the soul has with Christ in virtue of its union with him already explained. And here, says the author: "let us observe that in a genetical method, the order of things is warily to be considered, for the avoiding of confusion and false principles drawn from a mistake" in regard to it. "Thus, some, placing sanctification before justification, have inferred our works to have a causal influence into our justification, which is a pernicious error." "Effectual calling must needs go before all these benefits; for though that also be a benefit and fruit of the covenant of Redemption, yet it is that, also, which brings us into the covenant of grace." "By justification," he says, "we understand an authoritative pronouncing a person to be righteous on a fair trial." "Justification is of the person. It is the man that is justified." It "makes a change in the man's state, not in his nature." "The fountain from which it proceeds is the free grace of God." It removes the threatening. It gives a title also to the reward of the covenant. God never pardons sin in any other way than that of justification. And that supposes that the law is satisfied. "God hath respect in it to a righteousness that answers the law according to which the judg ment passes"-answers it not negatively alone but positively, repairing the breach which has brought upon us the curse, and fulfilling the requirement which was the condition of Blessedness. This doctrine of a two-fold fulfilment of the law on our account, by the Saviour, in order to complete justification, is essential to the fundamental principle of our author's whole system, that the dealings of God with man are all founded on his covenant, wherein Happiness or Blessedness is promised as a reward of obedience on the one hand, and eternal misery threatened as the penalty of the opposite. God is bound by his own engagements to see that that covenant is fulfilled on the part either of man himself or of the substitute. The satisfaction of Christ's death takes off the penalty, but leaves the sinner without claim. The righteousness of Christ's life fulfils the requirements of the law and secures all the positive blessings of his heavenly kingdom. This two-fold righteousness of Christ is "imputed" to the believer, not arbitrarily, but on the ground of our union with Christ. "He must be ours if his righteous

ness be so. Hence it is He himself that is made unto us Right

Fifty pages are occupied with the benefits "which do either accompany or flow from" the foregoing, both in this life and the future, assurance, peace, joy, growth in grace, perseverance, the Christian's death, resurrection, and eternal glory.

We then pass to the second of the two grand branches of the Catechism, viz., Human Duty. Nearly two hundred pages are taken up with an exposition of the moral law, as exhibited in the ten commands; in which our author shows himself to be a casuist of no mean rank. Then the subjects of inability and the degrees of sin are cursorily handled; and the terms or conditions of salvation, Faith, Repentance, and the use of means -the Word, sacraments, and prayer, conclude the discussion.

But all this portion of the volume we are compelled by the length to which this article has already been extended, to pass in silence. Enough, however, as we think, has been presented, to give some just, if not adequate, conception of the character of this old Puritan theology, and furnish a land-mark by which to estimate the progress which has been made, or the deflections and retrogradations which have taken place in subsequent periods. We are strongly of the opinion that the dogmatic history of New England, at any of its marked periods, cannot well be understood without a thorough acquaintance with the old theology in which the churches were cradled. Our object has been, not to express our own views under the cover of another's writings, but to let the venerable author speak out his own with as much fulness as possible. Therefore we have forborne for the most part to make comments; and at the risk of being tedious to many, have tried to fit together, as far as practicable, his own forms of expression. All must agree, we think, in admiring the terseness, exactness, and discrimination of many of the statements, and, if we have succeeded at all in our endeavors to present it, the logical consistency of the system taken as a whole.

The grand defect, as it seems to us, of this and of most other early Calvinistic systems, is to be found in the almost exclusive manner in which the theory is developed from the divine

side, that is, from the position of the Divine Sovereignty. The Bible sustains the conclusions, on that side, to the full extent, perhaps, of the reasoning; but it gives us also a human side, which, though recognized in the systems of these writers, has by no means its appropriate prominence. It is so in some degree with the Catechism. It is so, we think, manifestly, with the author before us. While he admits, fully and distinctly, the free agency of man, and his duty to obey God, and fulfil, by his own acts of repentance and faith, the conditions of the covenant, so working out his own salvation, under a sense of his dependence, with fear and trembling, the truth on this side is so overlaid by the vastly larger development of the sovereignty of grace, as to sink it, to a great degree, out of view, and give to the system a one-sidedness which mars its beauty and impairs the effect of the truth.

