the teachings against which they were aimed was great ; and though the specific offense may have ceased, the spirit of the heresy, especially that condemned in the last Article, is alive to-day in America to an extent that makes the writing seem a prophecy. An important-an even gigantic-struggle of the not distant future, not on the part of the State only, but of the Church also, is to be with socialism, under the guise of economics. When false doctrines were introduced into the Church, it was deemed expedient to go more into detail, so as to affirm the true doctrines in opposition to the false.-Dr. T. O. Sum mers. The principle of the Arminian type of doctrine was the universality of the benefit of the atonement and the restored freedom of the human will. The Wesleyan Methodists, however rejected the teaching of the immediate successors of Arminius, who were tinged with Socinianism and rationalism, and "Wesleyans," as Pope says, "were Arminians as opposed to Calvinists, but in no other sense."-Bishop John F. Hurst, "History of Methodism." No dishonoring uncertainty has characterized the Confession of the Church of God from the days of the apostles to the present. Through storm and tumult and change, in the face of skepticism, and despite opposition, with unfaltering utterance she has reiterated the great facts: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son our Lord.”—Bishop Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ." CHAPTER VI. DOCTRINAL INCLUSIONS. NOT a few critics have expressed, in one way or another, the conviction that the Articles of Religion are not as comprehensive of subject-matter, nor as full in detail, as could be wished. To a very limited extent this may be admitted, and I, for one, have favored an inquiry into the supposed lack. Not that I would see effervescent new wine put into old bottles, or modern damask sewed upon ancient cloth of gold; but rather, as has already been explained, that the teachings of our authoritative homilies and manuals might be reduced to a convenient, practical, and flexible writing that could be made to answer seasonably to our advancing theological interpretations. Such a writing, begun and completed without circumstance or betrayal of prophetic consciousness, might, in the course of ripening years, through the law of selection and survival, get fragments of itself into a formulary. What matter if it did not, so it served well its generation? But we must consider even inquiry in this direction as highly experimental, and the question of lack which it suggests as of doubtful point. We should also consider the favorable outcome of this inquiry, even on the basis of our own suggestion, as of no great utility, since we have the same results in other forms. As one |