others appear to have been substantially true, from the very reply which they provoked.

The accusation

against, or rather the approving description-for such it was intended to be of the Geneva clergy, is compris ed in a few lines, and in still fewer it might have been refuted. The venerable company, or the pastor Vernet, who was at their head, had but to recite, in a few brief sentences, a distinct creed; and had it been in the main orthodox, this would have been a satisfactory answer. But the equivocations and circumlocutions which were resorted to, show that there was no point-blank reply at hand to be given. Indeed, Vernet's own works were against him, and for D'Alembert, so that his defence of the company was a lame and an angry, a sore and a sorry affair, both to him and to them.

We must mention here, that this pastor thought the Christianity taught under his auspices might have the approbation even of Voltaire. He wrote to this declared enemy of the Christian faith, on his first coming to Ferney, a letter in which there is the following passage, which shows how tame religion must have become, how accommodated to the taste of incredulity, when such an appeal could be made in its favour to such a man, and from such a quarter:

"You know," writes Vernet, "that religion is as necessary to men as government; and you see that ours is so simple, so wise, so gentle, so EXPURGATED, (epurée, the word purified does not give its equivalent sense in English,) that a philosopher could not demand a more rational one, nor a politician one more conducive to the public good."

Vernes' controversy with Rousseau was much of the same character as that of Vernet with D'Alembert. Rousseau, in his confession of faith of the Savoyard vicar, had denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. On this point Vernes dares not meet him. He shifts therefore his ground to the subject of miracles, which Rousseau had also denied. But he had too able an adversary to deal with to be allow ed to confine the question to this topic. Rousseau, after insinuating that the miracle article of faith had been got up (batie après coup) merely for the occasion, challenges the whole con

fraternity of pastors to stand forward and defend their orthodoxy, on all those fundamental doctrines of Christianity which they had renounced. He thus has his assailants at great advantage. Without reply, they were obliged to hear such language as this.

"The church of Geneva had appeared for a considerable time to posess more of the true spirit of Christianity than any other, and on this deceitful appearance, I honoured her pastors with praises of which they seemed to be worthy. But now these same pastors, hitherto all compliance and suppleness, have become suddenly so rigid as to carp at the orthodoxy of a layman, whilst they leave their own in most scandalous uncertainty. They are asked if Jesus Christ is God, and dare not give an answer. They are asked what mysteries they admit, and they dare not give an an

swer.

On what points will they then reply? And what can be their fundamental articles which differ from mine, if those comprised in the above questions be not of the number?

"A philosopher casts a rapid glance on them; he sees through them; he sees in them Arians, Socinians; he declares the fact openly, thinking to do them honour, when immediately in alarm and consternation they assemble together; all is discussion, agitation; they are at their wits' end; and after consultations, deliberations, and conferences numberless, the whole ends in a confused logomachy, in which they say neither Yes nor No. Is not the orthodox doctrine very clear, and is it not in sure hands? Oh, Genevese! your ministers are strange men! They know not either what they believe, or what they do not believe; they know not even what they would seem to believe; and their only mode of establishing their own faith is by attacking that of others."

In truth, the Genevan clergy felt severely the falseness of their position. This is proved not merely by their evasions of the direct questions as to the Divinity of Christ, so repeatedly put to them, but also by the fact that the examination of Rousseau's heretical opinions, which was alone within the competence of the consistory, was transferred illegally to the civil power, who pronounced condemnation on them, and put their author out of the pale of the Republic. The venerable

company doubtless perceived that had this judgment emanated from them, they would have been obliged to pronounce it on strictly theological grounds, which would have forced them to be explicit as to their own doctrines whilst condemning the here. sies of another.

