Note 1 — MEMOIRS OF Dr. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. [WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.]

BAXTERIANS, The famous Non-conformist Richard Baxter who flourished about the middle of the last Century, attempted a Coalition between the doctrines of Calvin and Arminius. The former of these held that God from the beginning had elected a few of the human race to be saved, without reference to their good actions in this life, and had left the rest of mankind in a state of final and inevitable reprobation. The latter was of opinion that the Christian dispensation furnished the means of final Salvation to all men, though the merits of the death of Christ would be ultimately advantageous to believers only. Baxter, thought with Calvin that some among mankind were from the beginning elected unto eternal life, and gifted from above with the saving grace necessary in the first instance to the several steps of a believer’s christian character; but he thought also with Arminius that all men had common grace imparted to them, sufficient to enable them if they chose, to attain unto final Salvation by using the means ordained by Christ and his Apostles. Calvin also held the final perseverance of the Saints, or as it has since been expressed that a believer might fall foully but not finally, whereas Baxter seems to have thought that not every one who had saving grace imparted to him would persevere to the end, or as the Arminian Methodists quaintly express it, he held that a believer may fall both foully and finally. The compromising doctrine of Baxter may be seen in his very learned and unintelligible work entitled Catholick Theology. He used to be an annual communicant in the Church of England by way of exemplying his accommodating opinions.

T. C.