were accepted in common by both parties. In respect to the Trinity and the person of Christ, they stood on the same ground. On the subject of Anthropology, the doctrine of sin, it is true that the Reformers earnestly asserted the Augustinian views, in opposition to that modified opinion, less hostile to the Pelagian tenet, which had been distinctly espoused by one of the leading mediæval schools, the followers of Scotus, and had affected all of the scholastic systems. It was in their profound sense of the reality of sin, and of its dominion in the human will, that the Protestants laid the foundations of their theology. Zwingle alone, of all the foremost Reformers, called in question the fact of native guilt, as this is asserted in the Augustinian theology; and even he did not adhere uniformly to his theory. But the doctrine of sin was only indirectly and subordinately brought into the debate.1 The same might be said of the Atonement, since the body of the reformers rested on the Anselmic idea of satisfaction, which likewise formed a part of the opposing creed. The point of difference was on the vital question how the soul, burdened with self-condemnation, is to obtain the forgiveness of sins and peaceful reunion to God in the character of a reconciled father. In the teachings, injunctions, services, ceremonies of the Church, the Re 1 The Protestants held that the moral perfections—that is, the holiness — of the first man are concreated; the Catholics, that they are superadded gifts of grace. Cat. Rom., 1. ii. qu. 19. This doctrine of the donum supernaturale is drawn out in full by Bellarmine, Grat. primi Hom., ii. The effect of the fall is said by the Catholics to be the loss of the donum supernaturale, and a consequent, though indirect, weakening of the natural powers (vulnera naturæ); by the Protestants it was held to be a positive depravation of human nature. Bellarmine, Amis. Grat., III. i.; Conf. August., p. 9; Apol. August. Conf., p. 51; Conf. Helvet., II. cc. viii., ix. 2 The doctrine common to Anselm and Aquinas, that the satisfaction of Christ is absolute in itself, and infinite, was denied only by the school of Scotus, who held that it is finite, but is accepted by the divine will acceptilatio- for more than its intrinsic worth. The Tridentine creed denies that pardon carries with it the remission of all punishment; but asserts that the satisfaction rendered by the sinner is available only through the satisfaction of Christ. Sess. xiv. c. viii. See Baumgarten-Crusius, Dogmengsch., ii. 273, n. a. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 461 formers had sought for this infinite good in vain. They found it in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon, from the bare mercy of God, through the mediation of Christ; a pardon that waits for nothing but acceptance on the part of the soul the belief, the trust, the faith of the penitent. Everything of the nature of satisfaction or merit on the part of the offender is precluded, by the utterly gratuitous nature of the gift, by the sufficiency of the Redeemer's expiation. Every assertion of the necessity of works or merit on the side of the offender, as the ground of forgiveness, is a disparagement of the Redeemer's mercy and of his expiatory office. Faith, thus laying hold of a free forgiveness and reconnecting the soul with God, is the fountain of a new life of holiness, which depends not on fear and homage to law, but on gratitude and on filial sentiments. Christ himself nour-. ishes this new life by spiritual influences that flow into the soul through the channel of its fellowship with Him. Justification is thus a forensic term; it is equivalent to the remission of sins. To justify, signifies not to make the offender righteous, but to treat him as if he were righteous, to deliver him from the accusation of the law by the bestowal of a pardon. Saving faith is not a virtue to be rewarded, but an apprehensive act; the hand that takes the free gift. Such, in a brief statement, was the cardinal principle of the Protestant interpretation of the Gospel.1 The Christian life has its centre in this experience of forgiveness. Virtues of character and victories over temptation grow out of it. Christian ethics are united to Christian theology by this vital bond. But to what authority could the Reformers appeal in behalf of their proposition? What assurance had they of its truth? How did they arrive at the knowledge of 1 This idea of justification is the key-note in Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and in Melancthon's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. It is the distinctive feature of the Protestant exegesis of the writings of Paul. it? They had found this obscured and half-forgotten truth recorded, as they believed, with perfect clearness, in the Scriptures. The authority of the Scriptures was fully acknowledged by the Church in which they had been trained, however it might superadd to them other authoritative sources of knowledge, and however it might deny the competence of the individual to interpret the Bible for himself. That Christ spoke in the Scriptures, all admitted. What his voice was the Reformers could not doubt; for the truth that he uttered was one of which they had an immediate, spiritual recognition. Their interpretation verified itself to their hearts by the