iv! gf the Gheologicay Semin, Ξ %Y PRINCETON, N. J. BX 5137 ) ARTICLE III. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SPIRITUAL PROOF. Of the going down of Christ into Hell.—As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also it is to be believed that He went down into Hell. De Descensu Christi ad Inferos—Quemadmodum Christus pro nobis mortuus est, et sepultus, ita est etiam credendus ad Inferos descendisse. Division. Two Subjects. 1. Hell. 2. Christ’s Descent into Hell. 1. Heil. (1.) The Meaning and History of the word. (a.) Our old Saxon word “hell” (from helan, to hide, or conceal), now generally used to denote the place or state of punishment for the wicked after death, and the abode of evil spirits, had formerly a wider signification, in accordance with its etymology, as the covered or concealed place, and therefore has been used, though somewhat unfortunately, in our English Version of the Scriptures, frequently to represent two perfectly distinct words—Sheol or Hades, and Gehenna. (ὁ.) With the Hebrews, as represented by the Old Testament, Sheol (?i8Y—the hollow or subterranean pit, from 7Y¥, to be hollow), meant the general receptacle of the disembodied departed. “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave (sheol)?” (Ps. lxxxix. 48). Where ‘“‘death” and ‘“sheol” are evidently of the same universal meaning, and in parallelism. This receptacle, however, they divided into two parts. The abode of the righteous: “ But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave (sheol); for he shall receive me” (Ps. xlix. 15). And the abode of the wicked: “They (Korah, Dathan, and Abiram) went down alive into the pit (sheol)” (Num. xvi. 33). “The wicked shall be turned into hell (sheol)” (Ps. ix. 17). (c.) With the Greek-speaking Christians, as represented by the New Testament, Hades ("Aéjz, most probably from «& privative and ἐδεῖν to see—the argument against which derivation, from the aspirate in the Attic, not being tenable) is also the receptacle of the dead, with its EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 31 separate abodes of the righteous and wicked more clearly defined, as Paradise and Gehenna. “© death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory ?” (1 Cor. xv. 55). Where “grave” literally is Hades, and being in parallelism with “death” (as “death” and ‘“sheol” in Ps. lxxxix. 48, above), clearly intends the general receptacle of departed spirits, with- out reference to their condition of happiness or misery. “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise—év τῷ παραδείσω" (Luke xxiii 43). The abode of the righteous. “It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell (Gehenna)” (Matt. v. 29, 30). The abode of the wicked. (d.) Other expressions used by the Jews to denote that part of Hades inhabited by the blessed dead ; and which are less or more sustained in the New Testament. “The garden of Eden,” which, according to the Hebrews, was in the upper part of Hades. The phrase without doubt is sanctioned in the “ Paradise” of Luke xxiii. 43 : a word of Armenian origin, Pardes, applied to a park or garden adjoining the house, and replenished for use and ornament, but which had now passed, in the language of the Jewish schools, and so to the current phraseology of the day, to signify the abode of the faithful after death. ‘‘ Under the Throne of Glory.” Perhaps parallel with “under the Altar” of Rev. vi. 9, as the Hebrews considered the altar God’s throne. ‘In Abraham’s bosom.” This figurative expression, taken from the practice of accubation at meals, to indicate blissful rest and enjoyment with Abraham, is expressly used by our Lord Himself in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 22).} (e.) With Latin Christians, as represented by Jerome’s version, or the Vulgate, Sheol is for the most part translated by Infernus, and in the other instances by Inferus, with a preference for the plural Inferi (which Latin forms are most probably variations of digamated Greek evF egoc—that which is situate or dwells beneath or under the earth). And in the New Testament, Hades is everywhere translated Infernus, except Matt. xvi. 18, where for σύλαι cdédov, the gates of Hades, we have porte inferi, the infernal gates. While Gehenna is simply used throughout for its equivalent Greek, I'éeva. (7.) In our English Version Sheol equally is represented by “ grave ” and “hell,” thirty-one times each, and three times by “pit.” Whereas “hell” in the New Testament is the uniform rendering both of Hades and Gehenna, wherever they occur (probably twelve times each) in the original.? (g.) And in accordance with this idea of the invisible state or place of departed spirits, were the mythologies of the heathen world ; which, however simple and instructive amongst the early Egyptians, soon became overloaded with fiction by the Greeks and Romans; but were never able wholly to efface the broad marks of what we must conclude 1 Lightfoot, Hore Hebraice. Kitto, Cyc. Bib. Lit.. S.WV. Paradise and Abraham’s bosom. 2 See Kitto’s Cyc. Bib. Lit., S. V. Hell. 32 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. to have been the original impress of truth, derived from patriarchal and Divine sources. Thus the ancient Greeks spoke of a “common Hades,” with its two receptacles, one for the souls of the good, and the other for the souls of the wicked. And Virgil, in the sixth book of his A®neid, says : “This is the place where the path divides in two: the right, which leads to great Pluto’s walls; by this our way to Elysium lies: but the left carries on the punishment of the wicked, and conveys to cursed Tartarus.” (h.) It is interesting to compare the descriptions given us of Sheol and Hades in holy Scripture with those in early heathen tradition. Thus the Homeric Hades (including Tartarus) is the general recep- tacle of the manes of the departed. And Sheol is “the congregation of the dead” (Prov. xxi. 16). And see above. The Homeric Hades is subterranean. And the Scripture Sheol and Hades are also beneath. ‘‘He that goeth down to the grave (sheol) shall come up no more” (Job vii. 9). “Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell (hades) ” (Matt. xi. 23). The great poet’s Hades is a place of darkness, deep and spacious. And Sheol is “a land of darkness, as darkness itself” (Job x. 23). “ High as heaven . . . deeper than hell (sheol)” (Job xi. 8). While “ΤΡ αὖ ”—which we may take as the parallel of Tartarus—“is ordained of old; he hath made it deep and large” (Isa. xxx. 33). Homer speaks of Hades having strong gates. And Christ Himself of “the gates of hell—wtaas gdou” (Matt. xvi. 18). Homer peoples it, among others, especially with Giants and Titans. And the great prophet of the Hebrews says: “Hell (sheol) from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones (lit. the Rephaim or Giants) of the earth” (Isa. xiv. 9). In the recesses of the infernal regions lay Tartarus, “where is an abyss most deep beneath . . . as far below Hades as heaven is from earth” (Hom. Il. 8). ‘‘Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell (sheol) ” (Ps. 1xxxvi. 13). This terrible prison is surrounded by the waters of Phlegethon, which emit continual flames, and its custody given to the furies, at once the gaolers and executioners; or by some traditicns, to one fury, the avenger of all sim. “The lake of fire and brimstone” (Rev. xx. 10). ‘Where their worm dicth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark ix. 44). And St. Peter uses the very word ‘“ Tartarus,” and in the single line of his description, whichever reading be adopted, we have an allusion, at all events, not at variance with ancient mythology. “ For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus (so the original), and delivered them into chains (σειραῖς---- others read ‘dens,’ σειροῆς) of darkness” (2 Pet. ii. 4). (i.) The Romish view divides Hades into three different receptacles. (1.) The most loathsome and dark prison, in which the souls of the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 33 damned, together with the unclean spirits, are tortured in eternal ‘and inextinguishable fire.” (2.) ‘‘The fire of purgatory, in which the souls of the just are purified by punishment for a stated time.” (3.) “The receptacle (commonly called Limbus Patrum) in which were received the souls of the saints who died before the coming of Christ our Lord” (Catechism of the Council of Trent). The dis- cussion of the distinctive features of this view will come before us under the Twenty-second Article. (j.) Thus, then, all these views, except the last—Jewish, Christian, and Heathen, agree in their main and great features: A future state, immediately after death, with separate abodes, for the righteous and the wicked. In other words, the New Testament picture is a copy of the Old Testament picture, with somewhat of more definite outline ; while the Heathen picture traces out that of the Old Testament in the very outline of the New. What stronger proof could be wanted of a common origin? Of the fact of a Revelation, and of the original unity of the human race? that the Heathen Hades is not an invention outside and independent of Scripture revelation ; and that the Sheol of the Old Testament is more than modern criticism would accord it —not simply the vague notions of Hebrew sages, derived from some indefinite source, but the truth of God originally conveyed to the one and common family of mankind ? (2.) The Place or Design of Hades in the Economy of Revelation. _ (a.) We are naturally prone to forget that the Bible only fully unveils the human family in their origin and probation, with a need- ful but partial note of their angel surroundings, and a mere glimpse at all or anything beyond. What that all beyond may be, in the hands of the Infinite Good, it must take eternity to scan, as it reads out the harmonies of Creation’s Universal Song of Praise. The Bible is neither more nor less than a special revelation, disclos- ing a gradually unfolded economy, or perhaps we should rather say, a series of closely interlinked economies, as “ parts of God’s ways,” in a portion of His universe: concentric circles with man as their point of attraction, ever widening, and widening on, until they reach, with- out fully embracing, the unseen world. It is often, we believe weakly, conceded by Christian commen- tators, that the early Israelites had dim—comparatively very imperfect notions of Sheol. But how account for the fact, as above, that the Elysium and Tartarus of ancient heathen mythology are, in their groundwork, the very facsimiles of the New Testament Hades? At all events, we feel assured, that even in the primeval and patriarchal ages, the fathers of the Old Testament saw enough of God’s truth, for their Economy. And even yet we ourselves are not permitted to dogmatise ; and know little beyond the broad outlines of the world beyond the grave. A Paradise and a Gehenna, issuing in a Heaven and a Hell, are affirmed. But the veil is not fully lifted. Curiosity is not gratified. But enough is revealed, to woo and to win us to the one, and to deter C 34 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and save us from the other: as the first footfall or entrance, in either case, upon our eternal state. (b.) The Place or Design of Hades, therefore, in the Economy of Revelation, is not Probationary. ‘‘ Where the tree falleth, there it shall be,” here, above anywhere else, is unexceptionally true; the whole bearing of Scripture being explicit and uniform on the subject. “As the Holy Ghost saith, To-day if ye will hear his voice” (Heb. ill. 7; Ps. χουν. 7). “Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. vi. 2; of. Isa. xlix. 8). “ What- soever thy hand findeth to do, doit with thy might ; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave (sheol), whither thou goest” (Eccles. ix. 10). (c.) But Hades, nevertheless, is a Transitional, and not a Terminal, State or Abode, with a fixed temporal function. In the natural order of things, it could not be otherwise. The body and the soul together, have obeyed (in Christ and spirit) or violated (in Satan and the flesh) God’s laws. And so long as the former sleeps in the dust and is unconscious, it is clear there cannot be a full and final award. ** Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation ” (John v. 28, 29). “ For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. xv. 53). “And it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled” (Rev. vi. 11). ‘‘ And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell (hades) delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell (hades) were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Rev. xx. 13, 14). (d.) Paradise, therefore, is not the perfect Heaven ; nor Gehenna, the proper Hell. “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke xxiii. 43). But Christ did not go to Heaven till after His resurrection. “‘ Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. xxv. 41). | But these words are spoken, on the day of the great Assize, to all the wicked of earth, “ the quick and the dead,” and therefore to all who had been already in Gehenna. So that Gehenna clearly cannot be the final or proper Hell of the wicked. (e.) Yet in this transitional state or abode, the soul does not “die nor sleep idly,” but is in a state of activity—of blissful rest and enjoyment, or painful restraint and torment. Hence the fortieth Article of Edward, somewhat unhappily ex- punged by Convocation in 1562, ran:—‘“ The souls. of them that depart this life do neither die with the bodies nor sleep idly. They EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 35 which say that the souls of such as depart hence do sleep, being without all sense, feeling, or perceiving, until the day of judgment, or affirm that the souls die with the bodies, and at the last day shall be raised up with the same, do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture.” Though the soul of man is not absolutely immortal, “God only having immortality” (1 Tim. vi. 16), yet being a spiritual and im- material substance, without composition of parts, it cannot suffer dissolution ; and therefore having no innate or constituent principle of corruption, must remain in a state of activity, even when separated from the body. Hence we read— “ς And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried ; and in hell (hades?) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments ” (Luke xvi. 22, 23). ‘‘To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke xxiii. 43). ‘‘ And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit --τὸ πνεῦμα wov—my individual Personality (Acts vii. 59). The human soul in union with the spirit: the πνεῦμα proper, or the responsible faculty, receptive of the Holy Spirit—the human highest nature, the principle or breath of ever active undying life breathed into man by God; and the responsive ennobled outcome of heavenly desires, the sanctified ~ux7%—the ereation afresh unto Christ Jesus. And again—“ We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. v. 8). “For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better” (Phil. i. 23). “TU saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held... . And white robes were given unto every one of them” (Rev. vi. 9, 11). 