for that victorious, conciliating efficacy, which is inseparable from the grace of divine attraction: and acknowledges no other energy, but that to which the apostle sets his comprobatum est, where he says, The love of Christ constraineth us.

SECTION IX.

The Judgment of some eminent Persons, prior to the Reformation, continued.

If we carry down our enquiries, to the century preceding the reformation, we shall find that period illuminated by several very distinguished advocates for the doctrines of free and sovereign grace,

cian was in the right; it will follow, that, in the supernatural agency of grace on the heart, compulsion is quite excluded, be that agency ever so effectual: since, the more effectually it is supposed to operate, the more certainly it must engage the "preference of the mind." And, where the preference of the mind is thus engaged, won over, and secured, (the accomplishing of which is the very business of grace, Psal. cx. 3.) there compulsion can have no manner of footing or existence.

Another remark of Mr. Locke's deserves to be well considered: "voluntary is not opposed to necessary, but to involuntary. For a man may prefer what he can do, to what he cannot do:" [he may, for instance, prefer] "the state he is in, to its absence or change, though necessity has made it in itself unalterable." Ibid. sect. 11. 1 am apt to think, that the preceding citations from Locke will make Mr. Sellon stare. I wish the citation next ensuing may not make him swear. If the "Exotic" can get any body to lend him Locke's Essay, he will find in the 14th section of the chapter above referred to, the following observations: "Whether man's will be free, or no," is "an unreasonable, because unintelligible question. It is as insignificant to ask, whether man's will be free; as to ask, whether his sleep be swift, or his virtue square. Liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue." How far such concessions, as these, are reconcileable with some parts of that great man's theological system; or even with some of his own favourite metaphysical principles; I leave to the determination of more competent readers.

as now held by those who are since called (b) Cal

vinists.

V. John Huss, the well known Bohemian martyr, was converted to the truth of the gospel, next under God, by reading the works of our renowned countryman John Wickliff. He took his batchelor of arts degree in the university of Prague, A. D. 1393, and was eminent for learning (as learning then went), but more so for the exemplary sanctity of his life (c). I need not relate the perfidy of the council of Constance, who condemned him to the flames, in open violation of the safe-conduct which had been solemnly granted him by the emperor Sigismund. Suffice it to observe, that this infamous synod acted up to their own maxim, of "No faith to be kept with heretics:" and that he was burned, A. D. 1415. His dying prediction at the stake, is, however, too remarkable to be omitted. "He behaved himself at his martyrdom, with a wonderful cheerfulness; and seems to have had a spirit of prophecy for whereas Huss, in the Bohemian tongue, signifies a goose, he told them, you now roast a goose; but, after an hundred years, a swan shall rise out of my ashes. Which was fulfilled in Luther, who, just an hundred years after Huss' death, began to appear in opposition to the pope (d)."

(b) It seems, we are originally indebted to the church of Rome, for this appellation. "Calvinists: a name given by papists to the reformed of France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries." Great Hist. Dict.

(c) Vir, ipsis fatentibus adversariis, doctrinâ illustris, pietate conspicuus. Wharton, in App. ad Cavii Hist. Liter. p. 76.

(d) Hist. of Popery, vol. ii. p. 193. Mr. Rolt, in his Lives of the Reformers (p. 17, 18.) gives a more circumstantial account of Dr. Huss' martyrdom and prophecy. "Dr. Huss," says that judicious compiler, "heard his sentence, without the least emotion. He kneeled down, with his eyes lifted toward heaven, and said, with all the spirit of primitive martyrdom, May thy infinite mercy, O my God, pardon this injustice of my enemies. Thou knowest the

Among the articles of pretended heresy, which this excellent man was arraigned and put to death for maintaining, were the following (e).

"There is but one, holy, universal, or catholic church, which is the universal company of all the predestinate. I do confess," said Huss, "that this proposition is mine; and [it] is confirmed by St. Augustin upon St. John.

