This spirit has not indeed manifested itself in the article
of the Trinity, since Waterland gave the deathblow to Arianism, and so
left no alternative to the Clergy, but the actual divinity or mere
humanity of our Lord; and the latter would be too impudent an avowal for
a public reader of our Church Liturgy: but in the articles of original
sin, the necessity of regeneration, the necessity of redemption in order
to the possibility of regeneration, of justification by faith, and of
prevenient and auxiliary grace,--all I can say with sincerity is, that
our orthodoxy seems so far in an improving state, that I can hope for
the time when Churchmen will use the term Arminianism to express a habit
of belief opposed not to Calvinism, or the works of Calvin, but to the
Articles of our own Church, and to the doctrine in which all the first
Reformers agreed.
Note--that by Latitudinarianism, I do not mean the particular tenets of
the divines so called, such as Dr. H. More, Cudworth and their compeers,
relative to toleration, comprehension, and the general belief that in
the greater number of points then most controverted, the pious of all
parties were far more nearly of the same mind than their own
imperfections, and the imperfection of language allowed them to see: I
mean the disposition to explain away the articles of the Church on the
pretext of their inconsistency with right reason;--when in fact it was
only an incongruity with a wrong understanding, the faculty which St.
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