light and peace which that truth brought with it, as well as to their understandings on a critical examination of the text. The Church, then, that denied their interpretation and commanded them to abandon it, was in error; it could not be the authorized, infallible interpreter of Holy Writ. Thus the traditional belief in the authority of the Roman Church gave way, and the principle of the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, as the rule of faith, took its place. By this process the second of the distinctive principles of Protestantism was reached. That the meaning of the Bible is sufficiently plain and intelligible was implied in this conclusion. Hence, the right of private judgment is another side of the same doctrine. In the adoption of this, which has been called the formal, in distinction from the first, which is termed the material principle of Protestantism, there was no dissent among the churches of the reformed faith. Thus the Anglican body, which surpassed all other Protestant churches in its deference to the fathers and to the first centuries, affirms this principle. It accepts, in the eighth article, the ancient creeds, on the ground that they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture; it declares, in the nineteenth article, that the Church of Rome, as well as those of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and An ROMAN CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. 463 tioch have erred in matters of faith; and in the twentyfirst article it asserts that general councils may err and have erred in things pertaining to the rule of piety, and that their decrees are to be accepted no farther than they can be shown to be conformable to the sacred writings. The two principles are united in the fundamental idea of the direct relation of Christ to the believer as his personal Redeemer and Guide. a The Roman Catholic theory of Justification may be so stated as to seem to approximate closely to that of the Protestants; but on a close examination, the two doctrines are seen to be discordant with one another. In the formula which defines the condition of salvation to be faith formed by love-fides formata caritate separation between faith and love is conceived of, in which the latter becomes the adjunct of the former; and inasmuch as love is the injunction of the law, a door is open for a theory of works and human merit, and for all the discomforts of that legal and introspective piety from which the evangelical doctrine furnished the means of escape. Faith, in the Protestant view, is necessarily the source of good works, which flow from it as a stream from a fountain; which grow from it as fruit from a tree. The tendency of the Catholic system is to conjoin works with faith, and thus to resolve good works into a form of legal obedience. Moreover, Justification does not begin, as in the Protestant theology, with the forgiveness of sins; but the first element in Justification is the infusion of inward, personal righteousness, and pardon follows. Justification is gradual. By this incipient excellence of character, the Christian is made capable of meriting grace; and however this doctrine may be qualified and guarded by founding all merit ultimately on the merits of Christ, from which the sanctification of the disciple flows, the legal characteristic cleaves to the doctrine. 1 Concil. Trident. Sess. VI. c. x. But the wide difference of the Catholic conception from the Protestant becomes evident, when it is remembered that according to the former, for all sins committed after baptism, the offender owes and must render satisfaction a satisfaction that derives its efficacy, to be sure, from that made by Christ, but yet is not the less indispensable and real. And how is Justification imparted? How does it begin? It is communicated through baptism, and, hence, generally, in infancy. It is Justification by baptism rather than by faith; and for all sins subsequently committed, penances are due; satisfaction must be offered by the transgressor himself. We are thus brought to the whole theory of the Church and of the Sacraments, in which the discrepancy between the two theologies is most manifest. If the conflict of the two theologies were limited to this topic of Justification, and of the relation of faith to works; if the dispute could be shut up to subtle questions and tenuous distinctions of theological science, it might be more easily settled. On these questions a meeting-point might possibly be found. But the Protestant interpretation of the Gospel involved a denial of the prerogatives of the vast Institution which assumed to intervene between the soul and God, as the almoner of grace and the ruler of the beliefs and lives of men. The Reformers, in harmony with their idea of the way of salvation which has been described, brought forward the conception of the invisible Church. The true Church, they said, is composed of all believers in Christ, all who are spiritually united to Him; and of the Church as thus defined, He is the Head. This is the Holy Catholic Church, to which the Apostles' Creed refers, and in which the disciple professes his belief; "for we believe," said Luther, referring to this passage of the creed, "not in what we see, but in what is invisible." The visible Church, on the contrary, is a congregation of believers |