2. The Descent into Hell. (1.) Sketch of History of Opinions. (a.) As might be expected, the doctrine of the Descent into Hell was early and very generally maintained. St. Jude, according to Eusebius, delivered it to the people of Edessa. Trenzeus says: “ Our Lord departed into the middle of the shadow of death, where the souls of the dead were.” Clemens Alexandrinus : “ Our Lord wentdown into Hades—<«is gov.” Tertullian: “ Christ underwent the form of human death in Hades —apud inferos—nor did He ascend to the higher parts of heaven, before He had descended into the lower parts of the earth—in infertora terrarum” (de Anima,e¢. 55). Where apud inferos—whether we take it for Hades, as generally rendered, or for the inhabitants of Hades, as the older use will allow—is evidently synonymous, so far at least as local reference is concerned, with in inferiora terrarum, “ the lower parts of the earth,” or under-world. 1 The general term Hades is here restricted by “in torments ” (ἐν Bacdvas), 36 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Origen: “The region of Hades—ra& τοῦ ἄδου yw2ia—whither God himself, the Word, alone descended and passed through.” Cyril: “ Christ descended to the lower parts of the earth—eis ra καταχϑόνια.᾽ Epiphanius : “ Christ’s divine nature descended with His holy soul to the lower parts of the earth—«is ra χαταχαϑόνια. The Third Sirmian or Dated Creed, put forward by the Arians at the Council of Ariminum, 359: ‘‘ Was crucified, and died, and descended to the lower parts of the earth—eig ra xaraySéua—and ordered things there.” To this may be added the two cotemporary Acacian Creeds of Nice in Thrace and of Constantinople: both of which have the Burial as well as the Descent ; and what is here chiefly to be noted, the Descent in the exact words as above, where the Burial is omitted—éis ra καταχϑόνια. (b.) The first orthodox creed of the Church in which the Descent is found, is that of Aquileia, as cited by Ruffinus, about 400. “Crucified under Pontius Pilate, He descended into the lower parts —Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato, descendit in inferna.” Here a somewhat important discussion meets us. Bishop Pearson and others quote Ruffinus as the first writer who mentions the Descent as forming part of any creed. But if we may credit Eusebius, as above, it was in the exposition of faith delivered to the people of Edessa by St. Jude: it is expressly stated by the earlier fathers as quoted, with others of their age, which shows that it must have been generally received: and it was plainly inserted, as we have seen, in three Acacian Creeds, at the middle of the fourth century. It is clear, however, that Pearson falls into a confusion of dates as to these Arian Symbols. But a more important point is, that Ruffinus expressly states that the words ‘‘ He descended into the lower parts” (descendit in inferna), in the Creed of the Church of Aquileia, signify the Burial of Christ, or the descent simply of His body into the grave (‘‘ vis verbi videtur, esse in eo quod sepultus est”). Now if we only bear in mind that the period of Ruffinus is about goo, and that the authorities which we have quoted above, all date before Ruffinus wrote—ranging in fact over the first four centuries ; and declare by the Descent, expressed too in the identical or equivalent words of the Aquileian Creed, that they understood not that of the body of our Lord, but cf His soul, we can hardly accept the exposition of Ruffinus, supported though it be by Bishop Pearson and later writers who follow him, as the meaning of the Aquileian Church. It scarcely concerns us to know, save as a sort of circumstantial proof of our argument, what Pearson tells us: “ Ruffinus, who first mentioned this article, did interpret it of the grave; but yet he did believe a descent distinct from that, in the Exposition of the Creed.” If so, why so? and why interpret the Descent in the Aquileian Creed of the Burial? But further light is thrown on this subject by Cary :-- When Ruffinus first quotes this article of the creed of the Church of EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 37 Aquileia, he omits the word ‘ buried,’ and gives it thus—‘ crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato, descendit in inferna,’ and afterwards he says that the force of the words ‘descendit in inferna,’ seems in the Roman creed to be contained in the word ‘sepultus.’ If, therefore, the above is the original reading of the creed of Aquileia, it seems extremely probable that the descent in inferna was contained in that creed from the earliest times, possibly meaning something more than ‘ burial,’ though occupying the same place that ‘burial’ did in other creeds, It must be observed, however, that the word sepultus also is in the Aquileian Creed, and is given by Ruffinus as part of the creed ex- pounded ; so in Bingham it is thus—‘ sepultus οὐ descendit ad inferna,’ Unless, therefore, we come to the conclusion that ‘sepultus’ was inserted in the time of Ruffinus, it seems difficult to reconcile what he has said of its taking the place of the descent 7m inferna in other creeds, with the only version of the creed of Aquileia now extant.” (c.) The Roman or Apostles’ Creed, before the time of Ruffinus, had the Burial (ef sepultus), but after his time added the Descent, and that too in the very words of the Aquileian Creed as cited by Bingham—descendit ad inferna.: a strong corroboration of our view of the Aquileian Creed ; and at the same time clearly teaching that the soul of Christ did descend into the receptacle of the dead. (d.) Modern opinions, as quoted by Pearson— Durandus, a schoolman, held the Descent, not as signifying local motion or real presence, but only including a virtual motion, and an _ efficacious presence. This is met on the ground of its being incon- sistent with the Scripture, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ;” and that, if the efficacy of Christ’s death were His descent, then is He descended still. Calvin and others held, that the Descent into hell was the suffer- ing of the torments of hell. But remorse, despair, and alienation from God, were far from Christ. And besides, all the sufferings of our Saviour were antecedent to His death ; whereas the Descent was subsequent. Others, in the words ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,” taking “soul” to mean body, and “hell” grave, as the same words in the original are elsewhere sometimes so used, have explained “He de- scended into hell,” in the creed to be no more than this, that Christ in His body was laid into the grave. But since, in the gradual for- mation of the Apostles’ Creed, the Descent was inserted after the burial was expressed, such interpretation cannot be accepted at least as the sense of that Creed. And again, some have held the Descent to Hades to mean con- tinuance for a time in the state of the dead. But Hades never means, either amongst the ancient Greeks or ancient fathers, the condition of the dead, but a place. And besides, Christ’s death is expressly delivered before, and separately mentioned in the Creed (“was dead”), (e.) But the general opinion of the Church in all ages has been, that the rational and immortal soul of Christ, after a true separation 38 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. from His body, was really carried into those parts below, where the souls of men before departed were detained. Nor is there any point in which the ancient fathers agree more than in this, which they urged against the Apollinarians—who denied that Christ had a human soul, affirming that the Word or Logos was to Him in the place of a soul—to show, that as ‘‘this Descent was not made by Christ’s Divinity, or by His body, but by the motion and presence of His soul, therefore that Christ had a soul, distinct both from His flesh and from the Word.” 1 (2.) The Purpose of the Descent. (a.) Here the opinions of the early Church were various and widely different ; but it may suffice to notice the leading varieties. Two lines of thought especially seems to have divided the ancient fathers. That Christ descended to the faithful dead—that He descended only to the abode of the wicked. Amongst those who inclined to the first, many believed that the condition of the souls of the saints was altered, by their removal to a better and more glorious place; that Christ in fact thus opened the gate of the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Whilst others, and perhaps most of the fathers, for the first 500 years, held that our Lord did not so remove the departed saints, but descended to assure them of their completed redemption. Those who looked upon the Descent as to hell in its proper sense, seem to have viewed the matter chiefly as another offer of salvation ; which some of the damned, it was widely held, accepted, and were consequently loosed from the pains of hell, and translated to a place of happiness. But to believe, as a few did, that all in the torments of hell accepted this offer, and were delivered, was generally reckoned heretical. (b.) In the middle ages, the prevalent opinion coincided in the main with that of the fathers who believed in the translation of the just; but was delivered as an indisputable article of faith, and elaborated with the technicalities of the schools: so that it was held an infallible certainty, that at the Descent of our Lord, all the souls of all the saved, from Abel downwards, were delivered from the Limbus Patrum, and instated in essential beatitude and the immediate vision of God. (c.) At the Reformation, in the Edwardine Formulary, the Third Article agreed upon in Convocation, ran as follows :— “ As Christ died and was buried for us, so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell. For the body lay in the sepulchre until the resurrection ; but His spirit departing from Him, was with the spirits that were in prison or in hell (éncarcere sive in inferno), and did preach (predicavit) to the same, as the place of St. Peter doth testify ” (1 Pet. iii. 19). But in ten years afterwards, in the Elizabethan Formulary, the reference to St. Peter was withdrawn, and the Article reduced to its present limits. Some think, owing to the violent controversies to 1 See Bishop Pearson’s “‘ Exposition of the Creed,” pp. 360-374, for these opinions. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 39 which the final clause had given rise, especially in the diocese of Exeter ;! others, in deference to Calvin ;? but more probably, accord- ing to Bishop Hursley, ‘‘this change of opinion, I fear, is to be ascribed to an undue reliance of the divines of that time on the authority of St. Augustine ; for St. Augustine was, I think, the first who doubted of the literal sense of this passage of St. Peter. He perplexes himself with some questions, which seemed to him to arise out of it, of too great subtlety perhaps to be solved by man; and then he had recourse to the usual but dangerous expedient of abandoning the plain meaning of the passage, for some loose, figurative interpreta- tion, which presents a proposition of no sort of difficulty to the understanding of the critic, because in truth it is a proposition of his own making” (Sermon 20). It is to be particularly noted, that the MS. copy of the Edwardine Articles, in the State-Paper Office, signed by six royal chaplains, to whom they were submitted before their final publication, has the following sentence added to the Third Article as above. ‘“ But Christ the Lord by His descent liberated none from their prisons or torments — At suo ad inferos descensu nullos a carceribus aut tormentis liberanit Christus Dominus.” * (d.) At present there is still very considerable diversity of opinion. While all who have given any serious attention to the subject con- elude that our Lord descended into Hades, yet many think, that as the dying thief was to be with Him the same day in Paradise, the part of Hades to which He descended must have been the place where the souls of His people await the resurrection; and that He so descended, Himself to herald the finished work of salvation. Some would strongly incline to the belief that our Lord first descended to Gehenna, to proclaim and assert His victory over death and hell, and then passed on to Paradise, to assure His expectant redeemed of the triumphs of His love. And not a few, unwilling to push their inquiries beyond what they suppose is fully revealed, are content to - believe that our Lord’s descent to hell was simply to undergo the condition of the dead, and thus satisfy the law of our common humanity in death. While the Church of Rome holds, that “ Christ descended into hell in order that, having seized the spoils of the devil, He might conduct into heaven those holy fathers (who died before the coming of Christ our Lord, and who in the bosom of Abraham were expecting the Saviour) and the other just souls liberated from prison. His august presence at once brought a glorious lustre upon the captives, and filled their souls with boundless joy and gladness. Unto them He also imparted that supreme happiness which consists in the vision of God” (Catechism of the Council of Trent). (3.) What saith the Scripture ? The Descent is not mentioned in the Gospels, expressly and as part 1 Hardwick. 3 Hey. ® Hardwick’s “ History of the Articles,” heen dts ἘΠ: 40 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of the historic record ; but is clearly implied in Luke xxiii. 