_Extracts from Balnaves’s Confession of Faith, or Treatise on Justification._――In reading the writings of the first reformers there are two things which must strike our minds. The first, is the exact conformity between the doctrine maintained by them respecting the justification of sinners, and that of the apostles. The second, is the surprising harmony which subsisted among them on this important doctrine. On some questions respecting the sacraments, and the external government and worship of the church, they differed; but upon the article of free justification, Luther and Zuinglius, Melanchthon and Calvin, Cranmer and Knox, spoke the very same language. This was not owing to their having read each other’s writings, but because they copied from the same divine original. The clearness with which they understood and explained this great truth is also very observable. More learned and able defences of it have since appeared; but I question if it has ever been stated in more scriptural, unequivocal, and decided language, than in the writings of the early reformers. Some of their successors, by giving way to speculation, gradually lost sight of this distinguishing badge of the Reformation, and landed at last in Arminianism, which is nothing else but the popish doctrine in a protestant dress. Knox has informed us, that his design, in preparing for the press the treatise {391} written by Sir Henry Balnaves, was to give, along with the author, his “confession of the article of justification therein contained.” I cannot, therefore, lay before the reader a more correct view of our Reformer’s sentiments upon this fundamental article of faith, than by quoting from a book which was revised and approved by him.