disapprove. My Father's affectionate respect for Luther is enough to alienate from him the High Anglican party, and his admiration of Kant enough to bring him into suspicion with the anti-philosophic part of the religious world,-which is the whole of it except a very small portion indeed. My Father was a hero-worshiper in the harmless sense of Mr. Carlyle; and his worship of these two heroes, though the honors he paid to the one were quite different from those he offered to the other, was so deliberate and deep seated, that it must ever be a prominent feature on the face of his opinions. He thought the mind of Luther more akin to St. Paul's than that of any other Christian teacher, and I believe that our early divines, including Hooker and Field, would not have suspected his catholicity on this score. Indeed it is clear to my mind that in Luther's doctrines of grace (no one has ever doubted his orthodoxy on the subject of the divine nature, but his doctrine of the dealings of God with man in the work of salvation), there is nothing which ever would mortally have offended High Churchmen, Romish or Anglican; that they tried to find heresy in these because of the practical consequences he drew from them to the discrediting and discomfiture of their spiritual polity. On the doctrine of Justification he has been represented as a mighty corrupter; let us see how and how far he differs on that subject from his uncompromising adversaries.* There are but three forms in which that doctrine can possibly be presented to the mind, I mean there are but three ways in which St. Paul's

My authorities for the following statements are the Decrees and Canons of Trent, Luther's Commentary on Galatians, and Table Talk, Bishop Bull's Harmonia with his thick volume of replies to the censures of it, and Mr. Newman's Lectures on Justification, all of which I have dwelt on a good deal. I have not yet read St. Augustine on the subject, but suspect from extracts, that his view was the same as Luther's so far as he developed it.

Mr. Newman says in his Appendix-"I have throughout these remarks implied that the modern controversy on the subject of justification is not a vital one, inasmuch as all parties are agreed that Christ is the sole justifier, and that He makes holy those whom He justifies." Yet one who professed to hold Mr. Newman's religious opinions in general, could talk of Luther's doctrine as a doctrine too bad for devils to hold consistently, contrary tc natural religion, corruptive of the heart and at war with reason. It should be remembered that the state of mind in the justified is precisely the same in all the different schemes. The dispute is only about the name to be given to certain constituents of it; whether they are to be called justifying or only inseparable from, or the necessary product of, the justifying principle.

justified by faith without the deeds of the law can be scientifically explained or translated into the language of metaphysical divinity-namely the Tridentine, or that set forth by the Council of Trent,-the Anglican or High Church Protestant, set forth by Bishop Bull;-and that of Luther. Nay, I think that, really and substantially, there are but two, namely the Tridentine and High Anglican or doctrine of justification by faith and works as the condition of obtaining it, and Luther's solifidianism or doctrine of justification by means of faith alone, a faith the necessary parent of works. All parties agree that God is the efficient, Christ, in His sacrifice, the meritorious cause of salvation: all profess this in words, all the pious of all the different parties believe it in their hearts. The dispute is not about the proper cause of salvation, but only concerning the internal condition on our part, or what that is in us whereon justification ensues,-which connects the individual man with the redemption wrought by Christ for all mankind. Bull teaches that this link within us to the redemption without us is faith informed with love and works-faith quickened by love and put forth in the shape of obedience. The Tridentine teaches, in like manner, that we are justified directly upon our holiness and works wrought in us by the Spirit,-that faith and all other graces of which it is the root, are the condition of acceptance with God. Between this statement and Bull's I see no real difference at all; it is but the same thought expressed in different words. The Anglican chooses to add that our holiness and works, in order to be thus justifying, must be sprinkled with the blood of the covenant; the Tridentine declines that wellsounding phrase: perhaps he thinks it a tautology offensive to Him who forbade vain repetitions; and, for my own part, I can not think that his Saviour requires it of him, whatever divines may do. His anathemas against those who say either more or less than he says on these points are, in my opinion, the only anti-Christian part of his doctrine of justification. Drive the thing as far back as we may, still there must be something in us -in our very selves which connects us with salvation; it seems rather nonsensical to say that this is the blood of Christ. We should never have obtained this something without Him; He created it in us and to Him it tends; what more can we say without nullifying the human soul as a distinct being altogether,

and thus slipping into the gulf of Pantheism in backing away from imaginary Impiety and Presumption? Even if with Luther we call Christ the form of our faith, and hence the formal cause of our salvation, still there must be that in our very selves which at least negatively secures our union with him; to that we must come at last as the personal sine qua non of justification, whether we call it the proximate cause, or interpose another (the Holy Ghost dwelling in our hearts by faith), betwixt ourselves and heaven. The Anglican may call our holiness inchoate and imperfect, and may insist that only as sanctified and completed by Christ's merits is it even the conditional cause of salvation; still this holiness, if it connects us with the Saviour or precludes the impediment to such connection is, in one sense, complete and perfect, for it does this all-important work perfectly; it is no slight matter, for it is all the difference between salvation and perdition, as being indispensable to our gaining the first and escaping the last. Now in what other sense can the Romanist imagine that our holiness is perfect and complete? Does he think that it is perfect as God is perfect, or that it is more than a beginning even in reference to that purity which human nature may finally attain when freed from a temptable body and the clog of the flesh ?*

