Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: so painful a spectacle should be brought before them, and a vague feeling of incredulity as to the possibility that such doctrines have been believed. It is indeed an article not suited to every class of readers ; but to the student of human nature, to him who would know what men can believe and how they can feel, to him who recognizes the importance of the history of opinions, and especially of the history of human errors respecting religion and Christianity, the phenomenon that these doctrines have prevailed so widely among Protestants, and even extended into the Romish Church, — possessing the minds of such men as Pascal and the Port- Royalists, — this phenomenon is one of the most instructive facts to which he can direct his attention. But it may still be objected, that such an exhibition is, at all events, not required for the-removal of errors now existing,— that these errors have become obsolete. A controversy (principally conducted by other hands) followed the publication of the " Views of Calvinism," and one of the last publications of the writer or writers in the " Christian Spectator" contained the following passage, in which the objection just stated is implied : — " What Calvin believed and taught, and what any modern Calvinistic authors have taught, are questions of no real importance in the present discussion, any farther than their opinions are proved to be prevalent in our own times and in our own country. If therefore the Professor of Sacred Literature in Cambridge University thinks it an object worthy his zeal and labor to collect and expose the opinions of other centuries, or even the individual opinions of some in our own age, let him have the candour frankly to acquaint the public with his design." Before remarking on the objection I have mentioned, ...