into antagonism to the Church of the age, it was in the name of an extreme supralapsarian predestination that he appeared. Gottschalk was rewarded for his zeal by being harassed and vexed to death. Thus his earnest, persecuted life and his high predestinarianism became historically closely associated. Four centuries later Bradwardine revived the fatalistic views of Gottschalk. He escaped persecution only by dying before official attention became fixed upon him. Wiclif took up the views of Bradwardine, and was condemned and persecuted. Huss, whose theology was but an echo of that of Wiclif, was condemned, and his followers were put down by fire and sword. Thus it had become traditional that earnest protests against the practical irreligion of the priesthood were allied with an uncatholic theology. And thus it was a priori almost certain that any future assaults upon the religious abuses of the official Church would be associated with an unorthodox predestinationism. And this merely incidental historical association constituted in fact the mold by which, a century later, the theoretical systems of Luther and Calvin were actually shaped.

Before noticing the peculiar doctrines of Luther and Calvin, it will be well to trace the current of Latin orthodoxy down to its latest utterances on the question before us.

Wimpina (ob. 1531) charged Luther with teaching direct fatalism. To this he opposed the catholic doctrine thus: If even the heathen, (Rom. i, 14,) who have but the "lex naturae,' can by preventing grace ("solo auxilio divino praeventi ") do works "moraliter bona," how much more is this the case with those who have the "lex scripta" and the help of special grace! -"auxilium gratuito movens ! Grace is not irresistible"hominem non cogit ad bene operandum." It simply works with the will" assistat et juvet arbitrium." We are synergists with God: "Dei sumus adjutores, quod alii synergos, id est, cooperatores appellarunt." The "libertas arbitrii" is annulled neither by preventing grace ("generalis influentia ") nor by the grace of special awakening, (" auxilium gratuito voluntatem movens ;") but it is simply helped. The ground of predestination is the foreseen good or bad conduct of the subject. Without grace men cannot turn to God-" non possunt sese praeparare."

The notorious Eck (ob. 1543) pleaded boldly for orthodoxy against the early fatalism of Melanchthon: "Quia omnia de necessitate absoluta eveniunt, nulla est arbitrii libertas." Against this he had but to exclaim: "What need, then, for preces, consilia, praemia virtutum, poenae, leges, statuta! Though we owe to God all that we have, yet this does not exclude the "activitas liberi arbitrii." Though without grace a holy life is impossible, yet the action of grace is not of a physico-dynamic character; it does not force, but it co-operates with the will."

Erasmus (ob. 1536) stood firm against the revival of the errors of Augustine. He held thus: Freedom of will in man in general still exists, otherwise sin would not be sin. Our good lives are the joint products of divine grace and human freedom. Awakening grace is universal; no one is without it.

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The Council of Trent (1546) in its philosophy of regeneration formulated what had been essentially the voice of orthodoxy from the beginning. It held thus: By the fall of Adam all men have so become the servants of sin that they are unable ("non possunt ") by the law of nature to be liberated ("liberari") therefrom. Nevertheless, free-will is not extinct. The beginning of the regenerated life is from the prevenient grace of God. This grace becomes effective by man's freely assenting to and co-operating with it, ("gratiae libere assentiendo et cooperando.") Though man is able to reject grace, yet he is unable by his own free-will ("libera sud voluntate ") to turn to holiness. "If any one saith that man's free-will, moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates toward disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of justification, and that it cannot refuse its consent if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever, and is merely passive: let him be anathema." So reads Canon IV, on Justification. And Canon V is equally explicit: "If any one saith that, since Adam's sin the free-will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name; yea, a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan: let him be anathema." And the unorthodox notion of the physico-dynamic action of grace is thus condemned in Canon XXIII: If any one saith that a man once justified can sin

no more, nor lose grace, and that therefore he that falls and sins was never truly justified, . . . let him be anathema."

In these positions the Council of Trent did but re-affirin that which had been catholic doctrine from the beginning. Its voice on these points is the voice of the whole orthodox Church of the Orient. And, aside from the individualistic novelties of Augustine, it is essentially the voice of the whole series of great theologians of the West. And these definitions are final and authoritative in the whole Latin Church to this day.

Thus it appears that of the 370,000,000 of Christians in the world at the present time nearly three fourths (Schaff gives 190,000,000 of Latins, 80,000,000 of Greeks, and 100,000,000 of Protestants) teach essentially the synergism which has prevailed in the Church catholic from the beginning.

