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The doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense had long been the prevailing one in the Reformed Church of the revolted Netherlands, as in those of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Palatinate. No doubt up to the period of the truce a majority had acquiesced in that dogma and its results, although there had always been many preachers to advocate publicly a milder creed.

And when I got outside the religion of Christ, more difficulties than ever made their appearance, and difficulties often of a more appalling character. The doctrine of predestination came back in the shape of fate or necessity. All the great difficulties of theology had ugly likenesses in infidel philosophy. Instead of reaching a region of unsullied light, I got into one of clouds and darkness.

Second: Beg them to set aside, by an act of will, all unsolved problems: such as the problem of the origin of evil, the problem of the Trinity, the problem of the relation of human will and predestination, and so on problems which have been investigated for thousands of years without result ask them to set those problems aside as insoluble.

In his type of theology, he laid much stress on the sovereignty of God, and predestination; and taught a view of the Lord's Supper not so far from that of the old Church as the doctrine of Zwingli, but farther removed from it than was the doctrine of Luther.

The two worthy dominies continued to try to convert sinners by exhaustive arguments on predestination and infant damnation, but strange to say, made little progress.

Calvin's doctrine concerning Predestination, Universal Redemption, the Irresistibility of God's Grace, and of some other knotty points depending upon these; points which many think were not, but by interpreters forced to be, Mr.

Nothing on wheels could be hired at any price, at least, none could be found in an hour's search from one hotel or livery-stable to another. Chip, whose sleepless night and meditated fraud had not left much of the saint in him, swore the whole of Waltham as deep as the grimmest view of predestination would allow.

By degrees the sternness of predestination was mitigated, and it was admitted that in individual life there is an effect due to free-will; that by his voluntary acts man may within certain limits determine his own course. But, so far as nations are concerned, since they can yield no personal accountability to God, they are placed under the control of immutable law.

Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption; and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to the divine will.

It was bad enough for the Advocate to oppose unconditional predestination and the damnation of infants, but to frustrate a magnificent system of privateering on the Spaniards in time of truce was an unpardonable crime.