43: “ To- day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” In Eph. iv. 8-10, we read: ‘‘ When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts, τὰ κατώτερα, of the earth? ver. 9). He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.” Verse g, and ‘‘the lower parts of the earth,” have, we think, been too often read detached, and the meaning more resolved into what the isolated “lower parts” might possibly in the whole range of christology otherwise include than they seem fairly to do— as the incarnation, the descent on earth, the death, the burial. But we conceive, if it is possible to rescue any passage of Scripture from weak and erroneous gloss, this is one. First. The Ascension is confessedly in contrast with the Descen- sion. Therefore, we submit that, whatever the height or nature of the one, must be the measure of the depth or nature of the other. Second. In the Ascent Christ “led captivity captive”—Satan and his hosts. The warfare therefore must have reached, and conquered, Gehenna. Third. This interpretation alone satisfies “that he might fill all things.” Christ’s Ascension could not “fill all things,” make the whole universe feel His now won Mediatorial Sovereignty, in its power and presence, unless He had first asserted it in and over the habitation of devils. Fourth. Our argument is also strengthened by ‘he that ascended up far above all heavens.” He who ascended into the highest heaven, the same also descended into the lowest hell. Fifth. All, or nearly all, the ancient fathers thus read the passage ; and accordingly the earliest creeds adopt the words of the Apostle, or words similar to them, to express the doctrine of the Descent into Hades. The Apostle’s words are: τὰ χατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς---““ the lower parts of the earth ;” or as the Septuagint gives the force of the superlative to “lower” (for example, Ps. lxill. g—elg τὰ xarwrara τῆς γῆς), we may translate, “the lowest parts of the earth.” And the words of the earliest creeds are: τὰ xardrara— the lowest ;” ra naraysovia—“the lower parts” or “under-world ;” and inferna, equal in the ancient Greek translation of it, to τὰ κατώτατα. And although later on the creedal formula for the Descent settled down into ad inferos and εἰς ὥδου, yet we must remember that znferz is used not only for the souls of men in the earth, but also and most frequently for the under-world itself ; and that Hades is simply another term, in the language of the Greeks, for the lower or unseen abode of the spirits of the dead: and therefore that, in fact, the whole three forms, ad inferna, ad inferos, and εἰς ¢éov, are synonymous.! But the Scripture upon which many divines mainly rely for the Descent, is that contained in Acts 1. 25-31, where St. Peter on the 1 See Pearson’s illustrations in his notes under Article 5 of the Creed. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 41 day of Pentecost, or rather the Holy Ghost by St. Peter, quotes the 16th Psalm, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell” (sed. Hades or Sheol), and expressly applies it to Christ. And the plain argu- ment is this, that since at the resurrection of Christ His soul was not left in Hades, therefore it must have been there at some period between His death and resurrection. Hence, as St. Augustine re- marks here, “ Who but an infidel will deny that Christ was in hell?” Lastly, we come to the important passage (1 Pet. 111. 18-20): “ For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few—that is, eight souls were saved by water.” As Alford remarks, “the literature of this passage is almost a library in itself.” We shall, therefore, content ourselves by exhibiting some of the more reliable results of criticism, with the opinions of one or two leading expositors. In the first place, then, the words “ flesh” and “spirit” are, in the original, without preposition and article ; therefore “spirit” cannot apply to the Holy Spirit. The Received Text has the article τῷ (“the”) before σνεύματι (“spirit”), but it is not found in the best MSS. And even its retention would not indicate the Holy Spirit, unless a preposition also were prefixed, as ἐν τῷ σνεύματι. Moreover, as “flesh” is in antithesis with “spirit,” the latter must evidently mean Christ’s own spirit or soul. ‘ Quickened ” (ζωοποίηϑεις) means to keep alive as much as to resuscitate to life. ‘‘ Went” (πορευϑ εἰς) is local transference, an actual journey. ‘‘Preached” (ἐχήρυξεν»), to be a herald, elsewhere predicated of Christ or His apostles, is to proclaim good news. The word for “spirits” (πνεύμασιν) always means departed souls. And “in prison” (ἐν φυλακῇ) means simply in ward or safe keeping. The reading, therefore, of the unenclosed portion as above will stand. ‘ Being put to death in (or as to) the flesh, but alive in (or as to) the soul: in which (everliving soul) also he went and preached good news to the souls of men in ward (Syriac, in Hades or Sheol).” If this reading is correct, and it is based, we think, upon un- answerable arguments, it renders it altogether unnecessary to examine the views of those who have interpreted the apostle’s words otherwise than with reference to the Descent. But as we have before had occasion to speak of St. Augustine in connection with this passage, and as he has been followed in his unhappy perversion of it, less or more, by such men as Pearson and Barrow, we may again advert to him fora moment here. The preaching of the text, he thinks, was the preaching of Noah, inspired by the Spirit of Christ to his con- temporaries. And the “prison” was that of their flesh and the dark- ness of ignorance. But the order of time followed by the apostle— Christ suffered, Christ put to death, Christ quickened—must surely keep the preaching of Christ in the same historical sequence. And as our Lord preached, not in the flesh, but in the spirit (πνεύματι), so 42 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. also did He preach, not to men in the flesh, but to spirits (πνεύμασιν). Had the preaching been to the antediluvians, as men in the body, St. Peter would most probably have used the word ψυχαῖς here instead of πνεύμασιν, as he does in the phrase “eight souls” (dara ψυχαῆ). Bishop Horsley writes: ‘‘The souls in custody, to whom our Saviour went in His disembodied soul and preached, were those ‘which sometime were disobedient.’ The expression ‘sometime were,’ or ‘one while had been disobedient,’ implies that they were recovered, however, from that disobedience, and, before their death, had been brought to repentance and faith in the Redeemer to come. To such souls He went and preached. But what did He preach to departed souls, and what could be the end of His preaching? Certainly He preached neither repentance nor faith; for the preaching of either comes too late to the departed soul. . . . But if He went to proclaim to them (and to proclaim or publish is the true sense of the word ‘to preach’) the glad tidings, that He had actually offered the sacrifice of their redemption, and was about to appear before the Father as their intercessor in the merit of His own blood, this was a preaching fit to be addressed to departed souls, and would give new animation and assurance to their hope of the consummation in due season of their bliss. . . . But the great difficulty, of which perhaps I may be unable to give any adequate solution, is this: For what reason should the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of redemption be addressed exclusively to the souls of these antediluvian penitents? Were not the souls of the penitents of later ages equally interested in the joyful tidings? To this I can only answer, that I think I have observed in some parts of Scripture an anxiety, if the expression may be allowed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that the antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption and the final retribution. . . . It may be conceived that the souls of those who died in that dreadful visitation (the general deluge) might from that circumstance have peculiar apprehensions of themselves as the marked victims of Divine vengeance, and might peculiarly need the consolation which the preaching of our Lord in the subterranean regions afforded to these prisoners of hope. . . . And a particular conference with one class might be the means, and certainly would be no obstruction, to a general communication with all. If the clear assertions of holy writ are to be discredited, on account of difficulties which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them, little will remain to be believed in revealed or even in what is called natural religion” (Sermon 20). Bishop Wordsworth writes: “Christ then went in His human spirit, and preached (ἐκήρυξε) to those spirits in prison which were dis- obedient formerly, and did not hearken to the preaching of Noah, when the long-suffering of God was waiting for the space of one hundred and twenty years, in the days of Noe, when the Ark was preparing, into which only eight persons entered, and were saved by water; and the rest perished in the flood. . . . The apostle states the fact, but he does not declare the subject of the preaching, nor its result. Our duty therefore here is to receive with reverence what is revealed, and not EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 43 to aspire ‘to be wise above what is written.’ . . . It is a comfortable thing to know, that the disembodied spirit of our adorable Redeemer was full of tenderness to men. That love extended even to bygone generations, whose names are unknown tous. He went and preached —preached to spirits 7m prison, to those spirits which had been dis- obedient formerly, when the Ark was preparing, and which had not entered into the Ark, and which were now ina place of confinement. . . . Let it not, however, be imagined that the Holy Spirit here gives any ground for presumption, that, if we do not do well, and are not ready to suffer for Christ, and’ if we die in disobedience and impenitence, there remains for ws any message of comfort after death. ... The men of Noah’s age had only the example of a single godly family, and, as far as appears, Noah alone and his house had a direct invitation to come into the Ark. ... Thus the circumstances of the generation of those who perished in the Flood, differed widely from those of all generations since the coming of Christ even to the end of the world. There appears, therefore, to be special reasons for specialmercy to them. . . . St. Peter does not say, that when the Ark had been prepared, and when the Ark was shut, and when the Flood came, and it was too late for them to reach it, they all remained impenitent. Perhaps some were penitent at the eleventh hour, like the thief on the cross. ‘Every one will be justly dealt with by God. There are degrees of punishment as there are of reward. God does not quench the smoking flax. And St. Peter by saying that they did not hearken formerly, while the Ark was preparing, almost seems to suggest the inference that they did hearken now when One, greater than Noah, came in His human spirit, into the abysses of the deep of the lower world; and that a happy change was wrought in the condition of some among them by His coming” (Greek Testament in loco). Dean Alford writes :—“ From all then which has been said, it will be gathered, that with the great majority of commentators, ancient and modern, I understand these words to say, that our Lord, in His disembodied state, did go to the place of detention of departed spirits, and did there announce His work of redemption, preach salvation, in fact, to the disembodied spirits of those who refused to obey the voice of God when the judgment of the flood was hanging over them. Why these rather than others are mentioned—whether merely as a sample of the like gracious work on others, or for some special reason un- imaginable by us—we cannot say. It is ours to deal with the plain words of Scripture, and to accept its revelations as far as vouchsafed to us. And they are vouchsafed to us to the utmost limit of legiti- mate inference from revealed facts. That inference every intelligent reader will draw from the fact here announced: it is not purgatory ; it is not universal restitution ; but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of the divine justice : the cases where the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse which has incurred it. And as we cannot say to what other cases this κήρυγμα may have applied, so it would be presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficacy. The reason of mentioning here these 44 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. sinners, above other sinners, appears to be, their connection with the type of baptism which follows. If so, who shall say that the blessed act was confined to them?” (Greek Testament in loco). Conclusion. Upon a review then of the whole subject we find—(1.) That Christ, in the interval between His death and resurrection, did really descend to Hades, as is clear and unquestionable from Acts ii. 25-31. (2.) That in that descent He entered Gehenna, which we think is equally clear from Eph. iv. 8-10; and probably to proclaim and assert His triumph over death and hell. (3.) And most certainly did also graciously visit the souls of the penitents who perished in the Flood, to assure them, as we may only infer, and perhaps through them also all the faithful, of their completed redemption. But we must discard wm toto the notion that offers of mercy as such were made to ante- diluvian or other souls in this descent to Hades, as being utterly at variance with the whole tone and teaching of Scripture besides ; and as bordering upon, if not indeed directly encouraging and holding out, the dangerous view of a yet still possible repentance and salvation after death. And in arriving at these conclusions we have also seen that the intermediate state between death and judg- ment is to the righteous one of sensible and unspeakable gain in the blessed presence of the Saviour ; yet incomplete, so far as the soul is waiting for the resurrection body. And a state to the wicked of restraint and misery. ‘‘ There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest” (Job iii. 17). ἀπ} ARTICLE IV. DOCTRINE AND SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of the Resurrection of Christ.—Christ did truly arise again from death, and took again His body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, wherewith He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth, until He returns to judge all men at the last day. De Resurrectione Christi. — Christus vere a mortuis resurrexit suumque corpus cum carne, ossibus, omnibusque ad integritatem humane nature pertinentibus, vecepit : cum quibus in coelum ascendit, ibique residet, quoad extremo die ad judicandos homines reversurus sit. Driviston. Four Subjects.—1. Christ’s Resurrection. 2. His Ascension. 53. His Session at God’s Right Hand. 4. His Return to Judgment. 