But the extreme to which our modern divinity lamentably tends, is just the opposite. We want the truth full-orbed and complete in all its parts, just as the Bible has given it. And in these days, when free will and responsibility with many are made almost the whole of the Gospel, it is well for us to go back and hold converse with those old masters, who knew so well how to picture God as the first cause, and the last end of all things, and clothe the system of divinity with a truly divine glory and majesty. Their extreme, if extreme it must be called, will be far less detrimental to piety than that whose tendency is to make man every thing and the supreme God scarcely more than his helper.

ART. II.-JANSENISM AND THE JANSENISTS.

By Rev. LYMAN WHITING, Providence, R. I.

THE remarkable story of the Jansenists, is a memorable proof that the doctrines of the Gospel have an indestructible vitality. The history of truth, no where in this world probably, shows a tenacity of life more strikingly than in that portion of the Roman Catholic church, which this name justly covers. Such a hot hostility, such real papal madness, is hardly seen in the sword-and-brand, history of that church, as against those having that name, and the doctrines it describes. They were foes in her own household, hanging to her bosom, and claiming shelter under her maternal benedictions. Foes in any household are apt to be fierce in proportion as they are intimate. No family trouble has hurt the power, and boast of supremacy and unity, of the mother of abominations more than this. The only example of successful and persistent resistance to her terrible hand, is here; for all her force in cursing, and in shedding of blood, has failed to quench this poor candle that burns yet, without consuming. When authority Dellowed, and shook its dreadful horns; a quiet or dexterous resistance dodged or eluded the stroke. The walls of Port Royal-des-Champs, were pulled down, indeed, and not one stone left on another; but thongh the place of its cradle, and where its stoutest armor was forged and hung, was known no more, the vital doctrine still clove to the church as tenaciously as ever. The papacy had never such a pestilent offspring. Its old, fiery, flaming sword, and its poisons of sharper force than that of the asps; yea, even the diabolical assiduity of churchly hate, Jesuitism, all got tired long ago of trying to purge this (to her) poison of Gospel truth out of the veins of the church. Mr. Clowden, an English papist of note, laments this "tenacious uniformity in strong error, ** through a course of two centuries." He helps us also to the view of Jansenism in his church, or its "prominent feature," which he styles, "contemptuous hostility to the Council of Trent." He

compares them to a "generation of vipers." "I tremble and shudder at the savages, while I see that terrible disorder making amongst some of the catholic flocks within the dominions. of his majesty," and piteously he cries: "Would to God the remedy were as obvious as the disease is evident." Alas! Rome at a loss for a remedy against a truth of God working wholly within her own pale. That is a dilemma of mark!

Very numerous are the like cries of anguish, popish writers have uttered as to these doctrines, and yet it lives and works until now.

And what is Jansenism? What was the vital force of the Jansenists? The briefest answer would be, It is an embodiment of the remnant of the doctrines of grace, which Romanism, in its day of prime had failed to exterminate from the popular faith. The great doctrines of a fallen nature and of Divine grace, as a means of salvation, were the main components of their―to the papacy-fearful strength. Its organic history begins in the reäction upon the tyranny in faith and in practice of the Jesuits, and they were and are, its unresting foes. The grand doctrinal embodiment of it is a book called Augustinus, written by Cornelius Jansen, whose name has hence distinguished the doctrine. The book was a compendious reproduction of the doctrines of grace taught by the Bp. of Hippo. No equal force in church history has left so dire and mixed a story. Its fatal error was, trying to make the doctrines of grace a way of salvation, and staying in the papal church at the same time. Records and traditions throng the path they travelled, but very little, clear, distinct, and continuous account can be made of them. Naturally thus-trying to keep up a life in Christ, and with that body of death, the papacy. They were like a set of men trying to turn tombs and charnel houses into abodes for the living. Of course, the doors of tombs are kept shut.

A fine volume was presented to the world about two years ago by Rev. J. M. Neale, M. A., from the Oxford press, the title of which significantly shows this uncertain character of Jansenism. "A History of the so-called Jansenist Church of Holland; with a sketch of its Earlier Annals." It is the work