and if any one denies that a man is forthwith completely justified, it is, with them, all one with denying that he is "justified by faith only." I say this, by way of explaining how one who takes this view of justification must, if he judge another by his principles, do him injustice unintentionally; he cannot understand how our own merits and deservings are not introduced into the act of justification. On the other hand, according to our Church, we are by Baptism brought into a state of salvation, or justification (for the words are thus far equivalent), a state into which we were brought of GOD's free mercy alone, without works, but in which having been placed, we are to "work out our own salvation with fear and trembling," through the indwelling Spirit of "God, working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure;" a state admitting of degrees, according to the degree of sanctification; (although the first act, whereby we were brought into it, did not) a state admitting of relapses and recoveries, but which is weakened by every relapse; injured by lesser, destroyed for the time by grievous, sin; and after such sin recovered with difficulty, in proportion to the greatness of the sin, and the degree of its wilfulness, and of the grace withstood.

Now all this does not lie within the scope of the Article; the Article expressly condemns persons holding two opposite errors, "those which say they can no more sin as long as they live here," and "those who deny the place of forgiveness to such as

truly repent." But who "truly repent;" what are helps towards true repentance; when a man, who has been guilty of "deadly sin wilfully committed after Baptism," may be satisfied that he is truly repentant for it; whether and to what degree he should, all his life after, continue his repentance for it; whether he be altogether pardoned, or whether only so long as he continue in a state of penitence; wherein his penitence should consist; whether continued repentance would efface the traces of his sin in himself; whether he might ever in this life look upon himself as restored to the state in which he had been, had he not committed it; whether it affect the degree of his future bliss, or its effects be effaced by his repentance, but their extinction depend upon the continued greatness of his repentance; whether cessation of his active repentance may not bring back degrees of the sin upon him; whether it shall appear again in the day of judgment; these, and the like, are questions upon which the Article does not speak, but upon which a modern popular theology has decided very peremptorily, and will have no interference with its decrees. According to it, the whole office of repentance is to bring men to CHRIST, the terrors of the law are to drive men to dread the punishment due to their sins, to renounce them, to seek for reconciliation through the free mercy of CHRIST; and so far is, of course, true; but when men have thus been brought to "lay hold of His saving merits," then, according to them, their sins

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are done away; they "are covered';" they can appear no more; "the handwriting is blotted out;" a man has no more to do with them than to thank CHRIST that he has been delivered from them. This apprehension of Christ's merits" is to them instead of Baptism, a full remission of sins, completely effacing them; and so often as any man embraces those merits, so often, according to them, are his sins effaced. To revert to past sin, is to doubt of CHRIST'S mercy; to bear a painful recollection of it, is to be under the bondage of the law; to seek to efface it by repentance, is weakness of faith; to do acts of mercy, or self-denial, or self-abasement, or to fast, with reference to it, is to interfere with the "freeness and fulness of the Gospel ;" to insist upon them, is "to place repentance in stead of Christ." This system has but two topics, repent and believe the Gospel;" and so far right; but these two so narrowed, that repentance is to precede faith, faith to supersede repentance. Other offices of repentance, it scarcely entertains in thought, except to denounce or to scoff at 2.

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It was against this system my Lord, that I spoke : this abuse of the doctrine of justification by faith is searing men's consciences now, as much as the "indulgences" of the Romish system did before. It used to be said that "the Romish was an easy re

1 Ps. xxxii. 2.

2 E. g. in the way in which certain acts of self-discipline instanced from Bp. Taylor, in Tract 66, p. 8, have been jeered at.

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ligion to die in ;" but even the Romish, in its corruptions, scarcely offered terms so easy, at all events made not a boast of the easiness of its terms; if it had but the dregs of the system of the ancient Church, stale and unprofitable as these often were, they had yet something of the strength or the bitterness of the ancient medicine: they at least, testified to a system, when men made sacrifices for the good of their souls, humbled themselves in dust and ashes; practised self-discipline;" accused and condemned "themselves, that so they might find mercy at their heavenly Father's hand for Christ's sake, and not "be accused and condemned in that fearful judg"ment;" felt "the remembrance" of their past sins to be "grievous unto" them, "the burthen" to be "intolerable;" "were grieved and wearied with the burthen of their sins;" "turned to God in weeping, fasting and praying;" "bewailed and lamented their "sinful life, acknowledged and confessed their offences, and sought to bring forth worthy fruits of

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penance;" and in cases of notorious sin, were "put 3 "to open penance, and punished in this world that "their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord." The sun of the ancient Church was setting, sadly obscured by the mists and vapours of earth which had gathered round it; yet it did occasionally gleam through on the eye, which watched constantly for it

2 Communion Service.

1 Visitation of the Sick.
3 Commination Service.

behind those mists; and even to these clouds which half hid it, it imparted oftentimes its own, though a melancholy, lustre. Romanism was, in practice as well as in doctrine, decayed; yet to those who "loved the stones, and pitied the dust" of the ancient city of God, its very ruins marked the outline, which they might trace out for themselves : treasures were buried there for those, who would clear away the heaps, which decay accumulated over them. To the many, her's was a debasing system, yet there might be, and was often, reality in it, to those who would find it.

The refined distinctions, which she made in carrying out her divisions of mortal and venial sins; her accurate allotment of punishments, (as if she could measure out the degree of guilt contracted by each offence against God); her inventions of attrition and contrition; the assumption of an absolute power to remit altogether venial, and the eternal consequences of mortal sins; not to speak now of the sale1 of indulgences or the commutation of penance for money; these favoured the corruptions of carnal men 2, stifled

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The sale of indulgences was prohibited by the Council of Trent (Sess. xxi. c. 9. de reformat.) "that all might at length truly understand that these heavenly treasures of the Church were employed not for gain but for piety," and the extent of previous corruptions admitted; their use, as a means of power, is continued. See quotations in Mr. Newman, on Romanism, lect. 4. "Doctrine of Infallibility politically considered," p. 145. ed. 2.

2 See more fully Newman on Romanism, lect. 3. "Doctrine of Infallibility morally considered," p. 113, sqq. ed. 2.