the race was in danger of extirpation. The title of this work was A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indians. His efforts were not altogether fruitless, for he obtained a new set of regulations for the treatment and government of the Indians. He was now made bishop of Chiapa, and in 1544 returned to America. But he did not continue long there, for in 1551 he returned again to Spain, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died at Madrid in 1556, in the 92d year of his age. This brief account deserves to be inserted here, because Las Casas was in his day connected both with slavery and colonization. We have said nothing respecting Judge Wilkeson's History. It is doubtless drawn from the most authentic sources, and contains information greatly needed by many of the friends of Colonization, who have remained ignorant of the origin, progress, and present condition of this interesting enterprise. The only fault which we have to find with this work is, that it enters too little into detail, and is more like a table of contents than a history. It seems to have been suddenly produced to meet the urgent demand for information, which is heard from all quarters. But a "History of African Colonization" is still a desideratum; and from our knowledge of the facts, we are persuaded that there are materials for filling an octavo volume, and that the incidents are of such a character as could not but create a deep and lively interest in every philanthropic bosom. But until this is done, Judge Wilkeson's performance will serve an excellent purpose, by furnishing immediate information. ART. III. Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche. Von Dr. August Neander. Vierter Band. Achter Theil des ganzen Werks, Hamburg, bei Friedrich Perthes, 1836. Svo. pp. 506. THIS is what would be called in England or America the eighth volume of Neander's great work, though, from the peculiar manner in which they manage these things in Germany, it is numbered only as the fourth. The period to which it is devoted falls between the death of Charlemagne and Pope Gregory the Seventh, or from 814 to 1073. We are constrained to say that this is a tract of ecclesiastical story which less awakens our sympathies, and less displays the genius of the author, than any which he has yet treated. Instead, therefore, of seeking to characterize the volume, we shall single out a particular portion of it, relating to a subject never without its interest in the Presbyterian Church, and which it is useful to have brought before us by one as little favourable to the Calvinistic tenets as Neander; we refer to the controversy respecting predestination, which took place during the ninth century. Without confining ourselves to the language of the author, which is often awkward and circumlocutory in no common degree, we shall endeavour to be scrupulous reporters of his opinions; premising that in many respects they are very different from our own. The almost constant battling about the true meaning of the scripture, in regard to predestination, had resulted in a triumph of the Augustinian doctrine of grace over Semipelagianism; yet the question of predestination was still unsettled. For though the recognition of Augustine, as an orthodox teacher, was almost universal, and though his theory of all-working grace was commonly received, there were some who stumbled at the naked and fearful avowal of unmitigated predestination. Not, indeed, that such avowed dissent from the doctrine of this father, or gave that place to free will, in relation to divine grace, with which we are familiar in later days. Such was the influence of Augustine on the mind and thinking of the age, and such the universal sympathy of Christian experience with the doctrine of grace, that it would have been regarded as putting these in peril to attribute any thing conditional to the free will of the creature. The truth is, however, they viewed the Augustinian system more on its practical than its speculative side, and were more concerned with the doctrine of grace than with that of predestination and reprobation; and the tenet was set forth in that mild form which appears in the work de Vocatione Gentium. Both schemes, the rigorous and the mild, were handed down together. The age, if Neander errs not, was unused to the unfolding of subtile webs of thought, unpractised in acute and distinguishing thought, and given to a flow of rhetorical verbosity; hence it was easy for them to be misled by resemblances, and to mistake verbal for real distinctions. For the same reason, one who had derived all Neander's Hist. vol. ii. p. 897. his theological prepossessions from the school of Augustine might readily see in milder forms of expressing the doctrines of grace, a departure from them towards Pelagianism; and could scarcely escape giving offence to many by the uncompromising roughness of his expressions. Such a man, says Neander, was the monk Gottschalk, or Gotteschalcus, with whom began the predestinarian controversy in the ninth century. Gotteschalcus was descended from a Saxon family, and was placed by his parents, at an early age, in the monastery of Fulda, as an oblatus, or one set apart to the monastic life. Here he pursued the ordinary course of study, and formed at close alliance with the afterwards celebrated Walafrid Strabo. But he sighed to be released from these bonds, and, in 829, received from the council at Mayence a dispensation from his ties to the monastery. In seeking this dispensation, he was zealously, though ineffectually opposed by the abbot of Fulda, Rabanus Maurus. It is not unlikely that this had some connexion with their subsequent conflicts. Gotteschalcus, upon leaving this monastery, went to another called Orbais, in the diocese of Soissons, in France. Here he studied, with great zeal, the works of Augustine, and other theologians of the same school. The doctrine of absolute predestination became inwrought into his Christian life, and