As to Rousseau, it is by no means improbable, that his opinions pointed to a result of a practical sort he may have vaguely entertained. In his Social Contract, he sketches the outline plan of a civil religion. The New Testament, divested of its miracles and mysteries, would have furnished just the proper base for this religion, the idea of which he so fondly cherished; and he may have deemed the season and circumstances propitious for pushing his theory out into eventual, though not immediate, practice. A whole church, one firmly constituted, and that of his native city too, seemed disposed, as far as he could judge, to give admission to his views, at least not to repel them, and to let them work their own way. He made advances to this church; he expressed the most ardent desire to be received openly into her bosom. With many of her pastors he was personally and intimately acquainted, and, in their conversations, it might not have appeared that their religious sentiments differed very materially from his own. In their works, their Christianity, compared with the orthodox standard, had an almost doctrineless aspect. They had discarded the most important mysteries of the gospel-the godhead of the Messiah, original sin, the atonement, regeneration, and the doctrines of free grace and predestination. The gospel, thus stripped of all that distinguishes it from a system of ethics, looked very bare, and extremely rational; and the Christian theology revived at the Reformation, seemed on the very point of being converted into a Christian philosophy, in agreement with the spirit of the age. This would have suited Rousseau's theory exactly, and would have been quite on a level, almost synonymous, with his confession of faith in Emelius. And when we consider that the pastors themselves were mixed with the philosophers; that they

gloried in their philosophic liberality, and corresponded, some of them familiarly, on terms of cordial friendship, with the most determined infidels of the day, it is not surprising that the sanguine-dreaming Rousseau should have hoped, as he affirms he did, for their countenance to his religious views, and have expected to find in them very effective, if not very prominent confederates, in promoting the project we suppose him somewhat obscurely to have harboured. The following passage from his Lettres de la Montagne, seems to give some colour to the conjecture we have hazarded. He therein, giving a very just picture of the religious state of Europe at the time, intimates-and this intimation is full of meaning-that he had had the Genevan clergy in his mind in his portrait of the Savoyard vicar.

"As for me," he says, "I considered it the glory and happiness of my country to possess a clergy, animated by a spirit so rare, that, without attaching themselves to doctrines purely speculative, they centred all religion in morality and the duties of the man and the citizen. I thought, without taking upon me directly their defence, I should be doing the state a good service, by justifying the maxims I supposed them to hold, and by warding off the censures to which they were exposed. By showing that what they neglected was neither certain nor useful, I hoped to put a check upon those who would have imputed this neglect to them as a crime. Without naming them, without referring to them, with out compromising their orthodoxy, I held them up as an example to all theologians.

"My design was a bold one, but it was not rash; and had not circumstances intervened which it was impossible to foresee, it would naturally have succeeded. Many enlightened men, illustrious magistrates, entertained, equally with myself, this conviction. Reflect upon the religious state of Europe at the moment when my book was published, and you will see that the probability was that it would be every where well received. Religion, brought in all countries into discredit by philosophy, had lost its ascendant, even over the populace.

Ecclesiastics, obstinately bent on prop. ping it up on its weak side, allowed it to be mined in its foundations; and the whole edifice, bending to its fall, was ready to sink under its own weight into ruins. Controversies had ceased, because no one was any longer interested in them; and peace reigned among all parties, because no one cared about his own party. What a moment to establish a solid peace! And whom could a work offend, which-blaming none, excluding none-showed that all were essentially agreed, despite their differences? This was to set up at once philosophic liberty and religious piety; it was to reconcile the love of order with respect for particular prejudices; it was to destroy at their root all fanatical dissensions, and to realise the wish of the Abbé St Pierre-to abolish theology, that religion might flourish."

Subsequent to these controversies with D'Alembert and Rousseau, the Genevan clergy gave fresh manifestations of their Socinian principles. In 1777 a M. Jean Lecointe, a candidate for holy orders, being at the time a pupil of M. Vernet, proclaimed, with the approbation of the pastors, the following sentiments, in a proba tionary discourse: "that it was highly condemnable to regard Jesus Christ as equal to God the Father; that, excellent as he was, he was inferior to the Father by his nature, and subject to obedience. Sequitur ut ostendamus personam illam ut eximiam, minime tamen patri æquiparandam esse, imo tum naturâ, tum voluntate et obedientiâ, in feriorem, ac subjectam." He further rejected the expression Son of God, because it seemed to equal Jesus Christ with the Father, nullâ adhibitâ gradûs distinctione. He then declared that we should not render the same degree of honour to the Son as to the Father"non eodem honoris gradu colendum esse Patremac Filium;" and finally, hesummed up the substance of his theme in these words:" Denique Jesus (et hic est summus apex majestatis ejus) angelis ipsis fuit superior, summumque numen propius contingens, et in tanto gradu unicus, proptereaque dictus filius Dei unigenitus, ac dilectissimus."