1. Christ’s Resurrection. Against the ancient heresies of the Sadducees, Essenes, Docete, Manichees, and Eutychians, as well as the docetic notions of Anabaptists. Christ did truly arise again from death] (1.) The Fact and Importance of Christ’s Resurrection. (a.) The Resurrection of Christ is in one sense the very keystone of Christianity. Take it away and the whole fabric crumbles to pieces. Then is Christianity simply to be weighed as a political and perhaps hygienic institution against its competitors. And if so, we are free to admit, even with all its historic and general advantages, that its in- dividual experiences, the idiosynerasy of its life—its endurances, its negations, its intensity of love and disappointment of hope, must. pro- nounce it one of the very worst of all possible superstitions for the human family at large. Even as the Apostle teaches: ‘If in this life only we have hope in Christ ”—if the hope of our lives is to end there, then—“ we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. xv. 19). ‘‘ But ”— blessed be God, and as the Apostle continues—‘ now (νυν)---ἃϑ matters or facts stand) is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first- fruits of them that slept” (ver. 20). (6.) It is therefore of the utmost importance to show the reality of Christ’s resurrection. And we hold that it is possible to do this, to 46 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. actual demonstration, equal to, if not indeed above, any other fact of recorded history. We know nothing of the past, but from historical evidence— Monu- mental or Written. First. The Monumental Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection. Here (1.) Christianity is at least on a par with its competitors, and that in reality is all, from the nature of the case, that our argument requires. Christianity has its Church, its Polity, its Sacraments, ab initio ; ALL FOUNDED UPON THE ALLEGED FACT OF THE RESURRECTION, But (2.) it is more than on a par. Whilst many superstitions have passed away, and are forgotten as living realities, and whilst others are waning, Christianity is covering, here more slowly, there more rapidly, the face of the globe: conquering, by its appeal to the human mind, all the families of the earth. And its universal text is—A RisEN SAVIOUR. Now all this must, with fair and candid minds, go far to prove, over and beyond the actual requirements of the argument—not merely the fact, but what gives immense force to the fact, the Vitality of the Monumental Evidence of Christianity as founded upon the Resurrection of our Lord. It means, sift the Resurrection as you will, and as full eighteen centuries have done and are doing, it stands out and pro- gresses from age to age, clear and clearer still, as a Living Reatiry. Second. The Written Evidence of the Resurrection of Christ ranges itself under the following heads— ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY. *‘ My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption ” (Ps. xvi. 9, 10). Claimed by St. Peter for our Lord (Acts ii.), and inapplicable to any besides, A prophecy penned probably some 1060 years before Christ. “ΤῊ dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise, Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead” (Is. xxvi. 19). To be studied with: ‘“ When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days” (Is. lili. 10). Prophecies some 712 years before Christ. “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day” (Matt. xvi. 21). Words spoken, unless we can otherwise damage the credit of the Gospel narrative, and “openly” (πεῤῥησίᾳ, Mark xi.)—close upon a year before the crucifixion. ARGUMENT FROM TYPE. The restoration of Isaac to his father on Mount Moriah was, we are willing to believe with the majority of commentators, symbolical of the resurrection of our race; but it was we think still more even of the raising up of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. If God EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 47 vouchsafed to Abraham in that wonderful hour a revelation of His will and purpose to raise the dead, it is not assuredly too much to suppose that He revealed to him the procuring ground and connecting link upon which that revelation rests—even the actual sacrifice of a dearer Son by a higher Father, and the restoration of that Son again unto life as the glorious Firstfruits from the grave. And this we think only fully explains the language of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac... . accounting that God is able to raise even from the dead, from whence he also received him back ina parable”! (ἐν παραβολῇ, Heb. xi. 17, 19). A parable, or allegorical teaching, as we take it, of the Resurrection of our race in Christ. And thus in that Coming One of his line, slain and risen again, did the father of the faithful see the glimmer of the day whereof he was glad. And such a “parable” too, we speak with reverence, could, we think, alone justify the mysterious trial of the friend of God, contained in the command: ‘‘Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (Gen. xxii. 2). And this type was some 1872 years before Christ. Again we read: “And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (Jonah 1. 17). A type appropriated and explained by Christ Himself: ‘‘ For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. xii. 40). Anda type some 862 years before Christ. EVIDENCE OF PROFESSED WITNESSES. Not less than fowr historians, in jive separate histories, attest the resurrection of Christ, as a fact, at Jerusalem, seen and known by men and women whose names are given ; four of these histories (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts) published probably within some thirty years after the alleged event; the fifth (John) at a period sufficiently late to warn of the danger of further imposition, but which relates the story of the resurrection substantially in the same manner as the others, and that too without a note of defence, which shows that there existed no formal impugnment of the record: and all these histories put forth in the very country, though happily at different centres throughout it, where the fact is said to have happened, or at some outside centre of concourse and learning, such as Rome. While, on the opposite side, and as the late date of St. John’s Gospel, probably towards the close of the first century, is of peculiar value as a witness, we have not one historical document of the age, even pretending to show that these widespread accounts of the Resurrection were a fabrication. Add, that one of these histories (the Acts) gives us all the details of Resurrection sermons preached at Jerusalem before the representatives 1 So the exact rendering of the original; and not, as our Authorised Version— “accounting that God was able to raise him up.” ‘There is no “him” here in the Greek, and no past tense, or single case as of Isaac merely, indicated. 48 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of “every nation under heaven,” as on the day of Pentecost, bare fifty days since the event ; in the temple; before the Sanhedrim ; through- out Asia Minor ; on the Continent of Europe ; and even for something more than three years at Rome: and yet neither bigoted Jew, nor prejudiced heathen, even with the matter thus brought home to them, have attempted, on the part of their religion, their name, or posterity, to join issue on the main question. ARGUMENT FROM Martyrpom. These missionaries attested the truth of the Resurrection of Christ, as the basis of their preaching, in face of persecution, and at the risk of the loss of all things. ‘‘ He that liveth and was dead, and behold he is alive for evermore,” is the great text of Apostolic Sermons and Epistles. And the heralds of the risen Nazarene truly suffered. Their lot was persecution ; martyrdom, in many, if not most instances, their crown. ARGUMENT FROM CoNTEMPORARY History. In addition to the five histories above, we have the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the genuineness of which has never been disputed, written probably within twenty-four years after the alleged event; and the fifteenth chapter of which may be denominated an abstract of the preaching of St. Paul on the history and gospel of the Resurrec- tion of Christ, with the heads of the general philosophic argument. The first of these here concerns us, and this is the testimony: “ For I delivered unto you how that Christ rose again the third day accord- ing to the Scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that, he was seen of above FIVE HUNDRED BRETHREN at once, of whom the GREATER PART REMAIN UNTO THIS PRESENT, but some are fallen asleep; after that, he was seen of James; then of ali the Apostles ; and last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” One of two theories alone can account for this preaching. Either that St. Paul was ‘‘ beside himself,” or that he had really seen the risen Jesus, and so “spake forth the words of truth and sober- ness.” But madmen do not write as the Apostle wrote—with the same logic, the same coherence, the same diversity, the same definite appeal (as here), the same overwhelming powers of persuasion: whom even the heathen critic Longinus ranks among the greatest orators of ancient times. ‘ Let the following men be taken as the summit of all eloquence and Grecian intellect—Demosthenes—Paul.” ARGUMENT FROM STANDING MIRACLE. By Standing Miracle here we mean, that in some seven weeks after the death of Christ, His disciples, a small band for the most part of peasants, begin to deliver to the world, and in the face of their enemies, a system of theology grounded upon the alleged fact of Christ’s Resurrection, and upon the ancient Scriptures, so matured and com- plete, that eighteen centuries have only been able to illustrate it: and this without its friends being able to add to it: and without its foes EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 49 being able to invalidate it. Verily, there is nothing like this in the whole range of the world’s history. Let us examine it. Twelve men, ignorant all along of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ ; cowards who forsook their Master ; cold, if we may not indeed add scornful, unbelievers at the outset, who treated the account of the Magdalene and her sisters about the angels and the rolling away of the stone and the risen Lord as “idle tales;” despised, and in danger of their lives as having been associated with the crucified Nazarene ; poor and without means to secure followers or command respect in a venal age; illiterate fishermen. For such a miserable band—miserable in number—miserable in courage—miserable in education—miserable in Scriptural knowledge heretofore, to beard their bloodthirsty victorious enemies, the rulers of the people and elders of Israel, in their homes; and above all, to elaborate a system of doctrine, in a day, which harmonises God and man: all this, we say, is what the world has never besides witnessed : all this, we submit, implies a miracle: and that miracle 7s the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, with the consequent shedding forth of the Holy Ghost. And all this demolishes the ‘‘mythic accretions” of Strauss ; for accretions do not grow on pure and virgin soil, nor myths in seven . weeks. And took again His body, with flesh, bones, and all things apper- taining to the perfection of man’s nature] (2.) The Nature of Christ’s Resurrection Body. Probably against the Ubiquitarians of Romish and Lutheran schools. (a.) A veritable human body, as before. “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke xxiv. 39). ‘And they gave hima piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them” (Luke xxiv. 42, 43). (b.) The identical body. * Behold my hands and my feet, that it is 1 myself” (Luke xxiv. 39). ‘‘Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it “into my side : and be not faithless, but believing” (J ohn xx. 27). (c.) Endowed with the same rational and intellectual soul, as evinced by His discoursing with His disciples. “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in ‘the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me’ (Luke xxiv. 44). (d.) Yet at the same time, a glorified and “spiritual” body ; that is, invested with certain supernatural qualities and attributes, so as to fit it for its incorruptible and heavenly habitation. “The same day at evening, when the doors were shut, came Jesus and stood in the midst” (J ohn xx, 19). “And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight” (Luke xxiv. 31). “He appeared in another form unto two of them” (Mark xvi. 12). (e.) And still in the same conjunction with the Divinity. D 50 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES, Hence, in the plenitude of His Divine power, He “opened the understanding ” of His disciples (Luke xxiv. 45), and breathed on them the Holy Ghost (John xx. 22). 2. Christ’s Ascension. Against the various heresies of the Apellite, Selenciani, Heroniani, Manicheans, &e. Wherewith He ascended into heaven| (a.) The Ascension of Christ was typified by the High Priest entering into the holiest of all on the day of Atonement. “But into the second (tabernacle) went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people: the Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing. ... But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. ix. WO; LL, 12): (6.) Foretold by the Psalmist : “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive ; thou hast received gifts for men” (Ps. Ixvili. 18). Cf. Eph. iv. 8. By Micah : “The breaker! is come up before them: they have broken up and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them” (Micah ii. 13). By our Lord Himself : “ What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before ?” (John vi. 62). ‘Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John xx. 17) (c.) Related in two of the Gospels : “So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven” (Mark xvi. 19). ‘‘ And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke xxiv. 51). And in the Acts: “ And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and acloud received him out of their sight ” (Acts i. 9). (d.) Witnessed by the eleven apostles, as seen in foregoing quotations. 6.) Testified by angels : * And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts i. το, 11). 1 ‘‘ Breaker-up,” a Jewish title of the Messiah, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 51 (7.) Although it was the person of Christ that ascended, yet since the Divine nature is everywhere present, ascension can only be pro- perly predicated of Christ’s human nature. “ No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven” (John iii. 13). (g.) And the great end of the ascension of Christ into heaven, was to carry in thither the merits of His oblation, and as forerunner to take possession of and prepare for His people the many mansions that are there ; and make continual intercession for them. * Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession ” (Heb. iv. 14). “ Within the veil: whither the Forerunner (πρόδρομος 1) is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever” (Heb. vi. 19, 20). ‘Inmy Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John xiv. 2, 3). “ Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. vii. 25). 3. Christ’s Session. And there sitteth| (a.) By the Session of Christ at God’s Right Hand, is meant, not necessarily any corporeal posture or position, but the full and formal investiture of the Messiah with Mediatorial power and authority, as the reward of His obedience, sufferings, and victory. While we are to believe that the ascended body of our Lord hatha local habitation, yet the Session of our Article mainly refers to the judiciary power with which the Divine Person of Christ, as ‘‘ Head over all things to the Church,” was now invested. This Mediatory authority, the Son, as the Second Person of the glorious Trinity, and the delegate of the Father, had exercised all along since the Fall; but it was only, and from the nature of the case, could only be, when the Divine Person of the Incarnate Saviour “through death had overcome him who had the power of death, even the devil,” that “all things were put under his feet.” “ According to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church” (Eph. i. 19-22). ‘But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour” (Heb. ii. 9). ‘And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the 1 πρόδῥομος being without the article, is a predicate, and should be translated as forerunner. 