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

of low character may not be misled by the word Faith and ask useless questions.' 1

The English Reformers attempted no definition of Faith, and no definition is to be found in our Articles. But in the Homilies we read: 'A quick and living Faith is not only the common belief of the Articles of our faith, but it is also a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a steadfast hope of good things to be received at God's hand.' The Homily goes on to say: Dead Faith is not the sure and substantial Faith that saveth sinners. Another Faith there is in Scripture, which is not idle, unfruitful, dead, but worketh by charity, as St. Paul declareth.' 2 Elsewhere: 'There is one work in the which be all good works; that is, Faith that worketh by charity. If thou have it, thou hast the ground of all good works for the virtues of strength, wisdom, temperance, and justice, be all referred to this same Faith." is a popular statement of a sound doctrine of Faith.

6

This

The difference between the Catholic and the Protestant view of Faith may be made clearer if I quote a few sentences in which Newman sums up his own view of Faith, in opposition to that of the Reformers. Justifying Faith is Faith developed into height and depth and breadth, as if in a bodily form; not as a picture but as an image; with a right side and a left, a without and a within; not a mere impression or sudden gleam of light upon the soul, not knowledge, or emotion, or conviction, which ends with itself, but the beginning of that which is eternal, the operation of the indwelling Power which acts from within us outwards and round about us, works in us mightily, so intimately with our will as to be in a true sense one with it; pours itself out into our whole mind, runs over into our thoughts, desires, feelings, purposes, attempts, and

1 Harnack, History of Dogma, vii. p. 255.

Sermon of Faith, Part L

Of Good Works, Part L

works, combines them all together into one, makes the whole man its one instrument, and justifies him into one holy gracious ministry, one embodied lifelong act of Faith, one sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is his reasonable service. Such is Faith . . . existing indeed in feelings, but passing on into acts, into victories of whatever kind over self. These acts we sometimes call labours, sometimes endurances, sometimes confessions, sometimes devotions, sometimes services; but they are all instances of self-command, arising from Faith seeing the invisible world, and Love choosing it.' 1

Now hear Luther. Perhaps you will think that the difference is after all mainly one of emphasis. Faith is a divine work in us, through which we are changed and regenerated by God. Oh, it is a living, busy, active, powerful thing, this Faith, so that it is impossible for it not to do us good continually. Neither does it ask whether good works are to be done, but before one asks it has done them, and is doing them always. But any one who does not such works is an unbelieving man, who gropes and looks about him for Faith and good works, and knows neither what Faith is nor what good works are. Faith is a living, deliberate confidence in the grace of God, so certain that for it it could die a thousand deaths. And such confidence and knowledge of divine grace makes us joyous, brave, and cheerful towards God and all creation.' 2

In the nineteenth century, and at the present time, there has been and is much controversy about the meaning of Faith. In the popular teaching of the Roman Church there is a disastrous tendency to regard it as an act of violence exercised by the will upon the intellect, in obedience to external authority. The quotations from St. Thomas Aquinas, though they contain nothing to which we could object, show how easily this view might be taken. 1 Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 302. * Luther, Preface to Epistle to the Romans.

But the Thomist philosophy was an honest attempt to place theology on a rational basis. At the present day, even so liberal a Romanist as Father Tyrrell can define Faith as voluntary certainty,' and as an actively free belief.' 'Under the force of evidence,' he says,

6

6 our mind is passive and receptive like a mirror; but in the case of free assent, like Faith, we have to assert ourselves. A certain sense of unreality, one might almost say of pretence, is the normal and natural accompaniment of these freely chosen beliefs.' 'The difference between this and mere fictions or working hypotheses is that in the case of Faith we hold to the belief in obedience to the command of God as made known to us by the voice of conscience. But all this will not prevent that seeming black to us, which God tells us, and which we sincerely believe, to be white. Therefore a certain sense of unreality is part of the trial of Faith.' 'The great mass of our beliefs are reversible, and are dependent for their stability on the action or permission of the will.' I shall deal with this strange theory of Faith in a later lecture. Here I merely wish you to note its existence. It has had two logical and inevitable developments. With the help of the Kantian philosophy, or later systems based on Kant, the intellectual aspect of things has been disparaged, and the 'will-world' exalted to supremacy. All mere 'facts' being thus discredited in advance, Faith can create its own world with considerable independence. On the other side we see the larger and stronger party in the Roman Church scorning and prohibiting all attempts to accommodate dogmas to modern discoveries, and falling back upon implicit, unquestioning obedience to whatever the Church has chosen to declare.

We have now sketched the career of this remarkable word during the two thousand years of its life. IIσTISΠίστις Fides Glaube-Faith: they are not exact equivalents; each has had a history of its own. The conception has been narrowed in various ways-now into bare assent,