Anti-Calvinistic zeal, however, often took an anti-Puritanical form, and by assaults which were made upon predestinarian principles, the interests of evangelical religion were very seriously compromised.
“FUR PRÆDESTINATUS.”
A Latin tract, entitled Fur Prædestinatus, made some noise at the time of its publication, and has received the commendation of literary and theological critics. The Fur Prædestinatus was printed in London in 1651. D’Oyley, simply on the ground of general rumour, ascribes the tract to Sancroft, and prints it in his life. Hallam accepts the rumour, adding, “It is much the best proof of ability that the worthy Archbishop ever gave.” Birch says, in his Memoirs of Tillotson, that Sancroft joined with Mr. George Davenport, and another of his friends, in composing this satire upon Calvinism. But Jackson, in his Life of John Goodwin, affirms that the tract was in existence many years before Sancroft was capable of such a production. He adds, it was circulated in Holland, at the early part of the seventeenth century, and was thought to have been written by Henry Slatius. It is a dialogue between a condemned thief and a Calvinistic minister, in which it is attempted to be shown, that not only the doctrine of predestination but also the doctrine of justification by faith is marked by an immoral tendency, and several quotations from Luther and Zwingle, as well as from Calvin, Beza, and others, are pressed into the service. It exhibits, no doubt, some cleverness, and from the narrow view of the Atonement which is introduced, as held by some distinguished evangelical Divines, consequences are drawn which it would be difficult logically to repel. Yet most persons will acknowledge, that conducting controversy, dialogue fashion, is more easy for an author than it is satisfactory to a reader; and that, in this controversy especially, allusions to all sorts of authors can with ease be unfairly brought together, so as to impart a specious appearance to allegations which on a thorough scrutiny are found to be perfectly untrue. Certainly, Luther and Calvin never dreamt of entertaining such views as are put into the lips of the criminal and of his spiritual adviser—and they would have crushed, with a force of logic too much for a stronger man than the writer now under review, whoever he might be, the sophisms which are employed in the Fur Prædestinatus, to the discredit of that which Reformers held to be the scriptural doctrines of Divine grace.
Two eminent Puritans remain for consideration, and they may be regarded as maintaining an intermediate position between High Calvinists and Evangelical Arminians.
CHAPTER XX.
BAXTER.
Few persons could have been subjected in early life to a greater variety of influence than Richard Baxter. His father having been a gambler, became, before the birth of his illustrious son, a pious man, and trained up his offspring in godly discipline. Whilst over his home a religious atmosphere diffused itself, the people in the village spent the greater part of most Sundays in dancing round the Maypole. After four successive curates of worthless character, there followed a grave and eminent man who expected to be made a Bishop. Having been placed under each of them at school, Richard afterwards had for his tutor a Royalist chaplain, who did all in his power to make the youth hate Puritanism. Baxter’s religious impressions were deepened by reading the works of a Jesuit, which an evangelical Protestant had revised, and by the perusal of evangelical books from the pens of Sibbs and Perkins. The youth’s first associations in life were with the Episcopal Church, and he was then a Conformist in practice and principle. He studied Richard Hooker, and did not come in contact with Nonconformists, until just before he attained his majority. He spent, as a young man, a month at Whitehall, with the chance of becoming a courtier. Accident brought him within an inch of the grave, and he suffered so much from illness, that at twenty he had the symptoms of fourscore. No classic, no mathematician, he plunged into the study of logic and metaphysics, and soon formed an intimate acquaintance with Aquinas and Scotus, Durandus and Ockham. He had omnivorous habits of reading, and it is curious to notice the variety of authors whom he cites or enumerates. He was a self-taught man, and when Anthony Wood inquired of him by letter, whether he had been educated at Oxford, Baxter replied, “As to myself, my faults are no disgrace to any University, for I was of none: I have little but what I had out of books, and inconsiderable helps of country tutors. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to die: that set me on studying how to live; and that set me on studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my motives and comforts; and beginning with necessaries, I proceeded to the lesser integrals by degrees, and now am going to see that which I have lived and studied for.”[535]
