of his gentleness, and for Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the same in writing; and we, upon our honour and fidelity, by God's grace do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from His Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss.'

are its

A teachable spirit has not always thus accompanied the formulation of Creeds. The more ordinary style has been, 'Such is the dogma given by Divine authority; and we prophets. Anathema to those who dissent!' Switzerland and Scotland showed a more excellent way; and we shall soon have the happiness of pointing to others who have followed their bright example.

The whole course of procedure in regard to national Articles of Religion had been based upon the assumption, which few in that age ventured to contradict, that the nation formed a religious unity, and must be governed by one Creed as surely as, in secular matters, it was bound to obey one Law. As Richard Hooker put the theory with marvellous clearness, near the close of the Elizabethan period, the National Church was simply the Nation from a religious point of view.

The same persons constituted Church and Commonwealth, and the authorised rulers must legislate for them in both capacities. With our modern modes of thought we can hardly apprehend what in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a recognised first principle. Between our conception of the Church or Churches in a nation, and that of the Church of a nation, a whole world of difference lies. Collectivism in religious matters was the law; individualism was contumacy and rebellion; and diversity of opinion was no more to be tolerated. than disloyalty and rebellion in the State.

Yet meanwhile there were growing and notable exceptions. Puritanism by degrees became a power in England, and could not but lead to separatism also. Not only was Presbyterianism a rapidly increasing influence even within the pale of the Establishment, but from time to time. we have glimpses of little companies of Christian people who bravely detached themselves, regardless of consequences, from the ecclesiastical system, uttering protests which often brought upon them bitter persecution, and in some cases the crown of martyrdom. To these Confessors of the faith, in Queen Elizabeth's time, belonged Barrow, Green

wood, and John Penry; while the anonymous Martin Marprelate Tracts caustically maintained the same dissent. Robert Browne, a clergyman of some note, wrote and preached in the latter part of the reign, from a strongly Puritan standpoint, against the National Church, and was imprisoned, he tells us, thirty-two times, being also exiled, and finding a refuge in Holland, long the home of expatriated dissidents. From him the early Independents were for a time known as Brownists; but as Browne in the end conformed to the Establishment, and lapsed into idle and dissolute ways, they afterwards disowned the name. Our concern with these personages and events is limited at present to the Confessions which at intervals emanated from the Puritan separatists; and in 1578 we find a somewhat elaborate statement of belief by the learned Henry Ainsworth, leader of a company exiled to Holland for their faith. The Confession is in forty-five Articles regarding doctrine and discipline; and while emphatically Protestant and Evangelical, it contains a statement of Congregational principles, the clearness and precision of which could hardly be surpassed in our own day.

Another declaration, equally interesting, was made, also in Holland, by forty-two persons, men and women, exiled on the charge of Anabaptism. This document deserves our special notice as the earliest extant Baptist Confession of Faith in post-Reformation times. It is dated from Amsterdam, in 1611, the year in which the Authorised Version of the English Bible was published, and contains twenty-eight Articles, at the close of which the forty-two signatures are followed by a sentence reminding us of what we have noted in the Scottish Confession of 1560: 'We subscribe to the truth of these Articles, desiring further instruction.'

This Baptist Confession is additionally remarkable in its departure from Calvinistic dogmas. Up to this time the Puritans in Great Britain, following the Reformed Church in Germany and Switzerland, had adhered to the doctrines of Calvin and Bucer; but Arminius (or Hermann) had been teaching in Amsterdam; his followers, termed for a while Remonstrants, from the Remonstrance delivered by them to the States of Holland, had become very numerous, and these exiled English Baptists had been largely influenced

by them, while holding fast by the essentials of Evangelical Christianity. They were, in fact, the forerunners of the General Baptists of modern times.

The Article (II) concerning the Church is worth transcribing :

That though in respect of Christ the Church be one, yet it consisteth of divers particular Congregations, even so many as there shall be in the world; every of which Congregations, though they be but two or three, have Christ given them, with all the means of their salvation; are the body of Christ and a whole Church, and therefore may, and ought when they come together, to pray, prophesy, break bread, and administer in all the holy ordinances, although as yet they have no officers, or that their officers should be in prison, sick, or by any means hindered from the Church.

The growth of Arminianism was, it need hardly be said, regarded with much uneasiness by the leaders of the Reformed Church. It was time— so it seemed to them—to reopen the discussion of those questions which have occupied metaphysical speculators ever since philosophy began, and which have derived their chief interest from religious thought. A Synod of divines was therefore convened at Dordrecht, or Dort, in Holland, in 1619; certain English theologians attending as