was an exercise of the will combined with the workings of grace. In the tenth chapter of his work against the Manichæans, the bishop of Hippo thus expresses himself: ‘Who is it that will not exclaim, _How foolish it is to deliver precepts to that man who is not at liberty to perform what is commanded! And how unjust it is to condemn him who had not power to fulfil the commands!_ Yet these unhappy persons [the Manichees] do not perceive that they are ascribing such injustice and want of equity to God. But what greater truth is there than this, that God has delivered precepts, and that human spirits have freedom of will?‘ Elsewhere he says, ‘Nothing is more within our power than our own will. The will is that by which we commit sin, and by which we live righteously.’ Nothing can be plainer than that the writer of these passages admitted the liberty of the human will, and the necessity of our own exertions in conjunction with divine grace. How this is to be reconciled with his general doctrine, is perhaps indicated in the following passage from his book _De Gratiâ et lib. Arbitrio, c. 17_. Speaking of grace he says, ‘That we may _will_ God _works_ without us; but when we _will_, and so _will_ as to _do_, he _co-works_ with us; yet unless he either _works_ that we may will, or _co-works_ when we do will, we are utterly incapable of doing any thing in the good works of piety.’” These are but very slight specimens of the mode in which learned and ingenious men have tried to give a kind of symmetrical proportion to this father’s doctrinal system. Several large treatises have been published with the same praiseworthy intention; the pious authors of them either entirely forgetting, or having never read, the rather latitudinarian indulgence of opinion which St. Augustine claims for himself in his “Retractations,” in which he has qualified the harshness of his previous assertions on many subjects. If, however, an estimate may be formed of what this father intended in his various pacifacatory doctrinal explanations from what he has actually admitted and expressed, it may be safely affirmed that no systematic writer of theology seems so completely to have entered into the last and best views of the bishop of Hippo, or so nearly reconciled the apparent discordances in them, as Arminius has done; and few other authors have rendered more ample justice to his sentiments, talents, and character, than the famous Dutch Professor.