held that the validity and use of the sacraments are not dependent on the personal character of the officiating minister, they also asserted that they are equally independent of his secret intention. They recoiled from the doctrine that the priest, by a contrary intention, may annul the effect of the sacraments; whereby it is always left in some degree uncertain whether they are in fact received.

With the Catholic doctrine of penance, or temporal punishments following upon the remission of mortal sin, the doctrine of purgatory also disappeared, and consequently that of the lawfulness or need of prayers for the dead. The invocation of the Virgin and of the saints was connected with ideas concerning the character of Christ, which were at variance with the Protestant conception of his compassionate feeling and mediatorial relation; and such practices disappeared, almost of themselves. It is only in recent times that the immaculate conception of the Virgin has been proclaimed as a dogma; but the cultus of Mary, in the Middle Ages, especially under the auspices of the Franciscans, had been carried to a portentous height; and this exalted service offered to the mother of Jesus the Reformers discarded. The worship of images, or that homage to images which the Catholic theology permits, and the veneration of the relics of saints, vanished with the worship of the saints themselves, and was renounced likewise as a species of idolatry, or as involving a temptation to an idolatrous service. Pilgrimages and a great variety of ascetic usages were given up from their perceived inconsistency with the Protestant doctrine of justification, and of the liberty from ceremonial ordinances

sacraments: "Per que ceu media deus virtute spiritus sancti in nobis operatur." In the Conf. Helv. ii. (xix.) it is said of the sacraments: "Signa et res significatæ inter se sacramentaliter conjunguntur, conjunguntur, inquam, vel uniuntur per significationem mysticam et voluntatem vel consilium ejus, qui sacramenta constituit." See also Conf. Angl., art. xxv.; Conf. Gall., art. xxxiv.; Cat. Genev., p. 519.

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which is a corollary of that doctrine. It is a striking proof that the central principle of Protestantism is logically inconsistent with these practices, that they dropped off from the system of worship without any struggle in behalf of them, wherever that principle was intelligently received and professed. Monasticism, together with the celibacy of the clergy, as a compulsory rule, shared the same fate and on the same ground. As the Catholic theology made a distinction between mortal and venial sins, presenting thus a quantitative rather than a qualitative standard of conduct, which Protestantism rejected, so that theology made a distinction between two types of Christian character, the one being a salvable degree of excellence such as is gained by complying with the commandments of the Gospel, the other being the more exalted type of excellence, which is reached through compliance with the counsels or recommendations of the Gospel. On this distinction was founded the monastic system, with its three vows of poverty, chastity (including celibacy), and obedience. The Protestants rejected the distinction as belonging to a legal system at war with the spirit of Christian ethics, where the fundamental characteristic is not obedience to that which is exacted, but a free and willing and grateful self-consecration; where the question is not "how much must I," but "how much can I " do for the Saviour? For this reason they cast away also the rule of celibacy for the clergy, and for the additional reasons that it was one of the artificial barriers which had been set up to give a greater sanctity to the priesthood than of right belongs to the Christian ministry; that it puts a stigma upon the marriage institution; and that it had proved a source of corruption in the Church. Works of supererogation and the idea of a treasury of supererogatory merits of saints were cast away, as human inventions, which had sprung out of an eclipse of the truth that the merits of Christ are the sole and sufficient ground of salvation. With the abro

gation of penances, and with the denial of purgatory, there was no room left for indulgences or for absolution, considered as a judicial act of the priest. Absolution, where it was retained by the Protestants, was a declaration of the forgiveness of the Gospel, not to an individual by himself, but to the assembly of believers, and was founded on a general, not a detailed, on a common, not an auricular or private confession of sin.

