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offices are the ancient forms of catholic worship." But it is equally true of the parts introduced by the reformers into the liturgy from continental models. For instance, the prayer of general confession is a translation through the Latin of a French prayer composed by Calvin himself, translated into Latin by Polanus and into English from him. But we mark in it an insertion not found either in Calvin's French or Polanus's Latin; i. e., the phrase "According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord," a universal promise to a class of penitents, not a particularistic determination of certain individuals. Mark also the declaration of absolution, of which there is the faintest trace in Polanus, in which occurs the Scriptural affirmation of the disposition of God, "who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live," and one must say that these offices, new at the Reformation, and inserted by Cranmer himself, were not constructed on the extreme Calvinistic model. Take the office for the baptism of infants. The exhortation after the gospel is the exposition of Christ's general or universal disposition towards children as the ground of applying baptism to this child. The child now to be baptized is not held up as an exception, but as a specimen of all children as God regards them. "Ye perceive how, by his outward gesture and deed, he [our Saviour Christ] declared his good will toward them [children in general]. Doubt ye not therefore that he will likewise favorably receive this present infant."

And then follows the thanksgiving for the election or calling of God, which is, "We give thee humble thanks, that thou hast vouchsafed to call us" [the church in general], to what?" to the knowledge of thy grace, and faith in thee." It is the election to spiritual privilege, whose true issue and interest is eternal life, but whose privilege must be actively embraced by him to whom it is conveyed, in order thus to result. "Wherefore, after this promise made by Christ," the service goes on to say, "which he for his part will most surely keep and perform," "this infant must also for his part, promise . . . that he will renounce the Devil, and . . . believe God's word, and obediently keep his commandments," i. e., respond to the proffered grace. This office is not conceived in the atmosphere of absolute predestination, but in that of the early Patristic doctrine.

...

In the office of the holy communion, in the prayer of consecration, the universality of the atonement is declared in the phrase,

"who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." Now the framer of these offices was not imbued with a belief in a limited atonement. In these offices three of the cardinal tenets of the five points of Calvinism are expressly contravened. But the decretum horribile (Calvin's own phrase) of unconditional reprobation is founded on that theory of human nature and human will in relation to the Divine nature and the Divine will, which logically requires all the five points of Calvinism, the limited atonement, the effectual call only of the elect, and the indefectibility of grace, as well as absolute predestination; and where these are not held the others are not likely to be held. The Offices, revised by the same authority which issued the Articles, furnish a strong presumption against such exposition of the Articles as brings them into accord with Chapters III., V., and X. of the Westminster Confession.

But another yet more convincing reason for emphasizing the distinction between the two formularies is at hand. In 1595 (forty-three years after the Forty-Two Articles of Cranmer appeared) the celebrated Lambeth Articles, nine in number, were composed, and were sought to be engrafted on the Thirty-Nine Articles, once during Elizabeth's reign, and once in James I.'s time. These Articles stated with most startling distinctness the doctrines of ultra-Calvinism afterwards embodied in the Westminster Confession. They met the personal approval of several most distinguished prelates and divines of the time, Archbishop Whitgift of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Bangor among them. The justly celebrated James Usher, who in 1624 became Archbishop of Dublin, obtained for them a place in the Irish Church; though, twenty years after, they were displaced in that church by the Thirty-Nine Articles. But they never found a place in the English formularies. They were composed to meet a difficulty originating in the teaching of Barret, a fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, who preached ad clerum against Calvin's doctrines about predestination and falling from grace. For after the accession of Elizabeth (the Articles, we must remember, appeared in 1552, before her accession), the Calvinistic dispute rose to its highest pitch on the Continent and elsewhere. The Institutes of Calvin now became a handbook of the English clergy, and in this reign the sympathy, which had sprung up with the Continental Reformers, during the banishments under Mary, made the teaching of the English divines approximate more and

more to the teaching of the Calvinists. Many of the most distinguished men were now high Calvinists. As such they were not content with the XVIIth Article, and desired the nine Lambeth Articles, to give sufficient expression to their views. This is sig nificant of the fact that the XVIIth Article does not contain those views. And the fact that these Lambeth articles, however favored by distinguished individuals, never received any sanction of the church or crown, indicates that the doctrines contained in them are not imposed by the formularies of the English Church. So much can be said from the side of the Articles. Let us look at the question briefly from the side of the Westminster Confession.

Under the authority of the Long Parliament in 1642 (ninety years after the Thirty-Nine Articles appeared) an assembly of divines met by order of Parliament at Westminster, to amend the Articles of the English Church, with the intent to make them more explicitly Calvinistic. They advanced in this procedure so far as the Article XV., not reaching the celebrated XVIIth, when they were ordered to proceed no further on these lines. Even in the fifteen articles amended, the difficulties were too great. Sufficient congruity of form could not be retained if Calvinistic views were to be more explicitly stated.

