rable to those of Calvin and Gomarus. By the exertions of
Archbishop Laud, and afterwards, in consequence of the general tendency
of the public mind to doctrines of mildness and comprehension, an
Arminian construction of the English articles on predestination and
free-will was adopted:--it has since prevailed,--and the Arminian creed,
by the number of its secret or open adherents, has insensibly found
admittance into every Protestant church.

[Sidenote: History of Arminianism.]

If we believe the celebrated Jurieu[045], Arminianism even in its
Socinian form, abounded, in less than a century, after the death of
Arminius, in the United Provinces, and among the Hugonots of the
adjacent part of France. By his account, the dispersion of the French
Hugonots, in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
revealed to the terrified reformers of the original school, the alarming
secret of the preponderance of Socinianism in the reformed church. Its
members, according to Jurieu, being no longer under the controul of the
civil power, spread their Socinian principles every where, with the
utmost activity and success: even in England, Jurieu professed to
discover the effect of their exertions. He mentions that in 1698,
thirty-four French refugee ministers residing in London addressed a
letter to the synod, then sitting at Amsterdam, in which they declared,
that Socinianism had spread so rapidly, that, if the ecclesiastical
assemblies supplied no means for checking their growth, or used
palliatives only, the mischief would be incurable.

[Sidenote: CHAP. XII.]

This charge, however, the Arminians have indignantly rejected. A writer
in the _Bibliotheque Germanique_[046] relates, that

"the celebrated Anthony Collins called on M. Le Clerc of Amsterdam:
He was accompanied by some Frenchmen, of the fraternity of those,
who think freely. They expected to find the religious opinions of
Le Clerc in unison with their own, but, they were surprised to find
the strong stand which he made in favour of revelation. He proved
to them, with great strength of argument, the truth of the
Christian religion. Jesus Christ, he told them, was born among the
Jews; still, it was not the Jewish religion which he taught;
neither was it the religion of the Pagan neighbourhood; but, a
religion infinitely superior to both. One sees in it the most
striking marks of divinity. The Christians, who followed, w