in his mind was inseparably connected with the idea of God, and the unchangeableness of the divine will. He employed himself chiefly with dogmatic and speculative questions. In connexion with these, he received from his friend, the abbot Servatus Lupus, some very wholesome advice. "Let us expatiate," said he, in one of his letters, "in the open field of scripture, and devote ourselves wholly to meditation upon them, seeking the face of God, humbly, piously, and forever. The clemency of God, in condescension to our weakness, while we attempt not things which are too high for us, will raise us to higher and nobler views, and reveal himself to our purged faculties." In the system of Gotteschalcus the idea of predestination regards not merely the elect, but the reprobate. He recognised a predestinatio duplex, agreeably to which the former are predestined to everlasting life, and the latter foreordained to everlasting death. He held this doctrine to be important for vindicating the unchangeableness and independency of the divine decrees, which, but for this, would seem to depend on events occurring in time. In regard to the works of God, to foresee and to foreordain are one, as God's knowledge, like his will, is creative. And here, according to Neander, Gotteschalcus departed from the mode of expression which was usual in the school of Augustine, where it was common to distinguish between the praesciti, or reprobate, and the praedestinati, or elect: no doubt with the intention of removing from God all causality in regard to sin. Yet Augustine did not always avail himself of this distinction, and the idea of a twofold predestination had already been presented by Fulgentius of Ruspa, and Isidore of Seville.t There would, in the opinion of our historian, be no essential difference between the schemes of Gotteschalcus and Augustine, unless the former should be understood, in his zeal for the consistency of his theory of absolute predestinaiion, as mounting beyond the fact of the first sin, and regardtng the sin of Adam as conditioned not by his own free will, but by the necessary accomplishment of an absolute purpose of God, which predetermined the whole history of our race, and this event in particular. Neander here assumes the incompatibility of free action with an absolute decree. Laying together the positions that prescience and predestination are identical-and that all foresight of God is creative-Neander concludes that Gotteschalcus made no distinction between willing, creating, and permitting, on the part of God, and that his views were identical with those of the school since called Supralapsarian. Where he speaks of these points, however, he expressly limits himself to the relation of God to his own works, and denies that sin is one of the works of God. "Sempiterna cum praescientia voluntas tua de operibus duntaxat tuis, Deum praescisse ac praedestinasse simul et semel tam cuncta quam singula opera sua." He nowise refers the predestination of God to evil, but only to good; his prescience to both. "Credo atque confiteor, praescisse te ante saecula quaecunque erant futura sive bona sive mala, praedestinasse tantummodo bona." He further divides the good, which is the object of predestination, into the blessings of grace and the awards of justice, gratiae beneficia et justitiae judicia. Here, with Augustine, he proceeds upon the supposition, that the evil spirits fell by the lapse of their * Apud Omnipotentiam idem praescire quod velle. free will, and that the whole human race sinned in Adam, and partook of his guilt.* In the year 847, as Gottschalk, in returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, tarried at a hospitium, or house of entertainment for pilgrims, founded by Count Eberhard of Friuli, he met with Notting, then newly chosen bishop of Verona, to whom he made known his doctrine of twofold predestination. Shortly after, this prelate, at the court of the emperor Louis. the Debonnaire, fell in with Rabanus Maurus, who had recently become archbishop of Mayence, and acquainted him with the doctrine. It was highly offensive to the archbishop, who promised to oppose it in writing. Accordingly he composed two works, directing one to Notting of Verona, and the other to Count Eberhard. In these he manifested great warmth against Gotteschalcus, and pursued the opinions of the latter to remote and repulsive consequences, so as to justify the suspicion that he had not forgotten their former differences. It is not to be denied however that he may have been actuated by regard for true religion; and he was evidently the more hurt by the boldness of Gottschalk's positions, inasmuch as his own system forced him rather to conceal than to avoid the same odious consequences. He charged Gotteschalcus with the opinion, that the divine predestination so constrains every man, that even if he should desire to attain salvation, and seek it by true faith and good works, he would labour in vain, unless he were foreordained to eternal life. Gotteschalcus, as a man alive to the interests of morality, was far from admitting any such consequence. He unquestionably treated that grace, whereby man is converted and sanctified, as the operation in which the divine purpose of predestination reveals itself in regard to men. He was also, says Neander, far from teaching, as Rabanus alleged, a predestination of men to evil as well as good. As it regards the scheme of Rabanus himself, he considered the decree of God concerning the wicked, as conditioned by his prescience; not making this absolute like the decree of predestination. The distinction, therefore, between the praesciti and the praedestinati was in his view of great practical moment. His expression was that God had foreordained eternal punishment to those whom he foresaw as wicked, but not that he had foreordained these to eternal The words of Neander are remarkable: "dass das ganze Menschengechlecht in Adam gesündigt und an seiner Schuld Theil genommen." |