Since the three other Schemes of Doctrine are severally distinguished by the specific names of Calvinism and Arminianism and Nationalism, it will be convenient to give also to the primitive Scheme a descriptive appellation.

Its basis, then, like the basis of Calvinism and Arminianism, being Individuality; and its respect, like the respect of Nationalism, being The Visible Church I have not sufficient skill to frame a more appropriate title of the System, than that of Ecclesiastical Individualism; or of the doctrine, than that of Ecclesiastical Individual Election.

2. Before I enter upon my proposed inquiries, I may be permitted to offer a few remarks upon that Scheme of Doctrine, which, in point both of IDEALITY and of CAUSATION, is strictly the most ancient.

(1.) A System, thus characterised, will naturally have its own conventional phraseology: and, unless the true drift and bearing of the System be known, the phraseology will be very apt to be misunderstood. Accordingly, its really generic language has often erroneously been deemed particular.

the end of the second century, too hastily and too readily acquiesced in the solution of the Alexandrian Clement, which seemed so easily to meet the injurious reflections and thus at once to free them from their difficulties.

Thus acted not St. Paul, when similarly pressed.

Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus?

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ALL, without any individual exceptions, who, agreeably to the good pleasure of the divine will, have been elected into the Church, are generically addressed as Heirs of Glory.

But such language does not import particularly, that EVERY elected individual will infallibly obtain the inheritance. On the contrary, the promises of God must be received, as they are generally or generically set forth in Holy Scripture.

The attainment of everlasting life through the medium of faith and holiness is the object or purpose or intention of Ecclesiastical Individual Election.

Therefore the eternal happiness of ALL generically is viewed as the last link in the chain of electing love because it is so in purpose and intention, though not always individually so in effect and reality.

(2.) While the Gospel was gradually subverting Paganism and eclipsing Judaism, Individual Ecclesiastical Election both might, and in the course of God's providence would, assume the aspect at least of National Ecclesiastical Election: because, when Christianity became the universally adopted religion of a country, what was individual might coincide with what was national. Still, however, in point of IDEALITY, the doctrine of the Primitive Church respected, not nations as such, but individuals as being the accidentally component parts of nations.

Thus, for instance, the early Christians supposed not the Greeks collectively to be an elected nation, as contradistinguished from other nations which were not elected: but they viewed, as the Elect among the Greeks, those individuals, who, obeying the gospel call, had become members of the Church of Christ whether seated at Corinth or at Ephesus or at Colossæ or at Philippi or at Thessalonica.

Hence they esteemed the Catholic Church at large to be the Church of the Election, as comprehending the whole body or people of the Elect gathered individually out of every nation upon the face of the earth *.

(3.) By holding, as they originally held, God's Absolute Sovereignty and Supreme Will to be the impelling CAUSE of Individual Election into the

* I have thought it right to put the case of Individual Election gradually becoming equivalent to National Election: though it may be doubted, whether, in point of fact, any such case has ever yet occurred; whatever it may do under the influence of the yet future predicted millennian period. In strictness of speech, Ecclesiastical Individualism can never merge in Ecclesiastical Nationalism, until we shall behold a nation, every individual member of which has been so universally elected into the Catholic Church of Christ, that not a single person remains without its pale in the character either of an infidel or a heretic. For, since An Election into the sound Catholic Church of Christ constitutes the true and primitive IDEALITY of Scriptural Election: it is obvious, that neither an infidel nor a heretic can be consistently deemed to have been thus elected; or, at least, if, in the first instance, they were thus elected, they plainly must

Church; or, in other words, by making Designed Holiness the CONSEQUENCE, not the CAUSE, of that Election the strictly primitive Christians, according both to the plain declarations and the whole analogy of Scripture, effectually struck at the root of all fancied human merit, and amply secured the vital doctrine of the Necessity of Divine Grace in order first to personal holiness and ultimately to everlasting life.

be viewed as having deliberately and advisedly renounced the privileges of their election. To say, that those, who professedly belong not to the Church, are yet members of the Church of the Election, is a palpable contradiction in terms.

This circumstance, by the way, in itself forms an argument to prove that the Ecclesiastical Nationalism, advocated by Mr. Locke, CANNOT exhibit the true Idea of Scriptural Election.

CHAPTER II.

THE IDEALITY OF ELECTION ACCORDING TO THE

PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

AMONG the Fathers who chronologically preceded Augustine, notices of the doctrine of Election are not so copious as we might have wished. We find them, however, in sufficient abundance to determine the real sentiments of the Primitive Church in regard to, what I am now about to examine, the point of IDEALITY: and, what is of special importance to an inquiry like the present, we find them, not merely in those somewhat later writers who would be said by Mr. Milner to have departed from the original apostolic faith, but also, and that in comparative abundance, in those of the contemporaries and pupils of the Apostles themselves.

That the investigation may be conducted with all possible fairness, I shall begin with simply giving the precise words of the witnesses adduced: and, when that shall have been done, I may then be allowed to subjoin a few remarks of my own.

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I. The writers, whom I shall summon witnesses, are the following: Clement of Rome;