When we now turn to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century we are confronted at once by the curious fact that the three great founders of Protestantism-Luther, Zwinglius, and Calvin-were decidedly uncatholic and unorthodox on the subject of the relation of divine grace to the action of the human will. They all became entangled in a physicodynamic conception of the action of God on the souls of men. From this resulted necessarily the irresistibility of grace: grace being a dynamic, an efficient cause per se, it always produces its intended effect. This led to a partial atonement: Christ did not die for all, otherwise all would be saved; for grace can never be defeated. And this gives rise to the invention of two unscriptural decrees of election and of reprobation. But it was impossible to deny that the Bible proclaims a ready salvation for all men. How is the force of that to be evaded? By the monstrous invention of a dualistic will in God a revealed will which offers salvation to all men, and a secret will which nullifies and defeats the revealed will!

Such was the immense ballast of uncatholic error with which Protestantism was hampered from its very infancy. Why did not the young Church sink under the burden? Simply because these errors are of such a nature that it is impossible practically to believe them. They imply that salvation is exclusively from God, that God saves just whom, and when, and how he pleases, and that all the efforts of man are incapable either of preparing, or hastening, or in any way contributing one iota

thereto. Now, the logical tendency of such a belief would be to paralyze all human effort and concern about our ultimate salvation. But the dogma is so contradictory to our moral consciousness that it cannot be fully believed and acted upon. Its reflex, its indirect, effect is to awaken in us a very strong, trembling desire that "we individually might also be among the happy number of God's elect." Now, this desire itself is already essentially a humble petition for salvation. It is a thirsting for salvation. It is really a very strong virtualization of man's moral autonomy or ethical freedom of will. It is an actual co-operating with that grace which is the congenital heritage of every child of Adam. And this right use of present ability conditions, sooner or later, a richer presence of God in the heart-the normal result of all which is a true, orthodox, catholic, synergistic conversion, such as had been taking place in the Church from the beginning.

Thus the erroneous theories of the young Protestant Church were of such a nature as to be simply hinderances, but not entire barriers, to spiritual reformation. They only retarded, but could not defeat the efforts of good and holy men. Providence uses imperfect instruments. Essentially good movements are often enwrapped in very erroneous speculations. But our healthy intuitional subjectivism will not heed our speculative abstractions, and often arrives at its goal in spite of them.

But that the predestinarian fatalism of the early Reformers was an immense misfortune to the new Church is clearly manifest from two considerations: 1. The cause of God does not need the assistance of theological and anthropological error. And surely the unvarying testimony of orthodox catholicity against an unconditional predestination justifies us in regarding such predestination as an error until it proves itself to be true. 2. The whole history of Protestant theological thought for now three and a half centuries has consisted partly in a vain endeavor to explain unconditional predestination into consistency with our moral intuitions, but chiefly in the work of eliminating and casting it off. Bright names in this great movement of Protestant emancipation and of return to orthodox catholicity are Melanchthon, Arminius, Wesley. The essence of this movement has consisted in simply the self-reassertion of the healthy Christian consciousness.

The final result is, that of the 100,000,000 of Protestants now existing the very large majority have long since found their way back to the simple synergistic doctrine of œcumenical orthodoxy, while with the remnant the Augustinian errors are held more as a matter of official symbolic thralldom than from hearty youthful conviction. They lurk rather in the scholastic seminaries than in the evangelical pulpit.

We conclude, therefore, by the emphatic re-assertion of our thesis, to wit, that the synergism which was taught by Mr. Wesley is an essential of orthodox catholicity, and, by conse quence, that the monergism of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin is an individualistic innovation, destined ultimately to be entirely sloughed off.

ART. II.—IGNATIUS AND HIS EPISTLES.

I. PERSONAL HISTORY.

Of the personal history of Ignatius, as of the personal history of the great majority of the Apostolical Fathers, little is known; and this little cannot be accepted with full faith in its trustworthiness. Tradition relates that he was the child whom Christ placed before his disciples as the model of humility, (Matt. xviii, 2-4; Mark ix, 36;) and as the Saviour took the child in his arms, Ignatius was consequently surnamed Theophorus, "Borne or carried by God."* The chief authority for his personal history is the Martyrium Ignatii, a brief narrative professing to be written by those who accompanied him on his voyage to Rome and witnessed his death. Though its genuineness has been questioned by Daillé (Dallæus) and others, it has been regarded by most scholars as the work of Philo, Agathopus, and perhaps Crocus, whom Ignatius mentions as his traveling companions. Accepting the genuineness and authenticity of the narrative, we learn that Ignatius was bishop of the Church at Antioch at the close of the first and beginning of the

* In the "Martyrdom" (ii) this term is explained as meaning, "He who has Christ within his breast."

Epist. to Smyr., x; to Phila., xi; to Rom., x.