literal sense in which it is taken by one religious school now, it appears morally impossible that St. Augustine's doctrine of predestination should have been overlooked by the Church. If their account of baptismal regeneration is true, St. Augustine's doctrine of predestination was in plain and palpable contradiction to a fundamental doctrine of the faith. Then

it must have brought down summary condemnation upon him, as a manifest heretic, and one as audacious and presumptuous as the Church had yet seen. The theological career of St. Augustine is indeed a perfect prodigy of heresy, upon their rationale. How could such a subverter of the faith have been tolerated? How could he have been allowed to speak? How was it that his mouth was not stopped instantaneously? But he was not only tolerated, but admired and deferred to. I do not say that this was for his doctrine of predestination, but only that it was not prevented by it; that that doctrine was not regarded as heretical, and did not deprive him of universal respect and commanding authority.

And here I would willingly stop, but I can hardly avoid, before concluding this Preface, making some allusion to an event intimately connected with the subject of this treatise, I mean the Gorham judgment.

The baptismal controversy has slept now for some time in our Church, and the feelings excited by that judgment have in a considerable measure subsided. So far so good. But the controversy still sleeps, rather than is dead. A large portion of the clergy protested strongly against that judgment at the time, and as no sign of any change of opinion on that side of the church has appeared, that I am aware of, in the interval; I must presume that the same portion of the clergy protests now, though the continuance of the protest may be quiet and silent. Indeed, it is sufficiently evident that, while more than one Bishop openly rejects that judgment, a large

number of the clergy regard it as an incubus on the Church, from which they vaguely hope she may one day be relieved; though if they fairly examined their own minds they would find that they entertained themselves no real expectation that she ever would be. For do they think that the clergy themselves, were they polled, would be in favour of a reversal? Do they think Convocation would be? They know the contrary too well. They know that a large section of the clergy agree in this judgment, and that another section would maintain it for the sake of those clergy who agreed with it, and who would feel themselves burdened in conscience by the imposition of that interpretation of the baptismal formula from which that judgment gave relief, and many of them, perhaps, bound in conscience to leave the Church in consequence. They know that under these circumstances a reversal of the Gorham judgment would produce a disturbance and convulsion of the Church, of which no one could foresee the consequences; and that clergy and laity, Convocation, and Parliament, would be alike opposed to a step which would bring on such a catastrophe. Thus, protesting against a judgment which they know never can, and never will be, upset, they quiet their minds, some by the sensible argument that all Churches have their blots; some by an argument not so sensible, that the Gorham judgment is not the judgment of the Church; and some by thinking as little about it as they can. It is indeed most unreasonable to speak of the Gorham judgment as if it were the judgment of the Committee of Privy Council, as distinguished from being the judgment of the Church; because it is evidently the opinion in favour of it within the Church, and among the clergy themselves, which supports, maintains, and establishes it. But on whatever grounds the protesting party may submit to the fact, it cannot be regarded but as a serious thing that a

large number of clergy, headed by Bishops, and by other persons of great weight and distinction, should be in opposition to a decision on so important and even fundamental an article of Christian doctrine as that of baptismal regeneration is considered by many to be. Under these circumstances, then, if the Gorham judgment really rests on a solid theological basis, it cannot be otherwise than opportune to show it ; for while it still continues to be a large source of uneasiness, we are now sufficiently removed from the excitement and heat of the late controversy to be able to give an argument on the subject a calm and impartial hearing.

If the conclusion, then, at which this treatise arrives, is true, the judgment of the Committee of Privy Council in the Gorham case is correct; for that judgment only pronounces to be allowable an interpretation of the baptismal office which is here maintained to be the right one. The judges in the Gorham case, indeed, neither were, nor professed to be, theologians. But they brought to the consideration of the question before them qualities and attainments eminently calculated for dealing with it; strong sense, and a knowledge of language a practised estimate of the force and value of statements, phrases, expressions, and forms of speech. I do not say that such capacities and attainments were qualifications of themselves for judging on all theological questions; but on that particular one it appears to me that they went a long way in so qualifying; because the question at issue in the Gorham case was one of language,—a question respecting the force and value of a particular statement in our baptismal office, and whether, on the whole, and under all the circumstances, it did not admit of a particular construction which was objected to. Men of such practised acquaintance with language, knew that language abounded in statements and forms of speech which were not to be taken literally. They

saw, therefore, the untenableness of the imperative demand for the literal interpretation of the statement in the baptismal office, when common usage everywhere sanctioned the hypothetical kind of assertion, and our own Prayer Book contained undoubted examples of it. But the case of the movers against Mr. Gorham, resting as it did entirely on the general claim for literal interpretation, fell when that ground was disallowed.

The position which those who brought on the Gorham contest defended and maintained in that contest, was this, that it was necessary to believe that God conferred upon all baptized persons a certain grace or spiritual power sufficient to enable them to attain salvation; which grace was called regeneration, or a new nature. Now here were two serious mistakes.

1. It was a serious mistake to assert that it was necessary to believe that God gave all Christians this sufficient grace in baptism; because it is not necessary to believe that God gives all Christians this sufficient grace at all. This latter or general position was assumed in the special one relating to baptism: but this general position is altogether untrue. I mean that it is necessary as an article of faith to hold this. The Church has left this an open question, by her toleration of predestinarianism.

Here, then, was an error of philosophy and theology. It has indeed been a fault of the High Church party in the English Church, from the first, that they have been too hard upon, and have not sufficiently entered into and appreciated, the grounds and reasons of predestinarianism. The Caroline divines show this defect, in the shape of a certain Arminian taint; and their successors among us still show something of their over-bias and exclusiveness on this question. The predestinarian position is treated as a simply fanciful and gratuitous creation; and not at all as a system which has

true and real grounds, as far as they go, for its conclusions. It is forgotten that predestination is but the other side of the truth to free-will, and that the arguments for it, both in philosophy and religion, are just as strong, as cogent, and as certain, as those for free-will. The High Church party has put aside these considerations as metaphysical; and it has suffered for its neglect of an important department of thought, in a theology confined and exclusive on an important subject. It has maintained a narrow and superficial doctrine of freewill, not deepened by the perception of difficulties, or enlarged by sympathy with opposite truth.

Thus over-biassed, then, and too inaccessible to the reasons and arguments for predestinarianism, these persons naturally imagined that the position of the Church Catholic, on this point, was as exclusive as their own. They were not aware, consequently, that the Church Catholic had, with a wisdom superior to that of religious parties, tolerated even rigid predestinarianism, and allowed it a recognised and even honourable place as a school, within her comprehensive system. They did not apparently know that a Father whose name they specially revered, and to whose authority they were constantly appealing, had devoted his principal energies, religious and intellectual alike, to the disproof of the notion that God gave all Christians sufficient grace to attain salvation; and to the establishment of the contrary position that God gave only this amount of grace to a certain number of souls, whom He had from all eternity chosen to be the recipients of it. Thus, unacquainted with the line of the Church Catholic, and with the language of their own favourite Father on this subject, they assumed, as necessary to be believed, that which the Church has always allowed to be contradicted, and that which St. Augustine did contradict. They assumed it, as if proof were unnecessary, and the matter were one of common