which entirely transcend human knowledge, but it is not confined to what is essentially beyond our faculties. There are truths, such as the existence of God, which are capable of demonstration, but only by a course of reason which few have brains enough to follow; and therefore God has revealed them. The distinction between reason and revelation corresponds to the distinction between knowledge and Faith. Faith comes between opinion and knowledge; it involves an act of the will. "The intellect," he says, ' assents to a thing in two ways, in one way because it is moved to assent by the object itself, which is known by itself, or by something else; in the other way the intellect assents to a thing, not because it is sufficiently moved to assent by the object itself, but by a certain choice, by which it voluntarily inclines to one side rather than the other. If this choice is made from doubt and fear of the alternative, it is opinion; if with certainty and without fear, it is Faith.' 1 He also says that the objective ground of Faith is authority, of knowledge, reason. And since the authority is divine truth, it may be said that Faith has a greater certainty than knowledge, which relies on human reason.2 Since, however, the objects of Faith are less fully apprehended, being above the intellect of man, knowledge from another point of view is more certain than Faith. The certainty of Faith, on one side, comes from the will, which is guided by 'veritas prima sive Deus.' Faith, however, is not an act of arbitrary choice; it presupposes some knowledge: 'cognitio fidei præsupponit cognitionem naturalem sicut et natura gratiam.3 Faith cannot demonstrate what it believes; else it would be knowledge and not Faith; but it does investigate the grounds by which a man is led to believe-e.g. that the words were spoken by God.* 1 De Veritate, Quaest. xiv., art. 1. It is plain from these passages that Faith, for St. Thomas Aquinas, necessarily involves both an intellectual and a moral act; and also, I think, that he has shrunk from subjecting the basis of Church authority to a searching scrutiny. The practical question which we all have to face is whether we ought to allow the will to believe' to influence us in our choice of authorities-e.g. whether we may choose to follow the authority of the Church in preference to that of a naturalist or metaphysician. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the will is guided by 'the primary Truth, which is God.' If so, Faith would seem to be only the human side of divine grace, immanent in the human mind; and it must be ultimately independent of and superior to all external authority, even that of the Church. The authority of the Church can only be accepted as final on the further assumption that the donum veritatis belongs to one institution and one only. With the Reformation, controversy about the meaning of Faith became, for the second time in the history of the Church, acute. Every one knows that 'Justification by Faith' was the corner-stone of Luther's doctrinal system. His own account of the process by which he found the light is as follows. When he first read the words of the Epistle to the Romans, iustitia Dei in eo revelatur, he said to himself, 'Is it not enough that wretched sinners, already damned for original sin, should be overwhelmed by so many calamities by the decrees of the Ten Commandments, but God must threaten us, even in His Gospel, with His justice and anger?' But at last, he says, 'I perceived that the justice of God is that whereby, with God's blessing, man lives, namely, Faith. Thereupon I felt as if born again, and it seemed to me that the gates of heaven stood wide open.' It is not easy to see how the Justice, or righteousness, of God can be identified with Faith, if Faith has a human side at all; but Luther found ineffable peace in the thought that those who, through с Faith in Christ as the revelation of God's righteousness, have accepted Him, are clothed with a righteousness not their own-with the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. The form of this doctrine is derived chiefly from the Epistle to the Romans, studied in Latin with St. Augustine's commentary. In the sixteenth century, however, it was a crucial question, What is the proper instrument of justification? This 'justification' (to 'justify' means to pronounce righteous,' by judicial decree, but with no suggestion of a legal fiction) was regarded as the application of the merits of Christ to the individual, which application, it was agreed on all hands, must be through an instrument divinely appointed. An important passage, often appealed to, in Clement of Rome,2 says: 'We also are not justified by ourselves, neither by our own wisdom or knowledge or piety or any works which we did in holiness of heart, but by that Faith in which God Almighty has justified all men from the beginning.' Both sides were also agreed that Faith justifies. But