The reader fortunate enough to be wholly unread in controversial divinity, will yet probably not have escaped hearing of the utterly interminable disputes on justification, free-will, election, faith, good works, prevenient grace, original sin, absolute decrees, and predestination, which, with much of evil, and as yet little good consequence, have occupied the most acute intellects, and most learning-stored brains of Europe for the last three centuries. Without any accurate knowledge of the manner in which the doctrines represented by these familiar terms are dependent on, and necessitated by each other, and of the precise points on which the opposing creeds have fought this eternal battle, he will be aware that the system popularly known as Calvinism, represents the side of the question taken by the reformers of the sixteenth century, while the opposite theory of justification by good works was that held by the orthodox Catholic Church, or unreforming party. And with merely these general ideas to guide him, it will appear strangely unaccountable to find all the best, noblest and purest minds adopting a system which in its simplest logical development inevitably leads to the most debasing demonolatry, and lays the axe to the root of all morality and noble action; while the corrupt, the worldly, the ambitious, the unspiritual, the unintellectual natures that formed the dominant party, held the opposite opinion apparently so favourable to virtue. [Sidenote: JUSTIFICATION.] An explanation of this phenomenon by a partisan of either school would probably be long and somewhat intricate. But the matter becomes intelligible enough, and the true key to the wishes and conduct of both parties is found, if, without regarding the moral or theological results of either scheme, or troubling ourselves with the subtleties by which either side sought to meet the objections of the other, we consider simply the bearings of the new doctrines on that ecclesiastical system, which the orthodox and dominant party were determined at all cost to support. If it were admitted that man is justifiable by faith alone, that his election is a matter to be certified to his own heart by the immediate operation of the divine spirit, it would follow that the whole question of his religious condition and future hopes might be, or rather must be, settled between him and his creator alone. And then what would become of ecclesiastical authority and priestly interference? If the only knowledge possible to be attained of any individual's standing before God, were locked in his own breast, what hold can the Church have on him? It is absolutely necessary to any system of spiritual tyranny, that no doctrine should be admitted by virtue of which a layman may tell a priest that despite the opinion he, the priest, may form upon the subject, he, the layman, has the assurance of acceptation before God, by means of evidence of a nature inscrutable to the priest. Once admit this, and the whole