56

idea which is at the bottom of his whole theory, and it is very distinctly set forth in the comments on chap. ii., verses 16 and 20," Secondly, in holding faith to be the sole inward instrument by which the conjunction of the soul with Christ is effected. That Christ dwells in the heart by faith is directly affirmed in Scripture. Thirdly, in holding works necessary" in the order of salvation, as necessarily flowing from saving faith or rather from the Holy Ghost, united by faith with the soul, and the proper signs and manifestations of grace 'impetrated by faith." Fourthly, in holding that the outward law for the righteous is superseded by the inward law of the mind, though it remains to keep the flesh in subjection. Fifthly, which might have been firstly, that saving faith is itself produced by the Holy Ghost." Sixthly, that the Holy Ghost is given, and the soul renewed, in baptism. Seventhly, that conversion is wrought, and I suppose I may add, since "St. James says so," and St. Peter too, that we are divinely begotten or born again, in some spiritual sense, by the Word of God.

55 Mr. Newman gives him credit for this, in Lecture I., p. 22, and appendix, pp. 405 and 409,-" the bold, nay correct language of Luther, that Christ himself is the form of our justification,”-my Father's deep satisfaction in this thought may be seen from the following passage in the Remains, vol. iv.

"And I, my loving Brentius, to the end I may better understand this case, do use to think in this manner, namely, as if in my heart were no quality or virtue at all, which is called faith, and love (as the Sophists do speak and dream thereof), but I set all on Christ, and say, my formalis justitia, that is, my sure, my constant and complete righteousness (in which is no want nor failing, but is, as before God it ought to be) is Christ my Lord and Saviour." (Luther's Table Talk, p. 213.)

Aye! this, this is indeed to the purpose. In this doctrine my soul can find rest. I hope to be saved by faith, not by my faith, but by the faith of Christ in me." S. T. C.

56 Gal. ii., 20. Eph. iii, 17.

57 Commentary, chap. iii., verse 11, and elsewhere, Luther teaches that the righteousness which saves is a passive righteousness given us from above. Had he taught that we were saved by faith, as an act of our own taking us to Christ and laying hold of Him, this would have been as false and injurious as to ascribe salvation to outward works. The faith which accepts grace is itself the effect of grace.

58 Ib., chap. iii., verses 27, 29. Chap. iv., verse 6.

Wherein then do they differ? why truly in this. Luther denies that we are justified by the graces and works that flow out of our justification; Mr. Newman affirms that we are justified by them, that they help to justify together with the faith which makes them what they are. This appeared to Luther a hysteron proteron; and it certainly does look like a contradiction in Mr. Newman's scheme, that after confessing faith to be the sole inward instrument of justification he should call graces and works instruments also;--that after agreeing with the Homilist to shut them out from the office of justifying, he should think it essential to a sound belief--to shut them in again. Granted that the dis pute is a verbal one, still if we decide that one form of words is the correct form, we surely ought not to adopt another form which directly contradicts it. As for St. James, when he said that man is not justified by faith alone, he evidently meant by faith not what Luther defines it, a gift and a present of God in our hearts, the substance whereof is our will," but what Antinomians mean by it, mere belief; for this is a common art of rhetorical argument to adopt the adversary's expressions and turn them against him. With him works stood for a working spirit, by that common figure which puts the effect for the cause, as a man might say, this "spring was health to me," meaning the cause of health. The outward act of Abraham was nothing; in the mind of Abraham were an act of faith and an act of obedience intimately united. Now, Luther taught that the faith in this joint act alone justified; and Mr. N. seems to say the same, when he calls faith the sole inward instrument of justification. Luther's opponents maintain, that the obedience, which is one with the faith, helps to justify, and this Mr. Newman affirms also: but how can he make it consist with the sole instrumentality of faith?

Luther was

Table Talk, chap. 13. Of Faith and the cause thereof vacillating in his definitions of faith, for he sometimes placed it in the understanding and sometimes in the will, whereas it is in both; but he always described it as a work of the Holy Ghost (Comm., chap. iii., ver. 11), he calls it a believing with the heart, and he declares that it cannot. be separated from Hope which resteth in the will, the two having respect to the other, as the two cherubims of the mercy seat, which could not be divided. My Father says he discoursed best on Faith in his Pastille Remains, iv.

Surely that which alone joins us to Christ alone justifies us Now, Mr. Newman declares that faith is "the only instrument or connecting bond between the soul and Christ." What sig nifies it, as against Luther, to say, that according to St. James, we are "justified in good works?" Luther only denied that we are justified by them.