the Catholics distinguished between fides informis, inert opinion, and fides formata, which is perfected by the love and good works which spring from it. Among the propositions anathematised by the Council of Trent were: that a man may be justified without grace: that man is justified only by the imputation of the justice of Christ, or only by the remission of sins, without inherent grace, or charity : that justifying Faith is nothing but confidence in the mercy of God, who forgives sins for the sake of Christ: that man is absolved and justified because he firmly believes that he is absolved and justified. On the other hand, the Reformers held that Faith is the one principle which God's grace uses for restoring us to His favour. We need a radical change, which change is 1 As in Chrysostom's comment: 'When a just judge's sentence pronounces us just (dikalovs åπopalve‹) what signifies the accuser?'-Hom. `in Ep. ad Rom. 15. 2 Clem. i. 32. called justification from God's side, and regeneration on our side. It is initiated by the secret influence of the Holy Ghost, co-operating, as a rule, with the Word of God, or some other means of grace; and it appropriates salvation, leading to a feeling of absolute peace and confidence that our sins are forgiven. Justification,' according to this theory, is a change in God's dealings with us; and Faith means trust.' 1 This is clearly an attempt to narrow the meaning of Faith, by excluding from it some of the elements which it had been made to contain; and accordingly the Reformers defined Faith largely by negations. It is not intellectual belief, e.g. in the fact of the Incarnation; it is not knowledge and acceptance of any dogmas; it is, in itself, quite separate from charity or any good works; if it must be defined, it is a trust in Christ's merits for salvation. From this trust, all the fruits of the Spirit are said to flow. Melanchthon, the Confession of Augsburg, and the more moderate Lutherans generally, defined Faith as 'fiduciary apprehension' of Gospel mercy. Faith in itself has no virtue, the meritorious cause of Justification being the death and satisfaction of Christ, which Faith appropriates. Faith is to be defined rather by what it does than by what it is this is a favourite answer to the objection that Faith is certainly not only fiduciary apprehension, which may be destitute of any moral element. A real apprehension of Christ, they say, must necessarily be beyond explanation. But if so, it is not adequately explained as being' fiduciary apprehension.' The word ' apprehension,' moreover, needs definition. It is an ambiguous term, which tends to confuse the reception of news with the appropriation of a gift. As for the exclusion of love and good works from justifying Faith, the question seems to be little more than a scholastic dispute of no great practical interest. Faith 1 Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 6. from our point of view, is in its earliest stage a vague and undifferentiated apprehension of God, the first stirring of divine grace, which is an active principle working in and through the natural faculties. It is intended to develop and find explicit expression in all parts of our nature. If we must answer the question whether Faith or love is the formal cause of justification, we can only say that Faith is the beginning, love the crown, of the spiritual life, and that those who put love first, in time as well as in dignity, are in error. The Catholic doctrine is that Faith, as a disposing condition, is prior to justification, and that caritas is posterior to it. The only antecedent of Faith is a bona voluntas, a pia affectio. This accords with the view taken in these lectures. Melanchthon recedes considerably from the rigour of Luther's doctrine of justification by Faith only. He explains that it only means that we must renounce the merit of the good works which are undoubtedly associated with Faith; and he calls justification by Faith 'Paulina figura.' Nothing can show Melanchthon's position more clearly than the following passage from his Directions for Visitors, sanctioned by Luther. Although there are some who think that nothing should be taught before Faith, and that repentance should be left to follow from and after Faith, so that the adversaries may not say that we retract our former doctrine, yet the matter must be thus viewed: Because repentance and law belong alike to the common Faith (for one must believe of course that there is a God who threatens and commands) let it be for the man of degraded character that such portions of Faith [Luther had taught that Faith has no portions] are allowed to remain under the names of precept, law, fear, etc., in order that they may understand more discriminately the Faith in Christ which the Apostles call justifying Faith, i.e. which makes just and cancels sin, an effect not produced by Faith in the precept and by repentance, and that the man |