Of the theological divisions among the Protestants, the earliest and most noteworthy was the Sacramentarian controversy between the Lutherans on the one hand, and the Zwinglians first, and then the Calvinists, on the other; the controversy that raged in the first age of the Reformation. This has been described in preceding pages. The Arminian controversy, which is, perhaps, next in importance, related to the subject of predestination, and arose towards the close of the sixteenth century. The Reformers had followed Augustine in the assertion of unconditional predestination and election, which they assumed to be the correlate of salvation by grace alone. By Beza, the pupil of Calvin, who succeeded him at Geneva, this doctrine was taught in the extreme, or what was called the supra-lapsarian form. Calvin, to say the least, had not uniformly inculcated this phase of the doctrine, according to which the first sin of man is the object of an efficient decree; the salvation of some and the condemnation of others being the supreme end in reference to which all the rest of the divine decrees are subordinate. But this type of doctrine spread extensively in the Reformed or Calvinistic branch of the Protestant Church. The followers of Melancthon adopted the doctrine of conditional predestination, in the room of the Augustinian view, and the Lutherans at length practically acquiesced in the same opinion. In Holland, therefore, where the Lutheran teaching was early introduced, there had been, before the time of Arminius, more or less dissent from

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the Calvinistic dogma. But this dissent first acquired strength through his influence. James Arminius, born at Oudewater, in 1560, was one of the most learned and accomplished theologians of his age. He studied at the University of Leyden, but received his education principally at Geneva, where he was under the instruction of Beza. After travelling in Italy, he returned to his native country, and in 1603 became Professor of Theology at Leyden, and a colleague of Gomarus, a strenuous advocate of the supra-lapsarian theory. This view Arminius had been called upon to defend against the preachers of Delft, who had avowed their adhesion to the milder, or infra-lapsarian form of the doctrine, according to which election has respect to men already fallen into a state of sin. But in the examination of the subject, into which Arminius was thus led, he came to sympathize with the opinion which he was set to oppose, and at length to go beyond it, and reject unconditional election altogether. In short, he gave up what had come to be considered the characteristic dogma of Calvinism. A dispute arose between him and Gomarus, and the debate spread through Holland. Episcopius, the learned successor of Arminius at Leyden, and Uytenbogaert, who had been a fellowpupil of the former at Geneva, became the leaders of the party which the movement of Arminius had called into being. The main peculiarities of their creed were contained in the Remonstrance which gave the name of Remonstrants to the party that was addressed to the states of Holland and West Friesland in 1610. This document embraces five points, namely, Election based on the foreknowledge of faith, universal Atonement, in the room of Atonement made for the elect only, the resistibility of Grace, in connection with the need of Regeneration by the Spirit, and the doubtfulness of the Calvinistic tenet of the perseverance of all believers.

A great political line of division was also run between

the two theological parties. The Arminians were Republicans, and in favor of a closer union of Church and State, or a partial control of the State over the Church. The Calvinists adhered to the house of Orange, and were for the independence of the Church in relation to the State. In the progress of the conflict, Olden Barneveldt was beheaded, and Grotius, the illustrious ornament of the Arminian party, was banished. The Synod of Dort was assembled, in 1616, for the purpose of giving judgment upon this theological controversy. While this Synod declined to give an express sanction to the supra-lapsarian views of Gomarus, it declared its judgment in opposition to the Arminians, on all the characteristic points of their system, and put forth, by way of antithesis, what have been called the five points of high Calvinism: unconditional election; limited atonement (designed for the elect alone); the complete impotency of the fallen will; irresistible grace; and the perseverance of believers. The Arminians introduced into their theology other deviations from the current system. In particular, they modified the accepted doctrine of Original Sin, excluding native guilt in the literal and proper sense of the term; and through the celebrated treatise of Grotius in answer to Socinus, and in the writings of other eminent theologians of the party, they substituted for the Anselmic doctrine of the Atonement what has been termed the governmental view. The Arminian party, from the out

1 Grotius meets the objections of Socinus by denying that atonement or satisfaction is the payment of a debt. The ruler is at liberty to pardon, provided public order is not endangered. The end of punishment is the prevention of future transgressions, or the security of the commonwealth. The death of Christ, in its moral effect, as a means to this end, is equivalent to the legal penalty; since it equally manifests God's hatred of sin. Hence it permits the ruler to pardon, on such conditions as he may judge it wise to impose. The seeds of the Grotian doctrine are in the Scotist theology, which affirmed that the atonement is not intrinsically the equivalent of the penalty, but takes its place by the divine acceptance or consent (acceptilatio); though Grotius, on verbal and technical grounds, repudiates this term. Defensio Fidei Cathol. de Satisfactione Christi adv. F. Socinum (1617). Grotii Opera, iv. 297.