I am even bold enough to say, after all South's valiant feats against the windmill giant, Human Merit, that the dispute on this subject seems to me a mere dispute about words. That in us which even negatively (by preventing the prevention of it), unites us with Christ, may be said to deserve Christ, and hence to be unspeakably meritorious. The Romanist has declared that all the merit of procuring salvation is in Christ-surely then he only leaves to man-what no man should seek to deprive him of-the being rendered by the Holy Spirit a meet receptacle and worthy dwelling-place for Itself. As for grace of congruity and condignity-our Lord says that he who hath to him shall be given-does not this imply that he who hath grace deserves more, that it is due to his internal condition raised and purified by the Holy Spirit? Or does this notion really interfere with

*To call our inherent righteousness inchoate in reference to the power of justifying would be incorrect, would it not?—for it is the beginning and end of what we contribute toward our salvation, and certainly not the commencement of what is done for us.

the Scriptural truth, that we are unprofitable servants, and in our best performances can do no more than we are bound to do?* Is it essential to the idea of deserving reward, that he who deserves should be the original author and source of the services by which he deserves it? If it be, then the language of the Council of Trent is incorrect; but its doctrine is not incorrect, because the very same sentence which affirms the good works of the justified to be merits declares them previously to be gifts of God. Very indefensible is the next sentence which anathematizes him who calls them only signs of justification obtained and fears to add that they are merits.

The Tridentine and the Anglican statements of Justification

* My Father says, "I am persuaded, that the practice of the Romish Church tendeth to make vain the doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ alone; but judging by her most eminent divines I can find nothing dissonant from the truth in her express decisions on this article. Perhaps it would be safer to say:-Christ alone saves us, working in us by the faith which includes love and hope." "I neither do nor can think, that any pious member of the Church of Rome did ever in his heart attribute any merit to any work as being his work. A grievous error and a mischievous error there was practically in mooting the question at all of the condignity of works and their rewards." Remains, V. pp. 49, 50.

Canons 24 and 32 of the 6th Session of the Council of Trent are given in a note at the foot of the page to be compared with this opinion. I think there is no harm in them; they affirm that the good works of the justified are both gifts of God and merits of the justified person himself, that they deserve increase of grace and eternal life. Now in the only sense in which a believer in the primary merits of Christ can mean to affirm this I do not see how any rational Christian can deny it. There is a notion connected with this subject, which is taught not only in the Romish schools, but I grieve to say in some of our own schools too of late years, which does seem to me both presumptuous and unscriptural; I mean the notion, that a man can do more in the way of good works and saintliness than he is bound to do as a Christian, or at least that there is a kind and degree of holiness which some men may and ought to seek and obtain, which the generality of the faithful can not attain and ought not to strive after. This seems to me both false and fraught with corruptive consequences to religion. When Peter said to Ananias respecting his land, was it not thine own-in thine own power?-he surely did not mean that in offering it Ananias did more than he was bound to do, as a Christian before God, but only that, as he was not compelled to surrender it by any outward force or authority, his pretending to give and yet not giving the whole of it, was a gratuitous piece of hypocrisy-something worse than a simple falsehood extorted by fear

are tantamount to each other, may be resolved into each other; but there is a third way of stating the matter-between this and the other two there is perhaps a logical, though, I believe, no practical difference whatever. I allude to the notion of Luther that faith alone is that in us which connects us with Christ, and consequently is our sole personal righteousness (or that which entitles us to freedom from the penal consequences of sin); that faith justifies (in this conditional and instrumental way) in its own right, not as informed with or accompanied by or productive of love and works, but as apprehending Christ. Luther maintained that faith, although it is righteous and the necessary parent of righteous works, justifies only in bringing Christ to dwell in the heart, and that the righteousness which flows from this inhabitation, is not our justification but the fruit of it, or in other words that faith not love is the justifying principle. Now I think it is a notable fact in favor of my Father's opinion that these different views are all but different aspects of the same truth, and are not substantially different one from another, that Mr. Newman's splendid work on justification, which is generally considered by the High Anglican party as an utter demolition of Luther's teaching in the Commentary, and perhaps was intended to be so, is, in fact, a tacit establishment of it, or at least of its most important position; since on this cardinal point, this hinge of the question, whether faith justifies alone, as uniting us with Christ, or as informed with love and works, and as itself a work and a part of Christian holiness, he decides with Luther, not with Tridentines or High Anglicans.† For he expressly states that Faith does in one sense (the sense of uniting us with Christ, which is the same as Luther's sense), justify alone; that it is the "only inward instrument" of justification; that, as such inward instrument, it is one certain property, act, or habit of the mind, distinct from love and other graces,‡ not a mere name for them all; that there is "a certain extraordinary and singular sympathy between Faith and the grant of Gospel privileges, such as to constitute it, in a true sense, an instrument of it, that is of justification,

Galatians ii. 3.

Lecture X. throughout p. 256-287.

Ib. pp. 258-9—“ When it (faith) is called the sole instrument of justification it must stand in contrast to them (trust, hope, etc.), and be contemplated in itself, as being one certain property, habit, or act of the mind.”