Mr. Newman has a great objection to Luther's explanatory phrase apprehensive; he will not say that faith justifies by laying hold of Christ and applying Him to the soul, though this is said in our Homilies, with which he yet seeks, in his work on Justification, to be in accordance. He calls this way of speaking a human subtlety, and alleges that such words are not in Scripture: yet surely there is quite as much of human subtlety and extrascriptural language in his own scheme: where can we find it said by the Saviour or his Apostles, that faith is "but the secondary or representative instrument of justification," or its "sustaining cause," "not the initiation of the justified-state," or that

it justifies as including all other graces in and under it," as having "an unexplained connexion with the invisible world,” or five hundred sayings of like sort? These are but inferences from Scripture, not Scripture itself. Luther's term laying hold of Christ seems to me a mere translation into figurative language of what Scripture repeatedly affirms, namely that Christ dwells in the heart by faith; and the very same thing appears to be implied in Mr. N.'s own admission that it alone unites the soul to God as the inward instrument of justification. Even if faith and works. of faith are all one and what is true of the parent is true of the offspring, still if Christ alone is the meritorious cause of salvation, our personal righteousness justifies as connecting us with Him. that is as apprehensive, and not merely as purifying our souls in his sight. Luther denied that it justified in the latter sense at all, and whether he was right or wrong in this-this is the doctrine of our Articles and Homilies, which certainly intimate that not the faithful work, but faith in the work justifies, by laying hold on Christ. They who condemn his teaching in the present day, copy his own fault, unfairness to his opponents-casting into one condemnation practical perverters with theoretic teachers-while they hide all his merits behind a bushel.

Many of Luther's opponents remind one of Jack the Giantkiller's doughty host, they think they are belaboring Jack, while they are but beating a stuffed bolster. Mr. Newman is too skilful a combatant for this; but his fight against Luther is not more effectual; he keeps gazing at him with a look of deep hostility, but rather makes feints than really strikes him, and when he dces aim a stroke at the old swordsman it descends upon his shield or his breast armor. There is one point in Mr. Newman's scheme, and one alone, which seems to me utterly false, not in words alone but in sense: I mean his assertion that justification precedes justifying faith; that faith does but take up and sustain a spiritual state already established in the soul; that. the faith which is our access to grace is unjustified and unjustifying; contrary to the doctrine of Aquinas who teaches that the Spirit produces its own recipient, that it enters by the avenue of faith which it first opens out. Luther's own view of baptism implies as much undoubtedly, and it seems to me that he is wrong in too much agreement with Patrician theology, not in too much de parture from it.

As for the Apostolic teaching, I believe that it is quite on one side of these contentions; that the object of St. Paul was to reute Judaism, the notion that men can save themselves by the mere direction and compulsion of an outward law, without Christ in the heart; not to combat such an opinion as Bishop Bull's or that set forth in the Council of Trent; that the object of St. James was to put down Antinomianism, not such a Solifidian view as Luther's. I believe these inspired teachers would have asIsented to the statement of either party, and when they heard each confess Christ crucified and salvation by his merits, would have inquired no further. It is grievous to hear Christians accuse each other of irreligion and impiety on such grounds as their different views on this question." "Satanic influence !" cry the

60

60 Bishop Buil observes that there is but the difference of a qua and a que between his view and the Solifidian, when you come to the bottom of the latter; but is it not strange that he should ridicule the Lutheran because he fights fiercely for qua (the opinion that faith alone which worketh by love justifies), yet fight himself for qua (the opinion that faith inasmuch as it worketh by love iustifieth), as, if the safety of the Church

parties one against another :—as if Satan was simple enough to spend his time in weaving webs of justification! The nets with which he catches souls are of very different make and materials.

02

It was not these bubbles which my Father was thinking of when he called "Luther, in parts, the most evangelical writer he knew after the apostles and apostolic men :" it was the depth of his insight into the heart of man and into the ideas of the Bible, the fervor and reality of his religious feelings, the manliness and tenderness of his spirit, the vehement eloquence with. which he assails the Romish practical fallacies and abuses. He even contends with Luther when he lays too much stress on his Solifidian dogma, the exclusion of charity from the office of justifying; and on the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect preferred the notions of Hooker to those of the earlier assertor of faith. Perhaps it may be objected to Luther's teach. ing, that he does not expressly enough distinguish between the ideal and the actual, the abstract and the realized. Luther declares, after St. Paul, that the outward law remains for the out ward man, is dead for the spiritual man: but in actual men and women the carnal and spiritual exist together in different proportions. If any Christian on the face of the earth should apply to himself without reserve what St. Paul and what Luther say of the spiritual man, he will fall into spiritual error of the deepest kind. There have been great disputes whether St. Paul depended on the decision. I think if he had fought with Luther himself instead of certain narrow-minded disciples of Luther's school, he would have been brought to see that the Solifidian statement was at least as good as his own. If 'quæ can be wrested into Antinomianism more easily than qua, on the other hand qua more readily slips into Judaism than qua.

61 Either the Romanist or the Lutheran doubtless may add to his belief of Redemption by the merits of Christ what overthrows croreshadows it, in practice. But these practical falsehoods and heresies do not appear in formal schemes of Justification; let them be hunted out and exposed, but not confounded with theories and confessions of faith.

62 Remains, vol. iv. His views on this subject are given in his nole on Fenelon, Remains, yol. ii.—in the notes on a Sermon of Hooker's, Ib., iii.,-on Donne, Ib.,-on Luther's Table Talk, Ib., iv.,-on £ Barrister's Hints, Ib.,-on The Pilgrim's Progress. Ib.,—and in his Essay on Faith, Ib.