52 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exaited him; and given him a name which is above every name” (Phil. ii. 8, 9). (b.) And this Session at the Right Hand of God was foretold by the Psalmist : “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Ps. ex. 1). Cf. Luke xx. 42. By Zechariah : “Behold the man whose name is The Branch. . . he shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zech. vi. 12, 13). By our Lord Himself : “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power” (Matt. xxvi. 64). Recorded in one Gospel : ‘So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God” (Mark xvi. 19). In the Acts: “Being by the right hand of God exalted. . . . For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy foot- stool” (Acts i. 33-35). ‘‘But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts vii. 55). And expressly also, as will have been seen in the Epistles. Other examples : “Tt is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God” (Rom. viii. 34). ‘‘ Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him” (1 Pet. ili. 22). (c.) The purpose of Christ’s Session at the Right Hand of the Father, is (as will have been gathered) twofold: to be the glorious Head of His Church, and to make His enemies His footstool. “ And gave him to be the head over all things to the church” (Eph. i. 22). ‘Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Ps. cx. 1). ‘Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness ; therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows” (Ps. xlv. 7). See the whole Psalm: The King—His Beauty—His Manhood—His Godhead—His Con- quest—His Sceptre of Righteousness—His Queen Consort, on the day of His espousals—Her Trousseau—the Issue of “the marriage of the Lamb.” . (d.) And this Session, or Kingdom of the God-Man Christ, is for ever. Against the heresy of the Marcellians and Photinians. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever” (Ps. xlv. 6). ‘* Whose kingdom shall have no end” (Wicene Creed). (e.) But its present economy will be modified. On earth it is now administered by the dispensation of His word and sacraments, and by ruling over His Church in the midst of enemies ; but in heaven here- after, when all opposition shall have been subdued, and when the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 53 Church triumphant shall no longer see through the glass of ordinances darkly, but face to face, the present mediatorial service must of necessity cease, but only to assume a new and mending phase—the final and eternal economy of sustaining and developing the won king- doms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and of the clearer display of the glory of the Three One God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the king- dom to God, even the Father ; when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. . . . And when all things shall be sub- dued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. xv. 24, 28). ‘‘And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof : for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. v. 9, 10). “‘ For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Rev. vii. 17). ‘‘ Now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. xiii. 12). “We shall be like him ; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John iii. 2). 4. Christ's Return to Judgment. Against Gnostic and Anabaptist sects, whose docetic notions evidently sprang from the Sadducean heresy ; and which has tainted, in modern times, the Swedenborgian school, so far at least as to deny the literal interpretation of Scripture concerning the Judgment, limiting it to a present church and dispensation. Until He return to judge all men at the last day] (a.) A general judgment is necessary, on the ground of Divine justice. Confessedly, as the world is ordered, universal justice does not reign. The wicked prosper, and the righteous frequently are oppressed. We have only to turn to the book of Job, and such Psalms as the 73d, to see how hard holy men of old found it, to reconcile the government of the world as it is with the love and the wisdom of God. Nor have the further disclosures of Revelation much lessened, but in not a few cases perhaps have increased, the perplexity. Their main value and intention would only seem to be to give certain and future, though as to precise date necessarily indefinite, fixity to the words of the Preacher: “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Eccles. xii. 14). They shift the Throne of Judgment from the general Hebrew conception—this world and in this life—to “the clouds” of heaven and the end of time ; to that ‘‘Great Day” when “the earth and the heaven shall flee away, and there shall be found no place for them.” (b.) Believed in by the ancient Gentile world, and generally acknowledged by their writers. As may be seen in their mythologies, ἫΝ 54 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and as shown less or more at length by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Theodoret. Thus, as Pearson remarks, the principle of a judgment to come, as confessed by the heathen, was Justin Martyr's great encouragement in his apology for the Christian religion ; Tertullian quotes even their common conversation in proof—Deus videt, Deo commendo, Deus mihi reddet ; and Theodoret, after citing several places, concludes—wirws ἀκριβῶς ἐπίστευεν ὁ Πλάτων εἶναι τὰ ἐν dou χριτήρια, And thus— ** As Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled” (Acts xxiv. 25). (c.) Fully and explicitly asserted in Holy Scripture, but especially in the New Testament. Eccles. xii. 14 (as above). “1 beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him : thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thou- sand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (Dan. vii. 9, 10). “God hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts XVii. 31). ‘In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men” (Rom. ii. 16). “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were wnitten in the books, according to their work (Rev. xx. 12). (d.) The God-Man, Christ Jesus, the Judge. So far as regards all essential or legislative power and authority, a Three One God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is Judge; but in the Divine economy, the special exercise, or executive οὗ that power, is delegated to Christ, the Mediator ; and this not only as part of His exaltation, but also because of His peculiar fitness as the Son of man. “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John v. 22). ‘The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works” (Matt. xvi. 27). “For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Rom. xiv. 10). “And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man” (John v. 27). (e.) The Objects of the Judgment—all men, “ quick and dea and the fallen angels. “And before him shall be gathered all nations” (Matt. xxv. 32). “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall-rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess. iv. 16, 17). ‘And he commanded us to preach unto EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 55 the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead” (Acts x. 42). “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). (7) The Subject-matter of the Judgment. Thoughts. “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts” (1 Cor. iv. 5). Words. ‘‘ By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned ” (Matt. xii. 37). Works. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. v. 10). (g.) The Books of the Judgment. The Book of God’s Remembrance, or Omniscience. “Tord, thou knowest all things” (John xxi. 17). ‘Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name” (Mal. iii. 16). Without attempting to confound the omniscience of God with the laws and revelations of physical science, or in any way limit it thereby, we may remark that, according to the doctrine of mechanical reaction, it would appear that our words and actions are imprinted on the material universe for ever; and not only so, but according to the doctrine of electric reaction our very thoughts are telegraphed to every part of the universe, and remain there woven into its texture for all future time: and that it needs only the acuter perceptions of higher beings to see all those actions thus recorded there, and to read all the thoughts of the heart of man. And it may be that Scripture itself refers to this wonderful law of nature in such passages as the follow- ing: ‘ Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but with recompense, even recompense into their bosoms” (Isa, Ixv. 6)— “Ts not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among m treasures 1” (Deut. xxxii. 34). ‘‘ My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity” (Job xiv. 17). “For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord God” (Jer. ii. 23). The Book of Conscience, with its appeal on the one hand to the light of nature, and on the other hand to God’s written law. “As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. . . . For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Rom, ii. 12, 14, 15). 56 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. The Book of Life. “And another book was opened, which is the book of life” (Rev. xx. 12). ‘‘ Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” (Luke x. 20). ‘And there shall in no wise enter into it... but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev. xxi. 27). “ And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. xx. 15). 571) ARTICLE V. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of the Holy Ghost.—The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God. De Spiritu Sancto.—Spiritus Sanctus, a Patre et Filio procedens, ejusdem est cum Patre et Filio essentie, majestatis, et gloricz, verus ac eternus Deus. This Article, evidently inserted by Archbishop Parker to complete the dogmatic assertion of the Church’s faith concerning the Holy Trinity, embraces two subjects—the Procession and the Divinity of the Holy Ghost: the latter of which, having been necessarily treated under the first Article, need not be again taken up. We have, however, always considered it an oversight on the part of the compilers of our Articles, that no formal mention whatever is here or elsewhere made of the work or Office of the Holy Ghost. We have the Son’s work, or the Atonement, distinctly set forth even in this dogma of the Trinity. Why should we not also have the Spirit’s, and especially since this is the era of His Pentecostal mission on earth ἢ It may be that owing to this omission it comes to pass that our pulpits are unconsciously Unitarian, and Englishmen, to a large extent, Materialists. These, we feel, are serious charges. But let the reader ask himself, how often has he heard a sermon on The Present Administration of the Holy Spirit, or how many Churchmen has he met alive to the fact that the Holy Ghost is now on earth, in the extraordinary effusion of His power, just as verily, and to the eye of well-informed faith as sensibly, as the Saviour was for some thirty- three years; and the answer in each case will only too seriously sustain these solemn charges, And this is a matter to which we would earnestly call the attention of Convocation. It needs no alteration whatever of the present wording of the Article, but simply an addition, such as that of the Nicene Creed, “The Lord and the Giver of Life,” at the end of the Article, or of “The Sanctifier,” after the words, “The Holy Ghost,” at the beginning, or otherwise as might be agreed upon. We shall therefore add a section on this proposed supplemental 58 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. part, and our subjects consequently will stand thus: (1.) the Pro- cession of the Holy Ghost; (2.) the Office of the Holy Ghost. 1. The Procession of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son] It is a sad instance of the frailty of man that the nature of the Spirit who is Truth, and Peace, and Love, should have become the fierce battlefield, and been finally made the ostensible ground of separation between the Eastern and Western Churches; and that this rent in Christendom has now continued so many centuries. Whatever may have been the origin of the Procession, it is clear that ultimately lust for power and aggrandizement, not zeal for doc- trine, carried the schism. If we follow Pagi, the dispute ‘‘and from the Son” came to light in the counter-charges between the Latins and Greeks in the Iconoclastic war: the former accusing the latter of heresy for opposing images, and the latter retaliating by the ery of Filioque. But this at best only aims to date the contention, and tells us nothing how or when the faith ‘from the Father and the Son” came to life. For our own part we are disposed to think that the doctrine gradually developed itself as the unity of the Christian consciousness of God permeated the Church. And this perhaps will be sufficiently clear if we look for a moment at the history of the completed conception of the Divine essence in the Trinity. Thus Hilary of Poictiers, in the fourth century, while acknowledging, in an address to God, “ Nulla te, nisi res tua, penetrat””—that nothing could be foreign from God’s essence which penetrates into its depths, yet was but able to see that the apostles and prophets affirm expressly of the Holy Ghost, only that He exists. And Gregory Nazianzen could write in 380: “Some of our theologians consider the Holy Spirit to be a certain mode of the divine agency ; others, a creature of God; others, God Himself. Others say, that they do not know themselves which of the two opinions they ought to adopt, out of reverence for the Holy Scriptures, which have not clearly explained this point.” On the other hand, Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century, was able somewhat strongly to assert the Procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son: “ Each of the two names mentioned by me is inseparable and indivisible from the other. If I mentioned the Father, I also signified the Son in the Father, even before I introduced the name of the Son. Did I introduce the Son—although T had not spoken of the Father before, He would certainly have had His name anticipated in the Son. If I added the Holy Ghost, I at the same time subjoined both from whence and by whom He came (duu καὶ πόθεν καὶ διὰ τίνος ἧκεν. But these persons are not aware that the Father, in His relation of Father, is not separated from the Son, for the name imples union; nor is