divines of our church, who were called, in their day, the Doctrinal Calvinists."*

RISE, PROGRESS, &c.-Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, in 1509, and educated at Paris under Corderius, with a view to the church; but, conceiving a dislike to Popery, he entered upon the study of the civil law, in which he is said to have made considerable progress. Afterwards, finding it unsafe for him as a Protestant to remain in France, he retired to Basil, in Switzerland, where he again turned his thoughts to divinity, and published his Institutions of the Christian Religion in Latin, with a bold and elegant dedication to Francis I., king of France. In 1536, he became professor of divinity at Geneva; but being soon after obliged to leave that place, he withdrew to Strasburg, where he officiated in a French church of his own establishment, and was also chosen professor of divinity. In the mean time, the Genevese earnestly invited him to return: and he, accepting their invitation in

*Charge for 1801, p. 34.

"Indeed, I never yet could discover, what necessary connexion there is between Calvinism, and that spurious form of ecclesiastical government, Presbyterianism."-FABER'S Thoughts on the Calvinistic and Arminian Controversies, p. 42.

Even Calvin himself was, or professed to be, a warm friend and admirer of the Episcopalian form of church government. Vide Calv. Confes. Fid. Gall. Epist. ad Cran. de Reformand. Eccles. necessitate. Vera Eccles. Reformatio Epist. ad regem Polonia. Calv. Inst. L. 4. c. 4. Passim. Epist. 190, &c. &c.

1541, set on foot a rigorous system of ecclesiastical discipline, and continued at Geneva, actively employed as a preacher and a writer, till his death, which happened in 1564,*

Even his enemies admit that he was a person of great talents, indefatigable industry, and considerable learning; and it is generally allowed, that he wrote both in French and Latin, with great purity.t But the tenets which are commonly called Calvinistic, ought not to be considered as originating wholly with him; for many of them appear in authors long anterior to Calvin, especially in the works of St. Austin, whom, and the Latin Church, it would appear, he had nearly followed. "The opinions of Austin, which are the basis of Calvinism, have had their strenuous assertors in the Church of Rome itself. Indeed, for a long time, they were the prevailing opinions of the Latin Church."+

* See Beza's Life of Calvin, prefixed to his works; Bolsec also wrote a life of him. The former wrote as a friend, the latter as an enemy; the truth may perhaps lie between them.

+ His Theological works were published in 9 vols. folio. The Amsterdam edition, apud Schipper, of 1671, et an. seqq. is considered, I believe, as correct.

Bishop Horsley, as above. See also Bishop Prettyman's Elements, Vol. II. p. 312; and Dean Tucker's Letter to Dr. Kippis.

Many of those opinions, which are usually called Calvinistic, appear, we are told, in the works of Austin, Hilary, Prosper, Fulgentius, and other fathers of the primitive church, who handled the Pelagian controversy; and most, if not all of them, in those of the Waldenses, of Gotteschalcus, Huss, Jerome of Prague, the venerable Bede,

Calvin soon opposed not only the abettors of the Church of Rome, but in some measure Luther also, particularly on the subject of the Eucharist; and the disciples of the one became in a short time distinguished from those of the other. He also differed on the same and several other points of doctrine from Zuingle, who was a native of Switzerland, an eminent Reformer, and the founder of the Reformed Church in that country. But ever since the synod of Dort in 1618, which is the last Council that was held, the Calvinists have been chiefly opposed to the Arminians.

The tenets that have been usually styled Calvinistic, soon found their way into Germany, *

Grosseteste, Wickliffe, Bradwardine, and even in those of the Schoolmen, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus, all long anterior to Calvin.

* Among their chief patrons in Germany, we may reckon Frederick III., Elector Palatine, who, in 1560, removed from their pastoral functions the Lutheran doctors, and filled their places with Calvinists; and, at the same time, obliged his subjects to embrace the tenets, rites, and institutions of the Church of Geneva. From 1583, the influence and reputation of the Church of the Palatinate became so considerable, under the government of the Elector John Casimir, and his successors, that it obtained the second place among the Reformed Churches; and the Form of Instruction, which was composed for its use by Ursinus, in 1563, and which is known under the title of the Catechism of Heidelberg, was almost universally adopted by the Calvinists. For an account of this Catechism, which may be found in the Oxford Sylloge Confessionum, see Kocheri Bibl. Theol. Symbolica, pp. 593, and 308.

Towards the end of the same century, the doctrine and

France, Prussia,† and Holland,‡ at an early period of the Reformation, and were introduced into Britain in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by those divines who fled to Switzerland, &c. to escape the bloody persecutions under Queen Mary. But the political, and I may add, the fanatical, conduct of the Puritans, or of that faction of the Puritans, (who were all rigid Calvinists,) which overturned

discipline of Geneva were also embraced by other German states, the city of Bremen, &c.

* Dr. Mosheim, speaking of the French Protestant Churches, says, that about the middle of the 16th century, "they all, without exception, entered into the bonds of fraternal communion with the Church of Geneva."Eccles. Hist. Vol. IV. p. 384.-For the writers that have given the best accounts of the French Reformed Churches, their Confession of Faith, and their forms of worship and discipline, Dr. Mosheim refers us to Kocherus, in his Bibl. Theol. Symbol. p. 299.

"In Prussia, the Reformed gained ground after the death of Luther and Melancthon, and founded the flourishing churches that still subsist in that country.”—Mosheim. They also propagated their tenets, about the same time, in Poland, &c.

The religious system of Calvin was publicly adopted in the Belgic Provinces about the year 1571, or at latest in 1579, when the Belgic Confession, which made its first appearance in 1561, was confirmed in a public synod. And in the famous Synod of Dort, A. D. 1618, the same system was fixed as the national and established religion of the Seven United Provinces.

§ i. e. The Calvinistical tenets, in regard to church government and discipline, were then first introduced into Britain; for it would appear from Latimer's Sermons, Fox's Acts, &c. that several Protestants who suffered under Queen Mary, were Doctrinal Calvinists.

the church, and murdered their king, brought Calvinism, already in its wane, into total disrepute with the friends of monarchy in England. It has, however, maintained its ground there more or less ever since; but, since the restoration, chiefly among the Dissenters. In Scotland, no moderation was observed in the work of reformation, and various attempts were made to introduce Calvinism and Presbyterianism, from the days of John Knox, till the Revolution in 1688, when both were established; and at the union of the two kingdoms, the religion of Scotland, as then established, was confirmed.

But though the seeds of Calvinism were thus industriously and early sown in different countries of Europe, there does not seem to have been any great degree of unanimity among its professors in those countries; nor had any reformed Church, before the Synod of Dort, "obliged its members, by any special law or article of faith, to adhere to the doctrine of the church of Geneva, relating to the primary causes of the salvation of the elect, or the ruin of the reprobate."

It is also worthy of remark, that the authority of that synod was far from being universally acknowledged even among the Dutch; and it is doubtful whether the victory gained by it over the Arminians,* was, upon the whole, advantageous or detrimental to the cause of the successful party.

"It is at least certain, that after the Synod of

* See the Article Arminianism, below.