law, the law of liberty, righteousness, and everlasting life," which Luther identifies with Christ from first to last of his evangelical commentary.

Luther's language on the exceeding difficulty of believing unto salvation, on the relics of sin that cling even to the justified, does but show how searchingly, how earnestly he looked on these subjects-how hard he was to be pleased in matters that pertain to justification. Perhaps he should have taught more distinctly that all men are sinners, and require the coercions of the law more or less. Still it was but the remnants of sin which Luther spoke of, when he said, prospectively, that sin should not be imputed to the justified."" His fault as a teacher was, that he stuck too close to Scripture in his mode of expression, and repeated without explanation, or imitated too closely, its strong figurative language. But this doctrine of his, that the enormity of sin must not make the sinner despair, is no figure; it is literal Gospel truth. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow. Did Luther, in all his strong language on the power of faith, that is, of Christ dwelling in the heart by faith, go beyond this glad message of salvation? Blessed be his name for the courage wherewith he re-proclaimed a saving truth, which a self-serving, selfexalting clergy were putting out of sight-were hiding by the complicated superstructure of outward ways and means, which they erected upon it! Luther's a lax system!-No man wil find it such who tries to understand and practise rather than to criticise it.

But the grand charge against Luther's doctrine remains behind. He is said to have separated saving faith from love."

49 See Commentary, chap. xi., ver. 17. "But it followeth not therefore that thou shouldst make a light matter of sin, because God doth not impute it;" and many other places in the Commentary.

50 Mr. Newman in Lecture XI. argues that faith is not a virtue or grace in its abstract nature, that it is "but an instrument, acceptable when its possessor is acceptable." Faith apart from love is not a virtue, but this scems to be no proof that it is not a distinct grace; faith is not mere belief, though it includes belief; no one in common parlance would say, that he had faith in that which he merely believed. Faith is of the heart, not of the head only, or it is not faith. Nor can I think that it "differs from the graces" in that "it is not an excellence except it be grafted into a

The anti-Lutherans are never weary of harping upon this string. Having failed to convict him of Antinomianism on one side-the denial of good works to Christians, they try to thrust it upon him on the other, to find it in his definition of faith. But after all, where has he said, speaking analytically, that saving faith exists apart from love as a mere habit of the mind? "Luther confesses, in so many words," says Mr. Newman, "that the faith that justifies is abstract fides as opposed to concrete, in Gal. iii., 10." But if we look at Gal. iii., 10, I think we shall find, that by abstract faith as opposed to concrete, he meant faith considered as a spiritual principle in opposition to faithful works, and that heart that has grace." Love, humility, meekness, are all in the same case; abstract from these their direction, their object, and you leave a caput mortuum of mere human feeling. Love of God is excellent; love of man for God's sake, is excellent; but the mere adhesion of the soul to a certain object has no excellence in it. So humility, as a low estimation of ourselves, is not necessarily virtuous; it is only a virtue when it arises from a clear view of our relations to divine perfection,-a clear view of the relative goodness of others, which the mists of self-love and pride are apt to conceal from our sight. Have we any natural good acts or habits of mind; do not all our affections require to be raised and purified by divine grace before they can be acceptable? To say the contrary is Pelagianism. Love is as little a virtue without faith as faith without love, for no man can lore as Christ commands except he believe in God. It is not easy, indeed, to define Faith as the property of the will; but who can define primary feelings?

Consistently with the notion that Faith, in its abstract nature, is only Belief, Mr. Newman denies that it is to be identified with Trust: Yet surely Faith and Trust are only different attitudes of the same habit, the difference being in the tense or time of the habit. Faith believes that there is an Infinitely Good Being, and that he is good to us: Trust believes that he will be good to us. The devils believe; but they have not religious faith for this binds us to its object. No man owes fealty except for benefit and protection. It is unwise to separate the idea of love of God or faith in Him from that of advantage to ourselves; they are reciprocal and co-inherent; the love of God is its own reward, its fruition union with Him. Mr. Newman teaches that faith in its own abstract nature is no grace; that it is merely such a sense of the spiritual as belongs to the devils; that union with love and all the graces of a religious spirit alone makes it virtuous; my Father looked upon Faith as that in the will which corresponds to belief in the understanding; he thought that faith includes belief, but is more than belief; that it is a grace distinct from love, though inseparable from it

by works he meant not mere acts of the mind but outward actions. This is quite evident from his language, from the whole strain of his argument, and from all his illustrations. Let the reader, if he cares about the matter, look and see. Referring to the 11th chapter of Hebrews, he speaks of David who slew Goliah. The sophister says he looks upon nothing but the outward appearance of the work; but we must consider what manner of person David was before he did this work-that he was a righteous man, beloved of God, strong and constant in faith. Luther could hardly have thought that David was without love when he was beloved of God. Mr. N. represents it as a monstrous extravagance" in the Reformer to teach that faith justifies before and without charity. Yet it is evident enough, and must have been plain as noon-day to simple hearers, that when Luther speaks of charity he speaks of this virtue as it is manifested in the outward and visible course of life. Works he described as the bright children of salvation, not the parents of it. He insisted that a man must believe in God before he could perform godly actions, must lay hold on Christ before he could walk as a Christian. His commentary is practical, popular, and highly rhetorical in form, not scientific, though I think that every word of it may be scientifically defended. Where does he say that justifying faith, apart from love,-faith in the shape of bare belief, such as devils may have, comes first, lays hold of Christ, and then becomes the parent of all graces? He merely explains the saying of St. Paul, that by faith we have access to grace. His doctrine amounts to no more than what Mr. Newman himself confesses when he calls faith the "sole inward instrument of justification." That pale phantom of justifying faith, which flits about, a mere outline, a line without breadth or thickness, is not to be found in Luther's pages, but only in the pages of Luther's adversaries. Nor knew he aught of that other meagre shadow, justification by imputed righteousness alone;" he said that those three things,