the Son removed from the Father, for the appellation Father signifies community. In their hands also is the Spirit, which can neither be separated from EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 59 the person sending nor from the person conveying (τὸ Πνεῦμα, μήτε τοῦ πέμποντος, μήτετοῦ θέροντος δυνάμενον στέρεσθαι). How then, while I make use of these names, can I conceive that these are divided and altogether distinct from each other? . . . Thus we expand the Unity into the indivisible Trinity ; and again we sum up the undiminished Trinity in the Unity.” Still from-all this, and from the fact that discussion as yet had not ripened on the Nature of the Third Person of the Trinity, but hinged, as will be gathered from the preceding extract, on the Divinity of the Son, we may see how it came to pass that the Nicene Creed, in 325, only expressed the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit in the very loose and timid terms—“ And in the Holy Ghost.” The Macedonian heresy brought out and advanced the truth by an important stage. While the Pneumatomachi, or ‘“‘ Fighters against the Spirit,” were able to accept the feeble utterance of the Nicene Creed, they held that the Holy Ghost was a creation of God—an emanation from God, as the servant or minister of God, and not a Divine Person. Lamentable as was this blasphemy, it gave a healthy stimulus to the orthodox fathers, and ended in the adoption of a more distinct and definite formula into the Nicene Creed, at the Council of Constantinople, 381: ‘‘And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and the Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father ; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets.” Thus Christendom was committed to another development of the faith. But a further question still was now naturally opened : If the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, what is His relation to the Son ? The Greeks used two words to express themselves upon the Nature of the Spirit—éxrozebouas and λαμβάνω, and said the Holy Ghost “proceeds ” from the Father, and “receives” of the Son. Here tak- ing their stand upon two passages of Scripture which we shall after- wards examine: “The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth (ἐκ πορεύεται) from the Father” (John xv. 26), and ‘‘ He shall receive (Aj eras) of mine” (John xvi. 14). In other words, the Greek mind, persistently clinging to the idea that the Father is the sole Root (ῥίξα), Cause (αἰτία), and Fountain (πηγή) of Deity, could not admit the Procession or Issuing Forth (ἑχπόρευσις) of the Holy Ghost from, but only by or through, the Son—thus guarding against the accusation of holding a second Fountain of Deity in the Son. The Latins, on the other hand, only used the word procedo (“ pro- ceeds”), and concluded that to receive of the Son, and to proceed from the Father, are one and the same thing: since all things which the Father hath are the Son’s, and therefore all things which the Spirit receiveth, He receiveth not from the Father alone, but also from the Son. As Fulgentius expressly writes, that all things which the Father hath, and which the Spirit receiveth, are the Son’s, and therefore the Spirit proceeds neither from the Father alone, nor from the Son alone, but at the same time from both : 60 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. “De Filio ergo accepit, et omnia que habet Pater ἘΠῚ] sunt, que Spiritus Sanctus accepit: quia non de solo Patre, nec de solo Filio, sed simul de utroque procedit” (De Spiritu Sancto). And Hilary before him, that since there is no difference between receiving of the Son and proceeding from the Father, certainly it is to be accounted one and the same thing to receive of the Son and to receive of the Father: “Quod si nihil differre credetur inter accipere a Filio, et a Patre procedere ; certe id ipsum atque nuum esse existimabitur, a Filio accipere, quod sit accipere a Patre” (De Trin., 1. 8, 6. 20). And Ambrose, that in the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, there is no separation from the Father nor from the Son; that He is not the Son, because He is not begotten, nor the Father, because He proceeds from both: “Spiritus quoque Sanctus cum procedit a Patre et Filio, non sepa- ratur a Patre, non separatur a Filio. . . . Sed non est ipse Filius, quia non generatur, neque Pater, quia procedit ab utroque” (De Spiritu Sancto, et De Symb.). But it had remained for Augustine to give full and logical force to the argument, insomuch so that modern Greeks charge him with having invented the Procession from the Son. Thus he writes, that inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is called in Scripture sometimes the Spirit of the Father and sometimes the Spirit of the Son, it cannot but be that He, the Spirit of both [not two different Spirits, one of the Father and the other of the Son], proceeds from both : “Nec possumus dicere quod Spiritus Sanctus et a Filio non pro- cedat, neque enim frustra idem Spiritus et Patris et Filii Spiritus dicitur” (De Trin., 1. 4, ¢. 20). And that, as the Son of God is in all respects identical in essence with the Father, and as the Father had eternally communicated all to the Son, who is therefore God of God, so likewise does the Holy Ghost proceed as well from the Son as from the Father: “A quo autem habet Filius, ut sit Deus (est enim de Deo Deus), ab illo habet utique, ut etiam de illo precedat Spiritus Sanctus, ac per hoe Spiritus Sanctus, ut etiam de Filio procedat, sicut procedit de Patre ab ipso habet Patre ” (Tract 100). Hence we are not unprepared to find the Double Procession passing into the synodal articles of the Latin Church. Thus in the Third Council of Toledo, in Spain, 589, the Western doctrine was asserted by the addition of Filioque, without any record of a dissentient voice. : At Heathfield, in 680, an English Synod, convened by Archbishop Theodore, and numerously attended, declared their belief in ‘‘the Holy Ghost proceeding in an inexpressible manner (¢nenarrabiliter) from the Father and the Son.” At the great (general?) Council, of Frankfort, 794, convened by Charlemagne, 300 bishops present, representatives of Italy, Spain, Britain, Germany, and Gaul, the Double Procession was once and again less or more emphatically stated. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 61 The Council of Frinli, 796, assembled by Paulinus of Aquileia, at once the most influential and probably most learned bishop of Europe, not only adopted the Filioque ; but Paulinus defended the adoption at large in a vigorous letter to the king, which he sums up thus: “If, therefore, the Father is inseparably and substantially in the Son, and the Son in the Father, how can it be believed that the Holy Ghost, who is consubstantial with the Father and the Son, does not always proceed essentially and inseparably from the Father and the Son?” The famous Council of Aquis-Grani (now Aix-la-Chapelle), 816, held by the emperor, not only of course affirmed the Procession from the Son, but has a history of its own which is too frequently half told, if we are to be faithful historians. It resulted in an embassy from the emperor to the Pope, Leo III., to obtain his authority in support of the doctrine. Now it is only for the most part narrated that the Pope protested against the insertion of the Filioque in the Niceno- Constantinopolitan Confession, and ordered that creed to be engraven on two silver shields—one in Greek, the other in Latin—and fixed in the Basilica of St. Peter. But it is not generally told that Leo admitted the truth of the doctrine in question, and strongly advised it to be inculcated. But half a century passed away, and the equivocal tables of Leo were forgotten. Pope Nicholas 1. inserted the Filioque in the Roman Creed; and under Benedict VIII, in the eleventh century, it was sung in the Mass Service at Rome. Thus we see how the conception of the Third Person in the Trinity advanced in the Church from the feeble embyro of Hilary—“ exists ;” and from the vague formula of the Nicene Creed—“ And in the Holy Ghost,” to the more definite Niceno-Constantinopolitan dogma— The Lord and the Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets ;” and on in the whole Western Church to the Double Procession—“ From the Father and the Son.” We need not trace at any length the battle of the Filioque. Suffice it to say that the first stage in the conflict probably proceeded from personal animosity between two bishops of the fifth century—Cyril of Alexandria, and Theodoret of Cyrus: the former having anathe- matised those who denied the Holy Ghost to be ‘sv τὸ Πνεῦμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ (“own Spirit of Christ”); and the latter retaliating that if Cyril meant that the Spirit derived His being either from or through the Son, the saying was blasphemous and profane. Slumbering for a time, we find the clause brought out into relief in the eighth century, when Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine Copronymus punished the Roman pontiffs (Gregory II. and IIL.) for their image-worship by loss of revenue and possessions. And again, in the ninth century, the continued fight for territory between the Greek and Roman patriarchs, Photius and Nicholas, the Filioque was used as a pretext for the spoliation. But it remained for Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Con- stantinople, and Leo IX., Bishop of Rome, in the eleventh century, to carry the war of earthly ambition and temporal aggrandizement, 62 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. begun under cover of zeal for the truth, to the bitter end—when, in 1054, these heads of the two great Churches of Christendom solemnly excommunicated each other—the Western his antagonist upon the altar of God, and the Eastern his inhuman foe in public council, each thus wickedly rending the Body of Christ. Can the schism be effectually healed? And on which side of the Filioque controversy does the truth lie? We do not believe in compromise. It is neither more nor less than a drawn battle which time and circumstances are almost sure to renew. Of this we have a memorable instance in the Council of Florence, 1439, composed of Greeks and Latins, when this lamentable schism was relegated to the most distinguished individuals on both sides in order to reconcile their “‘ two aspects of the same truth,” with the following result :— “The Latins and Greeks, meeting in that holy ecumenical synod, diligently laboured mutually that the Article of the Procession of the Holy Ghost should be most diligently and carefully discussed. Bringing forward testimonies from the Holy Scriptures, and very many authorities of doctors, both Eastern and Western, in some of which it was said that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, in others from the Father by the Son, two aspects of the same truth ; the Greeks asserted that when they said the Holy Ghost pro- ceedeth from the Father, they say it not to exclude the Son, but because as they say it seems to them that the Latins argue that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, as from two principles and by two operations; therefore they abstained from saying the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son. But the Latins asserted that it was not with this mind that they said that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son, to exclude the Father from being the Fount and Principle of all Deity— that is, of the Son and Holy Ghost; or this, that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Son, the Son hath not of the Father; or that these are two principles or spirations. They assert, as they have always asserted, that there is one principle and one spiration of the Holy Ghost. When one and the same sense of the truth has thus been arrived at, they agreed in the following confession: That the Holy Ghost is eternally from the Father and the Son, and hath His essence and subsistent being from the Father and the Son together (simul et Filio), and eternally from Both, as from one principle and one spiration, proceedeth. Declaring that what the holy doctors and fathers say, that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father by the Son, leads to this understanding: that by it is signified that the Son also, according to the Greek, is a cause, according to the Latin, a principle of the substance of the Holy Spirit, as in the Father ; and since all things which are of the Father, He gave to His only-begotten Son, in begetting, save paternity ; this also that the Holy Ghost pro- ceedeth from the Son, the Son hath eternally from the Father, by whom from all eternity He is begotten.” The decree is of value. It presents in the main the question EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 63 between the Greek and the Latin. It is an example of what bare argument can do to effect a reconciliation, and therefore at the same time an example of perhaps inevitable ambiguity. Thus it affirms that the Son as well as the Father is the Cause and Origin of the Holy Ghost, and yet it professes “not to exclude the Father from being the Fount and Principle of all Deity.” But, however, no sooner had the Greeks returned to Constantinople than they found means to reopen the sore and build again the wall of partition. Neither can we believe in the panacea here of the doctrine of double intention—that is, that when we Englishmen and Westerns recite the Nicene and the Athanasian Creed, or say the Litany, we are to use the word “ proceeds” in the clause “the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth (or proceeding) from the Father and the Son,” in two senses: (1.) In the sense of proceeding from the Father as a Fountain; and (2.) in the sense of proceeding from the Son as from a stream from the Fountain: that we are to use “proceeds” in the first instance, as “issuing forth” from the Father as a stream from its source, or a first link in a chain from its origin; and that we are to use the same identical word ‘‘ proceeds” in the second instance, by some strange process of mental and double attachment, in a much wider significa- tion, not as a stream from its source, but as a successive link from a previous link. In other words, that when we say, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,” we are to conceive of the Holy Ghost as flowing out of God the Father, and yet not out of, but through, God the Son. This doctrine, which we shall presently discuss, has, we regret to say, been lately advocated by the truly great and good Bishop Wordsworth, not only in a sermon preached in Lincoln Cathedral, but in the Upper House of Convoca- tion. The question then recurs, On which side in the Filioque Contro- versy does the truth lie, or can the schism be effectually healed ? Now the solution of this important and, so far at least as the interests of peace and unity are concerned, momentous question, depends, we think, altogether upon a calm, truthful, and correct