AN ABRIDGEMENT OF CALVIN'S INSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

These brief, and clear sentences, are the skeleton of that body of doctrine which has the fullness and completeness of its form in the "Four Books of Institutes." This effort by Calvin, whether to be ascribed to Calvin himself, or more probably to Beza, are evidently the production of a master mind, and for many reasons, valuable. For they not only condense Calvin's theology into a small compass, thus affording to the inquirer, whose industry and research will not bear too severe a pressure, a bird's eye view of genuine Calvinism, but they impart intelligible and definite notions of sacred truths, not scattered, separated, and standing in lonely abstraction, apart from one another, but in due order, and conjunction, so strung together, so advisedly dis-posed, so skillfully adjusted, as to compose a harmonious system of religion and morals. In our age and nation, when all are so hasty to teach, and talk about religion, and when, from a too general confusion and crudeness of ideas on the subject, a Babel diversity of language is heard on all sides, such an intelligible code of faith and virtue is useful, and I hope will be welcomed.