51 That Luther never “renounced” any of his “extravagances" directly or" indirectly," early or late, is a point strongly insisted on by Archdeacon Hare, in note W, pp. 712-13. His extravagances were strictly within the bounds of Scripture.

52 Mr. N. does not give this, I believe, to Luther, but calls it the high

Faith, Christ, and Imputation, should always go together, and that faith and works should never be separated." They who say that Luther's scheme presents but half of the Gospel, know but half of his mind, and that not rightly."

Surely no one can think that the sentences quoted in the Lectures on Justification at p. 10, from Luther's Commentary, contain any proof that he thought or taught that "justifying faith is without love when it justifies," which Mr. N. declares to be plainly his doctrine, and "no matter of words." Luther, in them, shows that faith not love is the root of good works, since Paul said Faith worketh by Love, not Love worketh; he shows that charity or following works do not inform faith, that is, do not impart to it its justifying power, but that faith informs charity, and is "the sun or sun-beam of this shining," What is this more than Mr. N. himself asserts in Lecture X. when he teaches that faith, as faith, in its distinct character, unites the soul with God, or as he Protestant doctrine. High indeed in the heaven of absurdity. It should be sent to Milton's Limbo with a living Faith apart in time from Love -and should not Mr. Newman's own Justification precedent to justifying Faith, go along with them? Indeed I think this last is the Queen Chimæra of the whole tribe.

53 The confusion respecting the priority of justifying faith to love perhaps arises in this way. Faith includes belief, or the mere assent of the understanding to divine truth; though it is more than belief; and intellectual assent or perception is the means whereby we obtain the faith of the heart, which is joined with love. The one may not indeed precede the other in time; we may perceive the truth and embrace it spiritually at the same moment; the willingness of the heart clearing the head, and the head opening the heart; still there is a priority of faith to love in idea. Fides est humanæ salutis initium, fundamentum et radix omnis justificationis, says the Council of Trent. The Homily of Salvation shuts out love from the office of justifying; why is this, except that faith is conceived to have come first and done the work? Of course we make the notion both absurd and mischievous, if we suppose that justification is obtained by some one act of faith once acted. Faith is always coming first in the soul of the Christian, laying hold of Christ (or in Mr. Newman's words, uniting the soul to God), and producing good works.

54 Luther preaches the whole Gospel with an emphasis on particular parts to suit the exigencies of the day. So in our Tracts for the Times there is an emphasis on sacraments, outward works, all kinds of ecclesias. tical visibilities, and whatever can be brought forward relative to priestly power and authority.

expresses it elsewhere, is "the only connecting bond between the soul and Christ." I say again, that everywhere in the Com. mentary Luther connects charity with works and the outward life, and nowhere describes justifying faith as existing apart from the habit of love. His doctrine on this point is merely an expansion of St. Austin's sound maxim: per fidem (hominem) posse justificari, etiamsi Legis opera non præcesserint; sequuntur enim. justificatum, non præcedunt justificandum. (Quoted by Mr. N. him. self p. 438.)

Mr. Newman has beautifully described Luther's conception of justifying faith in his first lecture. It was then perhaps that he fell in love with it, though he did not tell his love at the time, but acted the lover in Lecture X. taking it for better for worse. I hope he will never divorce it. Yes! Luther thought of faith as the mere turning or adhering of the soul to Christ, which "may be said" not "by a figure of speech," but literally and truly, to "live in Him in whose image it rests." He thought that love lost itself in the object, Christ dwelling in the soul; that love of our neighbor, charity, and all the family of outward works, when set up as our justification or a part of it, were as a solid screen betwixt us and the Saviour, while the former was a medium like the fluid air, colorless and transparent. St. Paul's language in the fourth of Romans prima facie favors Luther's view, because it so pointedly calls faith our righteousness, as if we had no other justifying principle within us; and declares salvation to be of grace not of debt, and if it were obtained, even in a conditional sense, by our virtues, it would seem to be in some sort our duc. But, on second thoughts, we perceive that what is true of faith may be safely ascribed to the sanctification that is one with it, and that salvation is of grace if secured by the graces given us from above. St. Paul's only object was to show that men cannot save themselves, and Luther's only object was to prevent the practical recurrence of this trust in self-salvation by detached and outside performances.

The great opponent of Luther on the article of Justification, agrees with him on the following points, which, I think, are all the points of this high game. First, in holding Christ living in the heart to be the true form of our righteousness. This is the