This discourse became famous from the effect it produced in France. It was urged by the Popish clergy as an argument against allowing French protestants to be educated in Geneva.

In a remonstrance presented to Louis XVI. in 1780, on the subject, the remonstrants say:-" without appealing to public notoriety, without taking advantage of avowals which have escaped inadvertently from celebrated Calvinists, have we not seen the theological school itself of Geneva present, three years ago, the scandalous spectacle to the world of an argument publicly maintained, and remaining to this day uncensured, in which the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ

the immovable barrier which separates pure Deism from Christianitywas set up as a problem, to be disputed on, and to be decided negatively?"

It was now that Calvin's catechism, under the mask of which the Consensus had been suppressed, was itself arbitrarily abolished. The venerable company came to a decision to this effect; and the only formality used in accomplishing it, was the sending of half-a-dozen men, with large baskets, through all the schools and colleges of the canton, to gather up these catechisms, and to replace them by others of a very equivocal character. In this instance, as also in the suppression of the Consensus, the pastors acted without law, and in violation of express and positive ecclesiastical ordinances.

But why, it may be asked, being so bent on reducing Christian doctrine to the lowest state, should these men have been so warm in defending themselves from the imputations and the applauses of the philosophers on this score? Because the philosophers attributed to their opinions a purpose which they never intended to give them. They were justified, certainly, in disclaiming this purpose, and showing that their opinions did not lead to it; but in order to have done this finally and effectually, they should have proclaimed what they were-Socinians. A Socinian has much to contend for against an infidel, and the pastors no doubt felt this. They were not men of libertine-mocking intellects-they were influenced by no free-thinking maxims; but appear to have been grave formal persons, somewhat ambitions to be thought extremely philosophical, yet recoiling with horror from the idea of making common cause with the sceptical philosophy of the day. would hold them to have been, in the main, upright, conscientious men, who were really shocked at the construc

We

tion the infidel philosophers put upon their lowered views of the gospel. But they were in the net of their own prevarications, and had not virtue enough-had no conviction strong enough to extricate them out of it. Thus they equivocated shamefully, and exhibited to the world an example of bad faith in controversy which is perhaps unparalleled in the history of any other church.

Their conduct at the time, however, escaped censure and even notice; and nothing can prove more strikingly than this fact, the religious apathy into which all Europe had sunk during the eighteenth century. The renowned church of Geneva lapsed-unconsciously, one might almost say—as it were by a natural declension-into Socinianism, without exciting observation in any Protestant country. The highest light of the Reformation went our, and no eye missed it; and when the French philosophers exultingly announced it to be extinct, the same apathy continued. Yet the event was no common one; it was that of a whole national establishment apostatizing from all the doctrines which had formerly given it the very first rank among reformed communities. to adopt the extreme opposite tenets. The case was-we will not absolutely say is quite singular. A national Socinian establishment!--as really and openly so as if it had been founded by Socinus, and not by Calvin. This is what the Church of Geneva-though the fact was never explicitly avowedwas; and this Christendom, if the short triumph of the Arian heresy be not regarded as an exception, had never before witnessed!

We have attempted, in some of our preceding remarks, to account for this remarkable transformation of Calvinism into Socinianism. In addition, we would venture a query:-whether the Calvinistic doctrines themselves, which we regard as the purest and highest reach of Christianity, may not have contributed to produce this effect?

These doctrines may be held spiritually, or merely intellectually, viz. really or nominally, and seem in either case little calculated to keep up permanent life in ecclesiastical establishments. They are too spiritual for these institutions, which are civil and social as well as religious, or they

are too little so. They are the most abstract tenets that can be brought practically to bear on human nature, without straining the mind and producing an ugly and vicious exaggeration of conduct. They consequently, when they work by divine influence, put man in a directer, in a more intimate communion with God, than any other doctrines which have a less abstract, a more mixed character. The heart is then the seat of their actions, and they have a plenitude of vital power. They are understood less than they are experienced; and it is their operation, not their theoretic completeness, that is prized-that is felt to be infinitely precious. In this sense they are too spiritual for any promiscuous body of men. On the other hand, they may present themselves to the mind, divested of all evangelic virtue, in the severe shape of the most difficult problem of religious philosophy solved. They form a whole system of theology so rigorously logical, that they may be comprehended by the understanding without moving the affections at all. In this sense, again— though, under peculiar circumstances, they may hold their ground-they are not at all adapted to the multitude.

