console had taken flight; and as communications were not very rapid in those days, the prelates entrusted with it were very much at a loss to know what was best to be done. William still felt himself in a highly uncertain position, and would have been very glad to conciliate the episcopal party in Scotland. He had, besides, found it much more important than representations made to him on the continent by its opponents led him to expect. He came over with a notion that the country was all but wholly Presbyterian. He now discovered that this was untrue, except as to the trading and inferior classes; the gentry, with their connexions and dependents, being chiefly Episcopalians. Hence he was anxious to make a friend of the church, and would probably have saved it, had not adverse incidents driven him another way. Rose, bishop of Edinburgh, however, one of the prelates deputed to wait upon James, had an interview with him, which must have been felt as highly unsatisfactory. He had, indeed, already spoken with indiscreet warmth in favour of the fallen monarch, to Bishop Compton, and this language most probably found its way to court. William was naturally mortified and offended, although Rose had no commission from his brethren or those of his communion to the successful invader, and therefore could only speak his private sentiments. In Scotland, however, the episcopalian party was almost immediately after confirmed in disaffection to the new government, by finding itself in certain districts left defenceless at the mercy of a fanatical mob. No sooner did intelligence of James's ruin reach the western counties, which had been the principal seat of Cameronian excesses, than the wild populace rose upon the unfortunate clergy, and drove them from their cures and homes, with every circumstance of indignity and spoliation'. It is hardly doubtful that the new unsettled government had not sufficient means to repress this execrable spirit of outrage. But men under the extremity of suffering do not stop to make such allowances. They only feel the smart of their own miseries, and complain

8 Bp. Compton's speech to Bp. Rose. Ibid. 340.

9"It has been already stated that about two hundred incumbents, with their families, were expelled in the

course of the winter of 1688, and exposed to all the pains and privations which cold, hunger, and a fanatical multitude could inflict." Ibid. 352.

of remissness or hostility in that government which was instituted and is paid to protect them from such hardships. The government in this case, too, had one for its head who was educated a Presbyterian, and who felt soreness and embarrassment from the very party which was now hunted down by lawless Presbyterian mobs. Thus the Episcopalians became daily more alienated from the new administration, and this, in turn, as it gained strength, grew unfavourable to episcopacy. Hence the convention parliament, which assembled after the English precedent, not only declared in its Claim of Right, on the 11th of April, 1689, that no papist could lawfully be sovereign, but also that prelacy was a great and insupportable grievance and trouble, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people." The natural tendency of such a vote being the increase of alienation on both sides, and the crown finding its interest more likely to be promoted by taking part against episcopacy, that form of ecclesiastical polity was easily abolished in Scotland, by act of parliament, on the 22nd of the following July. It was impossible that such events should not occasion disgust and alarm among the steadier of the English episcopalians. They could not hear of the miseries which their unfortunate brethren had undergone in the last winter in the western Scottish counties, from the unrestrained violence of fanatical mobs, and of the legislative proscription of their church in the following spring and summer, without a suspicion that their own condition might prove precarious. Whatever faults. therefore, might be committed by individuals met in convocation upon the scheme of comprehension, more allowance is fairly claimable for them than has commonly been made. With an enemy triumphant in North Britain, and clamouring at the gates in South, cautious men might well consider the next autumn as time unseasonable for tempting his boldness by showing a ready disposition to make him new concessions.

§ 18. The reign of William III. is especially worthy of notice in a student of ecclesiastical history, because it placed the British throne on a basis essentially Protestant. The legislature assumed a power of selecting such a line of succession among individuals descended from the ancient royal family as should render a return to Romanism impossible in

the sovereign. A clause added to the Bill of Rights in the House of Lords provides not only that every person in communion with the church of Rome, or marrying a papist, shall for ever be incapable of the crown, but also that in case of any British sovereign's apostasy to Popery, the people shall be absolved from their allegiance, and the next heir shall immediately succeed, if a Protestant, just as if the royal personage reconciled to the church of Rome, or marrying a papist, had actually died'. This Act was passed towards the close of 1689. In the earlier part of that year, the crown had been settled upon the reigning sovereigns, William and Mary, and their issue, failing which, upon the Princess Anne and her issue. The king was desirous of a farther entail upon the Hanover family, being personally partial to it, and then intent upon gaining over its head to a close participation of his foreign policy. A motion to this effect passed the Lords, but the Commons rejected it, chiefly, as it seems, because, from the Princess Anne's known situation, it was likely to be found unnecessary. She was, in fact, shortly after delivered of a prince, immediately created Duke of Gloucester, and thus all farther precautions against a popish successor became for the present superfluous. The royal boy, however, died in July, 1700, and thus a new arrangement became essential to the public tranquillity. Hence was passed in the following year the Act of Settlement, which received the royal assent on the 12th of June, 17012. By this enactment the British crown was settled, in case of the Princess Anne's death without issue, upon Sophia, widow of Ernest Augustus, elector of Hanover3, and her issue, being Protestants. This lady was youngest daughter of Frederic the Fifth, elector Palatine, and eventually chosen, to his own great detriment, king of Bohemia. Her mother was Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I. To say nothing, however, of James the Second's proscribed issue, there was then a grand-daughter of Charles I. alive, namely, Anne, Duchess of Savoy, daughter of Henrietta, Duchess of

Kennet, iii. 546.