The assembly then proceeded to draw up the formula now known as the Westminster Confession of Faith. It was published in 1647, ninety-five years after the Articles first appeared. Three thousand clergymen, who had signed the Thirty-Nine Articles, refused to sign the Confession, and lost thereby their benefices. The basis of the Confession was not, as at first intended, the Thirty-Nine Articles, but the Irish Articles. These incorporated the famous Lambeth Articles, which the English Church had refused to adopt. The Irish Articles were drawn up by James Usher, who was then professor of divinity in Dublin, and afterward archbishop of that see. They were composed in 1615, sixtythree years after the appearance of the English articles. They expressed in the strongest terms the high Calvinism which had come to prevail in some quarters, declaring in almost the same words the views and statements contained in the Westminster Confession. Indeed, the Irish Articles and the Confession, in the order of subjects, the heading of chapters, in many single phrases, and in spirit and in sentiment, are almost identical. But just as widely as the Irish Articles diverge from the English, so does the Westminster Confession. To identify therefore the statements of

the English Church on predestination with those of the Westminster Confession is unwarranted. In fact, since the Irish Articles, after twenty years of use, fell into desuetude, the Westminster Confession has the monopoly, among all Protestant confessions, of the statements and deductions which many now desire to exscind from the Presbyterian standards.

Concerning the place of the Articles in the English Church and its American branch, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and of their binding authority, it may be remarked in closing this paper, that the Thirty-Nine Articles do not constitute the creed of either church. They indicate the polemical position towards Rome taken by the reformed church at the Reformation, and on their side of the controversy loyal churchmen are bound to stand. No subscription to them is required by either clergy or laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and their express words or form of expression is not (even now in England) obligatory upon any one. But historically the Anglican communion combats the Church of Rome along the line which they indicate. The two creeds, called the Apostles' and the Nicene, are the credenda of the churches, and the impress of no master mind, as of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Wesley, Pusey, or Arnold, has any force of obligation in interpreting the facts and statements of the creeds, further than the reasons adduced therefor have weight. The motto of the Anglican communion may justly be said to be, "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri," - save always those of the one great master, whose word shall never pass away, in "whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."

NEW YORK, N. Y.

C. C. Tiffany.

EDITORIAL.

THE HARM OF UNEDIFYING PREACHING.

THE pastor of a prominent Congregational church in Connecticut recently received a letter from one of his parishoners, from which we are allowed to make the following extract. The letter, it should be said, was written in serious concern about a young man in whom the writer was religiously interested.

"The preaching I heard in

consisted of doctrinal disquisitions only, of about a hundred years ago, and it was a revelation to me that enlightened Christians of this time could endure it. There was n't a word hardly in the sermons I heard to teach a man how to live a better life. I wish I knew if you thought it a duty for a young man, who is not a Christian, to go to church under such circumstances."

We do not presume to give the pastoral advice which is here asked for. Many would doubtless say, Let the young man be advised to go to church to worship, or to meet Christian people, or to show his respect for the Sabbath, or for a proper influence in the community. We should agree that there are reasons for church-going quite independent of the sermon, but we do not care to urge these at present, for we have a word to say about those preachers who, as preachers, are making it more and more difficult for Christian people to attend church, and almost impossible for them to persuade others to attend. The grievance of this letter is a very real one, and we suspect that in some communities there is no little occasion for it. The complaint is not that the preaching is unattractive or uninteresting, but that it is unhelpful - "hardly a word in the sermons I heard to teach a man how to live a better life." This is a very serious complaint, whatever may be the particular cause which gives rise to it. In the case before us preaching had become a series of "doctrinal disquisitions," and quite out of date at that: a state of things for which we suppose the theological training of the preacher may fairly be held responsible, and that the responsibility should be about equally divided between the departments of Theology and Homiletics. Theology must be as scientific as anything which assumes to be a science. And the teaching of theology must conform to the laws of philosophical thought. But to the degree in which theology assumes to be a science it must follow accredited scientific methods. To teach theology in terms which are obsolete and outlawed is a philosophical absurdity. The evident mistake of some theologians is that of giving an authority to the philosophy of a given period which belongs only to the truth which it tries to formulate. The philosophers are the real popes of Protestantism. It is their dictum which is infallible, not the word of God. And dogmatic preaching of a certain type betrays the fact. The preacher may deceive himself with the idea that he is declaring the truth of Scripture, but he