that God has from all eternity decreed whatever comes to pass.  Thus, after the lapse of many ages, were again emerging into prominence the ideas of the Basilidians wad Valentinians, Christian sects of the second century, whose Gnostical views led to the engraftment of the great doctrine of the Trinity upon Christianity.  They asserted that all the actions of men are necessary, that even faith is a natural gift, to which men are forcibly determined, and must therefore be saved, though their lives be ever so irregular.  From the Supreme God all things proceeded.  Thus, also, came into prominence the views which were developed by Augustine in his work, “De dono perseverantiae.”  These were:  that God, by his arbitrary will, has selected certain persons without respect to foreseen faith or good works, and has infallibly ordained to bestow upon them eternal happiness; other persons, in like manner, he has condemned to eternal reprobation.  The Sublapsarians believed that “God permitted the fall of Adam;” the Supralapsarians that “he predestinated it, with all its pernicious consequences, from all eternity, and that our first parents had no liberty from the beginning.”  In this, these sectarians disregarded the remark of St. Augustine:  “Nefas est dicere Deum aliquid nisi bonum predestinare.”

Is it true, then, that “predestination to eternal happiness is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, he hath constantly decreed by his council, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen out of mankind?” Is it true that of the human family there are some who, in view of no fault of their own, Almighty God has condemned to unending torture, eternal misery?

In 1595 the Lambeth Articles asserted that “God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto life; certain he hath reprobated.”  In 1618 the Synod of Dort decided in favor of this view.  It condemned the remonstrants against it, and treated them with such severity, that many of them had to flee to foreign countries.  Even in the Church of England, as is manifested by its seventeenth Article of Faith, these doctrines have found favor.

Probably there was no point which brought down from the Catholics on the Protestants severer condemnation than this, their partial acceptance of the government of the world by law.  In all Reformed Europe miracles ceased.  But, with the cessation of shrine-cure, relic-cure, great pecuniary profits ended.  Indeed, as is well known, it was the sale of indulgences that provoked the Reformation—­indulgences which are essentially a permit from God for the practice of sin, conditioned on the payment of a certain sum of money to the priest.

Philosophically, the Reformation implied a protest against the Catholic doctrine of incessant divine intervention in human affairs, invoked by sacerdotal agency; but this protest was far from being fully made by all the Reforming Churches.  The evidence in behalf of government by law, which has of late years been offered by science, is received by many of them with suspicion, perhaps with dislike; sentiments which, however, must eventually give way before the hourly-increasing weight of evidence.