view of the special development of the doctrine of the Triad in the Oriental Church. Here confessedly theology was too speculative ; and while it laboured to throw off the grosser forms of emanative Gnosticism and Sabellianism, yet could not rid itself entirely of the incubus of Subordination. Nursed by Platonism in the Alexandrian school, and tutored by the religious metaphysics of Origen, we need not wonder that intellectualism rather than the realism of faith marked the Greek mind ; that the main strain was to define as axiomatically clear what, after all, eternity must leave infinitely undefinable, the Essence of the Godhead, rather than to embrace what is revealed—the work and the history of Redemption. Hence the labour and the zeal about one efficient cause (μία ἀρχή) and Fountain of Deity (πηγὴ θεοτήτος) in the Father ; and hence the ingenuity to explain, or fence—since the Son is consubstantial with the Father—the Issuing Forth (ἐχπόρευσις) or i ii 64 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Procession of the Holy Ghost from that sole Fountain of the Father as a simple, and not a compound, act of production. Now, in the first place, we submit that the Scripture knows nothing of these philosophical distinctions, or epithets of man’s ingenuity. They are simply remnants of Gnostic speculation, worked out into finer and more specious threads, plain elements of the subordination theory, only removed, or aimed to be removed, from its temporal and sensuous anthropopathic representations. The chief Scripture upon which they affect to stand, so far as they relate to the main question before us, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, are the two passages already quoted, ‘The Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father,” and “ He shall receive of mine.” Let us take the passages in their entirety : First. “ But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (John xv. 26). Now, we think it is clear that two radically different things are here spoken of : (1.) The Dispensation of the Spirit, or His Official Procession—“ the Com- forter, whom I will send unto you from the Father, he shall testify of me.” A future Procession from the Father and glorified Son, to be the Paraclete, and to testify of Christ and of God. And (2.) the Essential Procession of the Spirit— which proceedeth from the Father.” Here we have the verb ἐκπορεύεται, “ proceedeth,” as an indefinite present, regard being had to the act (of the communication of the Divine essence) itself, rather than to the t¢me—the Eternal Now of the Procession of the Holy Ghost. Otherwise “ proceedeth from the Father” will be official also, and we shall lose the main Scripture for the ontological Procession, as Alford, following Luthardt, seems inclined to do. But if official, is it not a tautological Proces- sion, devoid of force, coming immediately as it does after “whom I will send unto you from the Father” ? Second. ‘“ Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come ... he shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you” (John xvi. 13, 14). Here manifestly the Procession is not onto- logically at all, but strictly and only economically ; and yet this is the key and the stronghold of the Greek position and controversy. “ He shall receive of mine” is, without doubt, expressly and officially, that “he shall show it unto you.” Otherwise, and if Essential Procession were at all meant, as the Eastern Church so emphatically would have us believe, it could only be that the Holy Ghost had not yet received, but was about to receive—in the Greek phraseology—His mediate Essence through the Son. In other words, that His Godhead was not yet complete ! Let us add the complemental verse: ‘All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you” (John xvi. 15). Here we have a Trinity in Unity, and at the same time, and as an outcome of it, the Official Work of the Holy Ghost. “All things that the Father hath are mine’”—the Son is Homoousian with the Father; and by plain inference the a EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 65 Spirit with the Father and the Son, for as a consequent of that one- ness of Godhead, He officially “takes” of the things of Christ and shows them, just as Christ, through the same oneness, had officially taken of the things of the Father and revealed Him. Demonstrably, therefore, the “shall receive” (λήψεται) of chap. xvi. 14 can only refer to the then impending and official mission of the Holy Ghost ; and the “receiveth,” or taketh (AcuSdves—not as our English Version following Hz. “shall take”), of ver. 15, to the con- tinuation (so far here indefinite) of that Mission and Testimony. And demonstrably also, since “all things that the Father hath are the Son’s,” the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father, of chap. xv. 20, must be the Procession also from the Son. But here Revela- tion closes. All beyond is vainly wise. Hence we are not called upon to explain, If the Holy Ghost pro- ceeds from the Father and the Son, and is consubstantial with them both, does He not therefore proceed from Himself? further, perhaps, than we may say, that the very same argument would apply to His Procession from the Father alone, and would equally affect the Eternal Generation of the Son. Neither are we called upon to explain whether the Procession is a simple or compound act of production, with num- berless like fruitless if not impious questionings. Here and along such lines is just where philosophy has shown its weakness, and without gaining a single atom of strength or of light, has enfeebled for a decade and a half of centuries, and darkened by its counsels, the Church of the living God. The revelations of the Bible were never meant to feed the futile theories and morbid cravings of the human mind, but are at once above as well as beyond philosophy. And the great duty of the Christian is to bring up his faith simply to the level of God’s revelations, as it is his greatest folly to try to bring down those revelations to the level of his finite under- standing. Again, the doctrine of double intention,—an adaptation of the teaching of the Greeks to explain away, and avowedly so, the obvious sense of our Creeds and Litany,—leads at once—to say nothing of its whole un-English aspect and bearing—into some of the most danger- ous pitfalls of subordinationism. In proof, we have only to quote Bishop Wordsworth in his argument to induce us to attach to the word “‘proceeds” the restricted sense on the one hand, as he will have it, of the Greek ἐκπορεύομαι, to issue forth, and “the much larger signification,” on the other hand, of the Latin word procedo, to pro- ceed. He says :— “Let us illustrate this statement by reference to the case of an epistle—St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. That Epistle csswed forth from the mind of the Apostle St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Ghost. It issued forth from that source, and from that source alone. But it proceeded not only from the mind of St. Paul, who dictated it, but from the pen of Tertius, who ‘wrote the Epistle’ at St. Paul’s dicta- tion (Rom. xvi. 22), and it also proceeded to the Romans from the hand of Pheebe, ‘the servant of the Church at Cenchree,’ who was i 66 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. commissioned by St. Paul to deliver it to the Church at Rome (Rom. KV Τὴ “530, again, in a chain it is the first link alone which dsswes forth from its origin; but any successive link in the chain may be said to proceed from the previous links in the series”! (Sermon on the Pro- cession of the Holy Spirit preached in Lincoln Cathedral on Whit- sunday, 1872, by the Bishop of Lincoln: Rivingtons). Now we think it is difficult, if not indeed altogether impossible, honestly and legitimately to apply this mode of: reasoning and illus- tration to the great doctrine before us, without arriving at the con- clusion, if not that the Second Person in the Trinity is inferior to the First, yet that the Third is inferior to the other Two. And it is just such human analogies, as St. Paul, Tertius, and Phebe, or the first and successive links in a chain, that show the vanity of all men’s philosophy, to explain what God has not explained—to reveal to our finite understandings the infinite depths of the Essence of the God- head. Nor is Bishop Wordsworth unhappily altogether consistent with himself. Foron the very same page where he states that the Greek Fathers taught the procession of the Spirit through the Son (διὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ), but not from or out of the Son (ἐκ τοῦ υἱοῦ), he quotes Cyril of Alexandria as speaking of the Holy Spirit ἐκ τῆς οὐσίαςτοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ (“ from or out of the Essence of the Father and the Son”). The fact is, the Greek mind, like all other minds, if it retained its ortho- doxy of a Divine Trinity, was sure at times philosophically to stumble at the stumbling-stone of the Procession. We do not care to comment on these passages in his sermon where the good Bishop expressly speaks of ‘‘God the Father being the only original Fountain of Deity,” and ‘‘God the Son being mediately and derivatively a fountain of the Holy Spirit.” But we rather turn to the more truthful—yet how different ?—language of the Bishop's Greek Testament (6th ed. 1868) on John xy. 26, τὸ Τινεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας, ὃ παρὰ τοῦ ἸΠατρὸς εκπορεύεται--- “The Spirit of truth who proceedeth from the Father. Some one may inquire, whether the Spirit proceeds also! from the Son? The Son is the Son of the Father, and the Father is the Father of the Son alone. But the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of both Father and Son. Hence our Lord says, ‘It is the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you’ (Matt. x. 20); and yet the Apostle says (Gal. iv. 6) ‘God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.’ And if the Spirit did not proceed from the Son, Christ would not have breathed on His Apostles and said, ‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost’ (John xx. 22). Why then did He say, ‘The Spirit of Truth that proceedeth from the Father?’ Because He ascribes what is His own to the Father, from whom He, the Son, Himself is; as when He says, ‘ My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me’ (John vii. 16). 1 “Dr, Johnson defines the word proceed as meaning ‘to pass from one person or place to another’”’ (Bishop’s Note). 2 The italics throughout are the Bishop’s. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 67 “The Son is of the Father alone; but the Holy Spirit zs of the Father and the Son.” In summing up then our argument, while we have no desire to indorse all that the Western Church and Fathers have written—or been Jed to write, either on the relations of the Trinity, or on the particular subject of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, yet we are free to confess that their symbol of that Procession has the clear balance of scriptural truth on its side; as it is, unquestionably, more in accordance with the great and cardinal doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. For, the question once opened, and et Filis, ‘‘ from the Son,” is but the consistent and natural complement of a Patre, “‘from the Father ;” if the Son is consubstantial with the Father. And to our mind, the healing of the schism between the East and the un-Romanised West, can only be effected—not by hollow or ambiguous compromise, as at the Council of Florence, nor by the wresting of words from their historical, plain, and obvious meaning, as the Bishop of Lincoln so unhappily suggests, but by the cessation on both sides of merely philosophical speculation in matters of faith, and by a devoted attachment to the central point of Christianity— the redemption of a lost world by the Saviour. Let each Church, for the present at least, retain its own dogmatic assertion of the Proces- sion—in the text thereof, and the legitimate exegesis of Scripture, as against the bewildering and unsatisfactory margin and exegesis of wisdom above that which written; but let them both unite, for- getting the animosities of the past, on the broad ground of a free and open Bible, and a common salvation, to extend the kingdom of the Redeemer on earth. And this united front of consecration to God will gather round it strength from within and without—bringing downa fresh Pentecostal blessing of “tongues of fire sitting upon each of them,” to purify the incense of their own worship, and to evangelise the world. And will at the same time be at once both the only safe and lasting Ivenicon of the churches that have not “denied the faith,” and the best practical protest against the apostate and pseudo-Catholic Church of Rome. 2. The Office of the Holy Ghost. AGAINST PELAGIANS AND SOCINIANS. (1.) A Present Work. While we are to believe that the Holy Spirit hath ever taken part in the work of human redemption, “striving with man” (Gen. vi. 3), -and “holy men of old speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. i. 21), yet we are to remember that ever since the departure of our risen Lord, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity hath been specially and officially present on this earth, in the fulness of His power, revealing and applying that redemption. In other words, that over and besides His universal presence as God, we are. living in the era of His special mission and veritable presence in our world—the Pentecostal Theocracy of the Holy Ghost. 68 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. “That he may abide with you for ever” (John xiv. 16). Looking back along the whole line of the history of the Christian Church since the days of the apostles and their immediate successors, this is a truth which seems strangely, if not indeed almost unac- countably to have been widely forgotten, or at best only confusedly remembered. Not but that the Church in some measure at least has formally embodied it in her creeds and confessions, and expanded it in her theology ; and individual souls once and again have been im- pressed with the bliss of its reality. Yet still the broad fact remains, that Christians are not, and have not been, alive to the Spirit’s Actual Presence on Earth. Could we bring the Churches and Christians in general to the full recognition and sense of this solemn yet glorious truth, what might not be the glorious results! Surely strife and contention, and the wars of brothers, would cease. For who could fight in the presence of God? Surely we should soon cover the earth with the knowledge of the Lord. For who would not go forth into the wastes of sin, at home and abroad, a missionary at the side of God? With what glad and holy purposes and results would the Eastern Church and the Western Church embrace each other to join in this Procession of the Holy Ghost ! It may be we have forgotten the Holy Spirit, because of the with- drawal of His manifest and miraculous gifts. Or perhaps rather it is that Satan, true to his character of Deceiver, has imitated the work and the power of God the Holy Ghost, and blinded man by a counterfeit— the power of human reason. Thus infidel “reason” was the weapon with which the devil carried the Fall—‘‘ Yea, hath God said?” And as we have seen in the former section, ‘ vain philosophy ” soon marred the fair face of Christendom. And, as we have often painfully felt, the pride of human reason it is to-day, which not only feeds the antago- nisms of the faith, but to which we often virtually trust as our talisman for progress. Look practically at the case as it stands: we have Universities for science, and Colleges for theology, multiplied and multiplying in every land; but we have not a School of the Prophets. for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost in all the world. Need we wonder that “the fruit of the Spirit” is not so abundant — “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance ?” (Gal. v. 22, 23). 