him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto by pardoning it; and accepteth him in JESUS Christ as perfectly righteous as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law; shall I say, more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I say but the Apostle saith 'God made Him Which knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.' Such we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it be counted folly, or phrensy, or fury, or whatsoever. It is our wisdom and our comfort; we care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God1."

Let the reader place this specimen of truly Anglican teaching and the opposite doctrine of Trent side by side with S. Paul's testimony in Romans iv. 1-8, 22—25, v. 12—21, viii. 33, 34; Galatians ii. 15, 16, iii. 6—9; Titus iii. 4, 5: and let him then judge for himself which of the two most nearly reflects the mind of the Spirit of God.

4. Comparison of the Tridentine Doctrine with the Judgment of Antiquity. On the question of Justification the ancient Church has said but little. Doctrines are not usually defined or stated with formal accuracy until some heresy arises to call forth the expression of the Church's mind. Now the heresies of the earlier ages centred almost exclusively round the Person of our Lord; the subjective work of Grace had not yet become the chief field of controversy; theories of Justification therefore belong to the 16th rather than

1 Serm. on Justification, §§ 5, 6.

to the 3rd or 4th century. Nevertheless, the general tone of the patristic writings is clear; and such evidence as they supply is the more valuable, as being incidental and informal. The following quotations may suffice. S. Clement of Rome: "All [the Saints of old] were justified not by themselves or by their works, or by the righteousness which they wrought, but by His will. And so we, too, being called by His will in JESUS Christ, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom or understanding or piety, nor by works which we wrought in holiness of heart; but through the faith by which Almighty God justified all [that have been justified] since the world began1." S. Polycarp: "Ye are saved by Grace; not of works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ"." Origen: "He [S. Paul] saith that the justification of faith only is sufficient, so that if any one do only believe, he is justified, though no [good] works have been fulfilled by him3." S. Basil: "This is perfect and complete joy in God, when one is not lifted up in the conceit of his own righteousness, but knows that he himself is wanting in true righteous'ness, and that he is justified only by faith in Christ+" S. Bernard: "Thou art as strong to justify as Thou art ready to pardon. Wherefore whosoever smitten with compunction for his sins hungers and thirsts after righteousness, let him believe on Thee Who justifiest the ungodly; and being justified by faith alone he will have peace with God." It will be noticed that this string of patristic witnesses extends from the very verge of the Apostolic age to the twelfth century after Christ.

5. Justification by Faith only. "Justification by

1 Ad Corinth. 32.
2 Ad Philip.

3 In Rom. iii.

4 De Humil. Hom. XXII.

5 In Cantic. 22.

faith alone without works" is little more than another expression for "Justification by imputed righteousness only." Faith, being an entire dependance on the merit of Christ, necessarily excludes merit in the believer: so that to say that we are justified by faith is to say in other words that we are justified by the merit of Christ.

That faith, in so far as it justifies, is to be considered apart from works of every kind1 seems clear from the following testimonies of Holy Scripture:

"The righteousness of God......is by faith of JESUS Christ unto all and upon all them that believe......being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ JESUS, Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in JESUS. Where is boasting then? It is excluded......by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." "To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." "David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works." "It is of faith, that it might be by grace." "Therefore being justified by faith we have [or, let us have] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans iii. iv. and v., cf. ch. x. 4-6, 9-11.)

1 The Schoolmen distinguished between a "formed" and an "unformed" faith, meaning by the latter what is more generally known as a 'dead faith,' by the former, faith "made perfect by works." The former, they said, alone availed to justify. Luther and Calvin agreed to attack this distinction because it appeared to them to be aimed at the doctrine of justification by faith only. There is probably some truth on each side. We are justified by a faith which is at least potentially a fides formata: although the office of justifying belongs not to the works of faith but to faith itself.

"That no man is justified by the law in the sight of God it is evident: for 'the just shall live by faith." "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law but the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." (Gal. iii. 11-22, cf. ch. ii. 16.)

"Not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” (Phil. iii. 9.)

6. Roman Catholic reply: its insufficiency. It is but fair to state the method by which these arguments, seemingly so invincible, are met on the Roman Catholic side. "True," they reply, "no man can be justified by the works of the Mosaic law, or by his own unaided efforts. The justice by which we are justified is not our own; it is God's work wrought in us by His grace: nor do we merit this grace of ourselves; it is vouchsafed to us for the merits of Christ."

The distinction is ingenious; but is it founded on any sound basis of Scriptural teaching? is it likely to be of any practical weight? Holy Scripture explicitly denies the merit of good works, even of those wrought in us by Divine grace1 (S. Luke xvii. 10). Nor is it easy

1 The Romanist divines suppose a radical difference between the works of the law, and the works of faith. But (1) both are the fruits of Divine grace; the saints who lived under the law surely did not obey God of their own unaided strength : (2) the two are practically identical; the Mosaic law is the rule of Christian as well as of earlier sanctity: (3) S. Paul's language equally excludes both from the office of justifying: for it is to the principle of justification by works that he objects, not to the works of one particular law in contrast with those of another. (Gal. iii. II, 12.) The Law is insufficient to justify, simply because it recognises working, and not believing; whereas believing, not working, is that upon which the life of the just depends.

to see how boasting can be practically "excluded1" by a Church which anathematizes those who teach "that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified."

7. Doctrine of S. James. A far more serious objection to the Anglican doctrine arises from the teaching of S. James (c. ii. 14-26). Certainly the language used by S. James appears to be the very negation of S. Paul's. But (1) it is by no means certain that S. James had in view either the doctrine of S. Paul, or any abuse of it by the Pauline Churches. A majority of modern critics fix the date of his epistle before the Council of Jerusalem, and therefore before the earliest of S. Paul's epistles had been written. It is thought, with much reason, that S. James intended to attack the barren orthodoxy of the Jews, rather than their tenet of justification by the law. (2) Whether this view be correct or not, a sober examination of the passage in S. James does not compel us to modify the doctrine which we have based upon the teaching of S. Paul. S. Paul nowhere asserts that the faith which justifies "hath not works;" on the contrary, he states distinctly that it is such a faith as "worketh by love" (Gal. v. 6). What he denies is the power of works as works to justify. S. James, on the other hand, denies this justifying power to an unworking faith; from his point of view, works justify and not faith only, because

1 Rom. iii. 27.

2 See Alford's Gk. Test. Vol. IV. Proleg. to S. James, p. 105, and Prof. Lightfoot's Ep. to Galatians, p. 157. "It becomes a question whether S. James' protest against reliance on faith alone has any reference, direct or indirect, to S. Paul's language and teaching: whether in fact it is not aimed against an entirely different type of religious feeling, against the Pharisaic spirit which rested satisfied with a barren orthodoxy fruitless in works of charity."