[82] Liturgy of the New Church Office of Baptism, p. 58.
[84] “Jesus the Fountain of Life and Light,” p. 12.
[85] In some places it is not till the end of a fortnight.
[87a] Examination of the opinions of the Plymouth Brethren.
[87b] The following is a sample from one of their published works: “The first eclogue of Virgil has always appeared to me to express most felicitously the pleasures of a pastoral life as we too frequently see it in these days. With what force the following lines describe the grateful feeling of a young clergyman, who is recounting the benefits conferred on him by his patron:
O Melibœe, Deus nobis hæc otia fecit.
Namque erit ille mihi semper Deus—
Ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum
Ludere, qæe vellem, calamo permisit agresti.
My patron shall always be a divinity to me, for he put me into this life of ease when he gave me this gem, the prettiest living in England. He gave me this easy duty, so that I can let my flock wander wheresoever it may please them, as you see they do; while I myself do just what 1 like, and occasionally amuse myself with a pianoforte by Stoddart, that cost eighty-five guineas.”
“He (the congregational minister) is now, in his own opinion, the one man of the whole body of believers in all the services of the sanctuary. He utters all their sentiments of faith and doctrine, and offers up all their prayers! How can he justify the position he has assumed as an usurper? yea as a grievous wolf! in that he has swallowed up all the gifts of the Holy Ghost in the voracity of his selfishness,” &c. It is not thus that the “unity of the church,” which they profess to desire is likely to be cemented.
[90] Bishop Jewel, in his “Defence of his apology for the Church of England,” says, that “the term Calvinist was in the first instance applied to the Reformers and the English Protestants as a matter of reproach by the Church of Rome.”
[91] Whatever difference may have subsisted between Luther and Calvin on the subject of Divine decrees, no language can be stronger than that in which Luther insists upon the moral impotence of man’s depraved nature in opposition to the Pelagian doctrine of freewill.