CALVINISM.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR," Sin,—Your reviewer (p. 420) of Canon Rawlinson's "Isaac and Jacob" has a strange idea of uncompromising Calvinism." He finds it in the statement : " Jacob was loved and Esau hated, while still in Rebekah's womb, because of their foreseen qualities." The shortest answer to this will be found in Calvini Institutio, III., xxii., §§ 1, 11, the first and last see- tions, almost the first and last words, of that chapter. The marginal summary of § 1 reads thus:—"Nonnulli existimant Deum, prout cujusque merita fore praividet, alios eligere, alios reprobare." (These are the adversaries of Calvin's "orthodox doctrine.") The last words of the last (11th) section, referring to the reprobate as well as the elect, are these :—" Admonen- tur homines nihil causse quEerere extra Bjus voluntatem." The second of the (intensely Calvinistic) "Lambeth Articles" expresses the same doctrine :—" Causa movens aut efficiens prEedestinationis ad vitam non est pravisio fidei ant perseve- rantix aut bonorum operum, aut ullius rei gum insit in person is predestinatis, sed cola voluntas beneplaciti Deis' The very name of Calvinism is being forgotten ; but the thing survives. —I am, Sir, &c., [" Calvinism " was certainly used in a very loose way. But "foreknowledge absolute " is very much the same thing as " fixed fate."—En. Spectator.]
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