By bearing in mind these remarkable facts, we shall be assisted in accounting for some peculiarities of opinions in this remarkable man. There was a manifold character in his theology corresponding with the manifold influences which moulded his religion, and we may trace the effects of his education in both the excellencies and defects of his numerous writings. In a literary point of view, they are strikingly different from those of Thomas Goodwin and John Owen. He is, in his doctrinal discussions, often as tedious as they, and sometimes more provoking with his endless distinctions, but, in the practical application of his theological principles, he exerts a charm which neither of those contemporaries could ever rival. His masculine style, just the outgrowth of his thought, just the natural skin, pure and transparent, which covers it, has been the admiration of popular readers and practised critics. It has been praised by Addison and Johnson; it has been felt and appreciated by thousands of unlettered people. We detect in Baxter, no rhetorical tricks, no striving to shine for the sake of shining, no waving of the scarlet flag, no “taking out his vocabulary for an airing:” and yet for fullness of expression, for a rich flow of words, for occasional felicity of diction, for poetry in prose, he surpasses all his compeers, except Jeremy Taylor: and in directness, force, and genuine fervour, as to a glowing heat of the affections, which is more intense than the eloquence of the imagination, as to words which come rolling out like balls of white fire, the great Church orator must give place to the Nonconformist Divine. If immense popularity, if the possession of a spell which can hold fast minds of all orders, be a test of genius, then Baxter must be allowed to have possessed it in a high degree. In activity of thought and in keenness of perception, in the grasp of his knowledge and in the retentiveness of his memory, in dialectic skill and in logical fencing, Baxter is acknowledged to have had no superior, if any equal, in his own day, and he would have been worthy of a lot amongst the mediæval schoolmen, to whose list of doctors his might have added another characteristic name. But such qualities have their disadvantages. In this instance, they led their possessor to travel over such an immense field of inquiry, to meddle with so many topics, to dispute with so many men, to make so many distinctions without any difference, at least such as less acute minds can discern, that it is difficult to gather together and harmonize his opinions, and to say on certain points what he believed, and what he did not. It is easy for a man of one-sided views to be consistent; but who that loves truth for the truth’s sake, and wishes to see as much of it as is possible in this world of imperfect knowledge, will value consistency of that kind? Baxter was not one-sided, but strove to look at every subject on its many sides, if it has many; and to reconcile aspects of truth which to hasty and prejudiced thinkers seem contradictory. Hence he has given occasion to the charge of inconsistency. His opinions have been a battle-ground for critics ever since he left the world; and in this respect he has attained a position honourable in one point of view, dubious in another—like that of Origen. A great thinker, a great debater, an eloquent expounder of his own convictions, he has been pronounced a heretic by some members of his own Church, and his orthodoxy has been endorsed by members of Churches not his own. It is a curious illustration of the difficulty of deciding what were Baxter’s sentiments on some intricate subjects, that his most copious and intelligent biographer should first say, that he was neither a Calvinist, nor an Arminian—should next assert his claims to be considered a faithful follower of the Synod of Dort,—and should finally pronounce this verdict: “Baxter was probably such an Arminian as Richard Watson, and as much a Calvinist as the late Dr. Edward Williams.”
BAXTER.
After such a verdict, I cannot hope successfully to thread the mazes of Baxter’s theology. Yet there are a few conclusions which appear to me undeniable. He took a Calvinistic view of the Divine decrees. Several passages, probably, might be found in his writings apparently inconsistent with the Genevan doctrine, but what convinces me that he held it substantially, is not so much his confession, that he accepted the decisions of the Synod of Dort (upon which his biographer just mentioned insists), for Baxter sometimes interpreted statements after a manner of his own,—as the fact that in his treatise On Conversion, when dealing with such as say, “Those that God will save shall be saved, whatsoever they be, and those that He will damn, shall be damned,”—instead of cutting the matter short, as an Arminian would do, by denying the Calvinistic dogma altogether, our Divine goes on to guard against the abuses of that dogma; and to argue that people should act in relation to the decrees of Grace, as they do respecting the decrees of Providence. He finishes by saying just what Calvinists say,—“God hath not ordinarily decreed the end without the means, and if you will neglect the means of salvation it is a certain mark that God hath not decreed you to salvation.”[536]