Church great moral corruptions countenanced by its highest authorities; he felt them; but instead of meeting them with divine weapons, he used one of his own. He adopted a doctrine original, specious, fascinating, persuasive, powerful against Rome, and wonderfully adapted, as if prophetically, to the genius of the times which were to follow. He found Christians in bondage to their works and observances; he released them by his doctrine of faith; and he left them in bondage to their feelings. He weaned them from seeking assurance of salvation in standing ordinances, at the cost of teaching them that a personal consciousness of it was promised to every one who believed. For outward signs of grace he substituted inward; for reverence towards the Church contemplation of self. And thus, whereas he himself held the proper efficacy of the Sacraments, he has led others to disbelieve it; whereas he preached against reliance on self, he introduced it in a more subtle shape; whereas he professed to make the written word all in all, he sacrificed it in its length and breadth to the doctrine which he had wrested from a few texts.

This is what comes of fighting God's battles in our own way, of extending truths beyond their measure, of anxiety after a teaching more compact, clear, and spiritual, than the Creed of the Apostles. Thus the Pharisees were more careful of their Law than God who gave it; thus Saul saved the cattle he was bid destroy, "to sacrifice to the Lord;" thus Judas was concerned at the waste of the ointment, which might have been given to the poor. In these cases bad men professed to be more zealous for

God's honour, more devotional, or more charitable, than the servants of God; and in a parallel way Protestants would be more spiritual. Let us be sure things are going wrong with us, when we see doctrines more clearly, and carry them out more boldly, than they are taught us in Revelation.

APPENDIX.1

ON THE FORMAL CAUSE OF JUSTIFICATION.

HE formal cause of a thing is generally explained to be

THE

that which constitutes it what it is; thus the soul may be said to be that which changes the dust of the earth into an organized and living body; or, again, heat may be considered the cause of a hot substance being hot, or that in which its state as hot, consists. Comparing the formal cause to other so-called causes or antecedents, it is the last in the series by which a thing is brought to be, or the ultimate state of the process which intervenes between the will of the originator and its performance; at least this will convey a notion of what is meant, sufficient for the matter in hand. Thus, according to the Council of Trent, justification, the work of God, is brought into effect through a succession of the following causes: the mercy of God the efficient cause, Christ offered on the Cross the meritorious, Baptism the instrumental, and the principle of renewal in righteousness thereby communicated the formal; upon which immediately follows justification. Or again, Faith is, by various parties, considered successively as a disposing

1 [The purpose of this Appendix is to show that the cardinal question to be considered by Catholics and Protestants in their controversy about Justification is, What is its formal cause? When this is properly examined, it will be found that there is little or no difference of view between the disputants, except when the Protestant party adheres to the paradox of Luther:-"Sola fides, non fides formata charitate, justificat: fides justificat sine et ante charitatem," and refuses to assign a formal cause.]

cause, the instrumental, or the formal cause of justification, thus being brought nearer and nearer to that of which it is the cause, till it (as it were) falls into and coincides with it. Hence the form is that, between which and the thing in question nothing can be interposed in our ideas; and accordingly it is sometimes really distinct from that effect, sometimes not, though it is always supposed to be distinct. Thus, to take one of the instances 'given, if the renovation in righteousness which follows Baptism, or the "justitia Dei qua nos justos facit," as the Council speaks, be considered as the principle of renewal, as I have expressed it, it is the formal cause of our renewed state itself as well as of justification; and is or is not really distinct from that renewed state, according as we believe the principle of renewal to be a mere abstraction of the mind contemplating it, or a definite divine gift residing in the soul. Again: heat, the formal cause of a hot iron, is or is not really distinct from and antecedent to its being hot, according as we view caloric as an idea or as a substance. When what is considered the formal cause is a mere abstraction of the mind, then it nearly coincides with the logical differentia, or proprium, or inseparable accident. Thus whiteness is at once the form and the accident of a white wall; and animality is the form and the generic difference of man as distinguished from a vegetable.

The ordinary meaning of the word form serves to illustrate this scientific use of it. What discriminates a body from everything else is its shape; which is the development of that of which it is composed, into and unto a certain determinate lineament and structure. The Form then is some such disposition or result, constituting a thing to be what it is. For instance, the matter of a science is its objective truth, its form is that truth when it has become subjective, or knowledge, which is a sort of determinate embodying of what was till then unappropriated.