This

Now, in establishments, it is always this intellectual and nominal, not the genuine and spiritual, Calvinism that is set up, and it has rarely any long endurance. Despite her articles and homilies, the Anglican Church has been almost constantly Arminian. In Scotland, however, it must be admitted, that the school of Knox, the Calviu of the North, has lasted stoutly out down to the present time. may be accounted for by the peculiar national temper of the Scotch. They are a hard and severe race. They demand less that their affections should be stirred than that their understandings should be convinced. Besides, to their Calvinism they have added a grave, reasoning, yet gorgeous philosophy, which comports well with it, and has imparted to it somewhat of popular attraction. The Genevese are of an altogether different temperament. Strictly moral and serious, reflective, too, and foud of argument, there is yet no people less logical or less profound. The rigid and the positive is not for them. That tension of intellect and rigour of principle, which is so natural to the Scotch, is

totally incompatible with their cast of character. They are not made even to appreciate the theoretic beauty, the wholeness, the metaphysical depth and grand simplicity, of Calvin's theology. It is not surprising then that they let it go-that it vanished from among them at the period we speak of completely. As it had assumed a more austere and absolute form with them than any where else, so their renunciation of it was thorough and unequivocal beyond any example. The reaction from Calvinism brought them at once down to Socinianism; and of the great work of the great Genevan reformer, nothing but its memory—a nominis umbra-remained.

The mixed doctrines appear to be more suited, than the abstract Calvinistic ones, to establishments. These are neither too spiritual nor too systematic, but have, as it were, an ascending and descending scale of piety, recommending them to the warmest and sincerest, as well as to the formal and half-hearted Christian. From their very brokenness, from their inconsistencies, they cannot satisfy religious reasonings, or induce any one to rest, renouncing further quest, in this barren satisfaction. The affections play in them a very great part, precisely because the presumptuousness of reasoning is baffled. They are never a mere theory, an object of intellectual contemplation, a semblance, a name, with a reality working against them, as established Calvinism usually is. In their practical energy, greater or less, their very existence consists; and they are, on the whole, so conformed to the middle course which the great majority of serious men love in all things to pursue, that even without the mysterious agency of the Holy Spirit, it seems they would ever have an extensive acceptance among the generality of religiously disposed persons.

In confirmation of this remark, we may observe, that Wesley left behind him a church, which, by the power of the mixed tenets, has diffused itself over the whole Protestant world; while Whitfield left none, but only numerous followers. Indeed it is probable, that this latter reviver of the Gospel perceived how strongly Calvinism repudiates ecclesiastical organizations, and therefore abstained

from the attempt to found a church after the example of the Wesleyans.

As to evangelical parties, which are not established churches, they represent exactly genuine Calvinism, which is ever springing up, here and there, out of all communions, but as soon as it becomes at all widely spread, getting corrupt, and dying away of itself. Popularity is, in every case, death to its purity and spirituality. Thus, whilst it has always been found, and always prominent, in the Church of Christ, it has never, except during brief seasons previous to its temporary local extinction, been popular. And this is the great argument in its favour, this is what stamps it with the seal of truth; for the mass of men ever love the partially true better than the absolutely true; and the Gospel, pure from God, will always gather to itself the few of every denomination, not the MANY of any denomination, for its real disciples.

It may appear, perhaps, to some of our readers, that the distinctions we have just made are too nice, and, besides, that they but very remotely account for the effect we would in part attribute to Calvinism. These objectors would probably rather see only, in the fall of the Genevan Church, an illustration of the state of Christianity all over the world at that period. Be it so. Socinianism was not openly expressed, but whether it was not tacitly entertained by Christian doctors pretty universally at this time, it would be hard to determine. The very doubt one feels with respect to this question, goes far to decide it against those who are the objects of the doubt. It might have been, that any one of the reformed churches at that juncture, being placed precisely in the external position of the Church of Geneva, would have acted as she acted. When we consider that the pastors were the most compact and powerful body of the little republic to which they belonged, and that, aided by the gradually increasing indifference of the people, they could do in Geneva what any other clergy could not do in any other state, we have, it is possible, in this difference of power, the whole difference that existed between the Genevan and other Protestant communions, during the greater part of the eighteenth century.