injustice of my accusations, how deformed with crimes I have been represented; how I have been oppressed by worthless witnesses and an unjust condemnation. Yet, O my God, let the mercy of thine, which no tongue can express, prevail with thee not to avenge my wrongs. The bishops, appointed by the council, stript him of his priestly garments, degraded him, and put a mitre of paper upon his head, on which devils were painted, with this inscription, A ringleader of heretics. Our heroic martyr received this mock mitre with a gallant air of unconcern, that seemed to give him dignity, instead of disgrace. A serenity, a joy, a composure, appeared in his looks, which indicated that his soul had cut off many stages of tedious journey in her way to the point of eternal joy and peace. The bishops delivered Huss to the emperor, who put him into the hands of the duke of Bavaria. His books were burnt at the gate of the church, and he was led to the suburbs to be burnt alive. When he came to the place of execution, he fell on his knees, sang portions of Psalms, looked stedfastly toward heaven, and repeated these words: Into thy hands, O Lord, do I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O most good and faithful God. When the chain was put about him at the stake, he said, with a smiling countenance, My Lord Jesus Christ was bound with an harder chain than this, for my sake; and why should I be ashamed of this old rusty one? When the faggots were piled up to his very neck, the duke of Bavaria was officious enough to desire him to abjure. No, said Huss; I never preached any doctrine of an evil tendency; and what I taught with my lips, I now seal with my blood. He said to the executioner, Are you going to burn a goose? In one century, you will have a swan, whom you can neither roast nor boil. If he were prophetic, he must have meant Luther, who had a swan for his arms. The flames were then applied to the faggots; when the martyr sang a hymn, with so loud and cheerful a voice, that he was heard through all the cracklings of the combustibles and the noise of the multitude. At last, his voice was cut short, and he was consumed. The duke of Bavaria ordered the executioner to throw all the martyr's clothes into the flames: after which, his ashes were carefully collected, and cast into the Rhine."

(e) Fox's Acts and Monuments, vol. i. p. 693.

VOL. I.

Y

"St. Paul was never any member of the devil, albeit that he committed and did certain acts like unto the acts of the malignant church" [i. e. St. Paul, prior to his conversion, acted like a reprobate, though he was secretly, and in reality, one of God's elect]. "And likewise St. Peter, who fell into an horrible sin of perjury, and denial of his master; it was by the permission of God, that he might the more firmly and stedfastly rise again and be confirmed." To this charge, Huss replied, “I answer, according to St. Austin, that it is expedient that the elect and predestinate should sin and offend (f)."

"No part or member of the church doth depart, or fall away, at any time, from the body: forsomuch as the charity of predestination, which is the bond and chain of the same, doth never fall." Huss answers; "This proposition is thus placed in my book: "As the reprobate of the church proceed out of the same, and yet are not as parts or members of the same; forsomuch as no part or member of the same doth finally fall away: because that the charity of predestination, which is the bond and chain of the same, doth never fall away. This is proved by 1 Cor. xiii. and Rom. viii. All things turn to good, to them that love God: also, I am certain that neither death nor life can separate us from the charity and love of God, as it is more at large in the book."

Another article, objected against him, was, his being of opinion that "the predestinate, although he be not in the state of grace according to present justice, yet is he always a member of the universal church." He answers: "Thus it is in the book,

(f) Let not the reader imagine, that I approve of the unguarded manner, in which Mr. Huss here expresses himself. I only give his answer faithfully, as I find it. His meaning, I doubt not, was this: that, by the incomprehensible alchymy of God's infinite wisdom, even moral evil itself shall be finally overruled to good.

about the beginning of the fifth chapter, where it is declared, that there be divers manners or sorts of being in the church: for there are some in the church, according to the mis-shapen faith; and other some according to predestination: as Christians predestinate, now in sin, shall return again unto grace." The good man added: "Predestination doth make a man a member of the universal church; the which [i. e. predestination] is a preparation of grace for the present, and of glory to come and not any degree of" [outward] "dignity, neither election of man" [or, one man's designation of another to some office or station], "neither any sensible sign" [i. e. predestination does not barely extend to the outward signs, or means of grace but includes something more and higher]:

For the traitor Judas Iscariot, notwithstanding Christ's election" [or appointment of him to the apostleship], and the temporal graces which were given him for his office of apostleship, and that he was reputed and counted of men a true apostle of Jesus Christ; yet was he no true disciple, but a wolf covered in a sheep's skin, as St. Augustin saith."

"A reprobate man is never a member of the holy church. I answer, it is in my book, with sufficient long probation out of the xxvi. Psalm, and out of the v. chapter to the Ephesians: and also by St. Bernard's saying, The church of Jesus Christ is more plainly and evidently his body, than the body which he delivered for us to death. I have also written, in the fifth chapter of my book, that the holy church" [i. e. the outward, visible church of professing Christians, here on earth] "is the barn of the Lord, in the which are both good and evil, predestinate and reprobate: the good being as the good corn, or grain; and the evil, as the chaff. And thereunto is added the exposition of St. Austin.”