2 Halliday's Hist. of the House of Guelph. Lond. 1821. p. 145.

3 William of England induced the emperor to raise him to the electoral

dignity in 1692. But the elevation gave offence in some quarters, and on allegation of informality it was not universally admitted. Ibid. 141.

Orleans. There were also other members of the Palatine family, whose claims by seniority stood before Sophia's. In fact, there were about forty individuals then living descended from James I. But all of them, except the dowager electress, were Romanists, her nearest connections of the Palatine family having apostatised from that scriptural religion for which their house had undergone so much. If, however, a prospect were opened of succeeding to the English throne, some of these individuals might probably have been found quite willing to talk of undue haste in embracing popery, and to make a profession of Protestantism. But the English parliament wisely refused interested minds any temptation to a conformity which was likely to prove hollow and insidious, settling the crown upon an individual whose religious position had never afforded any ground for suspicion. The Act of Settlement was therefore a political arrangement of the highest importance to the religious world. It secured from the pestilent operations of a Romish confessional, a throne which was rising in power throughout the eighteenth century, and which has now no equal in Europe, except in France and Russia. Had not allegiance to the British sovereign been made conditional, the temptation of matrimonial connections with the principal royal houses abroad might have introduced again artful Jesuits, with all the seductive blandishments of paganised christianity, so germane to the

4 Ibid. 145.

5 "Though many of her family were rigid members of the Roman catholic church, she" (Sophia) "was educated a Protestant, under the care of her cousin, the Princess of Orange, and she remained firmly attached to the doctrines and principles of that faith." (Ibid. 165.) She was born on the 13th of October, 1630, married in 1658, left a widow in 1698, and died on the 8th of June, 1714. Anne died on the first of the following August. Sophia's son, the clector George Lewis, had now become heir to the British throne, and under the designation of George I. was its first occupant of the Hanoverian family.

Queen

6"These last" (others of the Palatine family) "had abjured the Reformed faith, of which their ancestors

had been the strenuous assertors; but it seemed not improbable that some one might return to it." (Hallam's Const. Hist. iii. 244.) "While the bill regulating the succession" (that of 1689) was in the House of Commons, a prociso was offered by Mr. Godolphin, that nothing in this Act is intended to be drawn into example or consequence hereafter, to prejudice the right of any Protestant prince or princess, in their hereditary succession to the imperial crown of these realms. This was much opposed by the whigs; both because it tended to let in the son of James II. if he should become a Protestant, and for a more secret reason, that they did not like to recognise the continuance of any hereditary right. It was rejected by 179 to 125." Ibid. note.

corrupt nature of man, into the families of our sovereigns. But by guarding effectually against any such contingency, the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement have opposed a solid bulwark to the range of Romish sophistry and ambition.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF THE ARMINIANS OR REMONSTRANTS.

§ 1. The name of Arminians.-§ 2. Their origin.-§ 3. Their progress.—§ 4. The five points.--§ 5, 6. Maurice resolves on their destruction.--§ 7. Opinion of the synod of Dort.-§ 8. Condition after the synod of Dort.-§ 9. Recalled from exile.-§ 10. Early and later theology of the Arminians.-§ 11. Its aim, and principal heads.—§ 12. Their Confession of Faith.-§ 13. Present state of the Arminians.

§ 1. FROM the bosom of the Reformed church, to its great injury, there originated in the present century two sects, the Arminians and the Quakers; the former owing its birth to an excessive regard for human reason, and the latter to a neglect of it. The Arminians derived their name and their rise from James Harmensen, or, (as he chose to be called in Latin,) James Arminius; first a minister of the Gospel at Amsterdam, and then professor of theology at Leyden; a man whom even his enemies commend for his ingenuity, acuteness, and piety'.

1 The fullest account given of him is by Caspar Brandt, in his Historia Vita Jac. Arminii, Leyden, 1724. 8vo. and republished, with a preface and some notes, by me ; Brunsw. 1725. 8vo. Add the Noureau Dictionnaire Hist. et Critique, tom. i. p. 471, &c. [and The Creed of Arminius, with a brief sketch of his life and times, by M. Stuart, in the Biblical Repertory, Andover, 1831. vol. i. No. ii. p. 226–308. Tr.] The entire works of Arminius have been repeatedly published, in a moderatesized 4to volume. I use the edition

of Frankfort, 1634. 4to. Those who wish to discover and estimate correctly the genius of the man, should read especially his Disputationes, both the public and the private. His manner of teaching partakes somewhat of the dark scholasticism of his age; and yet it approximates to that simplicity and perspicuity, which his followers have regarded, and still regard, as among the primary excellences of a theologian. The historians of the sect, and its Confessions, are treated of by Jo. Christ. Köcher, Biblioth. Theol. Symbolica, p.