2.) A Work in the “ World”—zxéowog. The unconverted world. (See John xvi. 8-11.) (a.) To “reprove” it—éAéyyew τὸν κόσμον. To convince and convict the world. The Punitive Office of the Holy Ghost. This ἔλεγχος of the world consists not only in the reputation of the sinner, but in bringing home to his conscience the conviction of wrong. It is punitive, inasmuch as it entails the sense of guilt; but it has a merciful side—to redeem the world. And this ἔλεγχος extends even to the heathen world. Hence in Romans ii. 15 we read: “Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 69 In other words, the law of God is written by the Spirit less or more plainly on the heart of man, as the conscience of every nation under heaven testifies. Cui bono? Who has benefited? The answer is twofold. The Gentile world itself has benefited. Its conscience has contributed its ethics, whether written or oral; and its ethics has been its life. And Christianity has benefited. For the conscience of the heathen world has been the first foothold of the Gospel. (b.) To “reprove it of 51η --ὡὠμαρτία. The missing of the true end of life—the knowledge of God. But especially does the Spirit ““reprove” the gospel world of unbelief: convincing unto Life those who hear; and convicting unto Death those who neglect and despise His message. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. But he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed (μὴ xex/orevxev—deliberately chosen not to believe) in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (See John ii. 36 and 18.) And thus the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost, “ filled” the apostles with His power, and Peter stood up with the eleven, and testified of a risen Saviour, declaring salvation in His name. ‘“ And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 11.). But when the proto-martyr Stephen, ‘‘full” also of the Holy Ghost, testified of the same Saviour, “standing on the right hand of God,” his murderers ‘‘stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord” (Acts vii.). Here we have a marked instance of the ἔλεγχος of the Spirit—and as it ever goes on—proving “to the one the savour of life unto life, and to the other the savour of death unto death” (2 Cor. ii. 16). (c.) To ‘‘ reprove it of righteousness "--δικαιοσβνη. Whose “righteousness?” First, the world’s own, demonstrating that it is but “filthy ways.” Second, Christ’s “righteousness ”— His to-God, in-God, and for-God love; the value and acceptance of which was proved by the fact of His ascension and reception into glory—“ because I go to the Father.” Third, the saint’s “righteous- ness” through faith in Christ—‘‘ because ye see me no more.” (d.) To “reprove it of judgment ”—xgiors. At once the world’s “judgment” and God’s—“ because the Prince of this world is judged.” The estimate which the world forms under subjection to and the bondage of the devil, is at once and clearly refuted by the very fact that its “Prince” himself is cast out and condemned. And so the polemical ἔλεγχος of the Spirit, as it reveals the condemnation and devices of Satan, ever points to the progressive judgment of God, in its summation for the final phrase of the Judg- ment to Come. (3-) A Work in the Church. No greater proof could well be wanted or given of the presence of the Lord the Spirit on earth, than the Church of the living God presents. _ It is the Church of God Christ “purchased with His own blood,” ΝΕ“ “ “.“-.-Ἄ-Ἄ-Ἄ- 70 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of which as a flock the Holy Ghost taketh charge, and over which He setteth “ overseers” (Acts xx. 28). Let us examine its polity, or Theocratic Regime (1 Cor. xii. 13). First of all its members confess “that Jesus is the Lord, by the Holy Ghost.” Here the first step towards visible churchmanship— confession—illustrates the first step of initiation into the invisible Church, or covenant relationship with Jehovah Jesus—“ that Jesus is the Lord.” Christ is thus made the great Foundation-Stone—“ The spirit of truth shall glorify me” (John xvi. 14). Then by this ‘‘one Spirit are we all baptized into one body; and have been ali made to drink into one Spirit.” Here again the out- ward rite of baptism typifies the inward washing and watering (ἐτοτίσθημεν), or enlightenment (εφωτίσθημεν, v. r.)—the gracious and abiding influence of the Spirit. Alford’s comment that the aorist of the Greek verb (denoting a fact gone by) is fatal to this interpretation, is singularly weak ; for it is a self-evident and recognised canon of sound criticism, that typical language must not be interpreted in minuteness of detail. Baptism is once, and indeed so is the seal of the Spirit ; but the influence of that seal is ‘unto the day of redemp- tion” (Eph. iv. 30). Next we have the “ Manifestation of the Spirit”—His modus operandi : **Diversities of Gifts, but the same Spirit ”—varieties of Endow- ments in the members, but bestowed or consecrated by the Holy Ghost. “Differences of Administrations, but the same Lord ”—-varieties of Ministries, or channels of the gifts, ordained by Christ, the Founder of the Church, when on earth—‘ Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. xxviii. 19), and so perpetuated in His name. “ Diversities of Operations, but it is the same God, which worketh all in all.” If we read this 6th verse of 1 Cor. xii., with verse 11 of the same chapter, “ But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit,” and with the “ Lord,” or Christ of the “ Administrations” of verse 5, we have clearly a Trinity “working” in Unity. The Father, the Divine Architect of the Church, the Son the Ordainer of its varied Ministries, and the Holy Ghost the Builder of this Temple of God. “ Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. i 2). Then we have the detail— “ For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ”—whether of the intellect or the heart, “ sanctified in Christ Jesus.” “ΤῸ another the word of knowledge ”—to discern what is the truth of God. “To another faith ”—in its varied practical workings energised by love. P And all these are “through” (éia—as to their medium) “aecording to” (xardé—as to their disposal), and ‘‘in” (‘-—as their element, life, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 71 and power) “that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.” Finally, passing over the temporary miraculous dispensation of the Spirit in the early Church, we come to the ever-abiding graces—im- planted here, and bringing forth fruit, some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundredfold, but to bloom with ever-increased and perpetual vigour in the Church triumphant: ‘“ Faith, Hope, Charity.” Trust, with its outcome of confident Expectation of Good, and, as the root of all, Eternal Love. And this Theocracy immeasurably surpasses the former, or Jewish theocracy. (a.) As to the grasp and nature of its Revelations. The Jewish was imperfect, and its ‘law a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Gal. iii. 24). The Christian is the revelation of “all truth,” that its subjects “‘might receive the adoption of sons ” (Gal. iv. 5). “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John xvi. 13). Not all knowledge, not infalli- bility, but “all truth” adapted to human need and conception, as necessary to salvation. This promise was graciously fulfilled to the Apostles, in the inspiration of them by the Holy Ghost to unfold the doctrine and law of the Church, but like all God’s gracious promises, it has an ever-widening, undying circle. And therefore thus, and thus alone, can we account for the great truths of the Gospel being preserved in the Church, notwithstanding man’s sin and the world’s opposition. (d.) As to its Duration—for Ever. “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. xi. 29). “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth” (John xiv. 16, 17). This promise is parallel with, ‘‘ Lo, Iam with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. xxviii. 20). After which end, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory” (John xvii. 24). The Theocracy of the Spirit is the result of the ever-present Emmanuel; and the abiding Presence of our God-Man Elder Brother, is the result of the good-will of the Father: and this Triune God and Economy remains to all eternity. * Another Comforter ”—TlazazAnres. Here, in this one word, we have all the manifold gifts and offices of the Spirit comprised. As Bishop Wordsworth beautifully narrates them: “ Sanctifier, Teacher, Comforter, Exhorter, Remembrancer, Inspirer, Enlightener, Counsellor, Guide, Helper, and Advocate of the Church.” Or, as they may be reduced to two classes—Comforter and Intercessor. And these again to one—the Giver of Life. The Eternal Function of the Eternal Spirit. (4.) A Work in the Individual Soul. Here the lines of the Spirit’s Work in the Church are in many eases parallel. But an example gives us better the detail. (a.) To “sanctify ” means to make sanctus or holy—separate from 72 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. sin, and sharing in the purity of God. And for this reason the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is called in Scripture the Holy Spirit— not but that the other Persons of the Trinity are also Holy Spirits, but because the special office of the Third Person is to impart holi- ness or transfuse spiritual life into the souls of men. « And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. vi. 11). “* Because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” (2 Thess. ii. 13). (6.) Sanctification, then, or the working of the Spirit in the human soul, is a creation afresh, after the image of God. It is not, like justification, something done for us (propter—on our account), but something done in us. It is not therefore a work of merit in any way on our part or “fon our account” before God, but a work altogether of grace. And this is a point which should be carefully kept in mind to guard, on the one hand, against the Scholastic and Romish doctrine of merit de condigno, and, on the other hand, against the widely spread practical error of confounding justification and sanctification. The Romish doctrine of condignity, though the Tridentine divines avoided the term, stands thus: “ Whosoever shall say that the good works of a justified man are in such a sense the gifts of God that they are not good merits of the justified man himself, or that a justified man by good works which are done by him through the grace of God, and the merits of Jesus Christ, of whom he is a living member, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the actual attainment of eternal life; if he die in grace, together with increase of glory, let him be anathema” (Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 32). This at once flatly contradicts the force of our Saviour’s own words: “When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants” (Luke xvii. 10). And the practical error of confounding justification and sanctification is that the Christian fails to feel the blessedness of, and consequently to live up to his true position before God—that of a “ purged wor- shipper” (Heb. x. 2), and son and heir with Christ. And therefore, instead of living in the atmosphere of perfect acceptance before God, even as God’s own eternal and well-beloved Son, and intimate com- munion with God, he is overwhelmed with a sense of guilt—guilt which was utterly taken away on justification, or the day of his closing in with the offer of the Gospel; and this sense of guilt prevents him going forth and doing service unto the Lord. Save sheer infidelity itself, we know of no more effective weapon of the armory of Satan—retailed and burnished, alas! as it is in too many pulpits—to eat out and destroy the life of Christendom, than this negation of the birthright of the child of God. As on the other hand, we know of no greater incentive to further and higher holiness and to increased good works, than to know and to feel that we are the accepted sons and daughters of the Holy and Almighty Lord God. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 73 “ For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his | good pleasure” (Phil ii. 13). ‘‘ Created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. ii. το). “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all blessing of the Spirit (τνευματικός---τιοῦ merely as the English version ‘spiritual,’ but the actual working of the Spirit) in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. i. 3). Here is an epitome of the whole of Salvation—of the ‘‘new heavens and the new earth,” of the creation of the Holy Ghost. God the Father blessing ‘according to the good pleasure of his will.” God the Spirit working the edA07v/a— all the blessings of His gracious influences. God the Son the con- necting Personal God-Man link between us and the Godhead. And Heaven, the state to which we belong, and our final home. “Where is boasting then” on the part of man ? Yet still, blessed be God, ‘there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. . . . For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. .. . And if children, then heirs—heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. vill. 1, 2, 15, 16). “As he (the Eternal Son) is, so are we in this world” (τ John iv. 17). (c.) Justification, or the righteousness of Christ imputed to the sinner, and in the order of nature preceding sanctification, alone gives a title, as such, to heaven ; whereas sanctification, being the righteous- ness of a sinful creature, and imperfect in degree, though inwrought by the aid and grace of the Spirit, is powerless, and indeed not needed, to give a (second) title to heaven, but is only meant and needed to give a meetness for heaven—the plain and natural proof and evidence of our sonship. The former respects the whole person, the latter affects the whole man—‘“spirit, soul, and body” (τ Thess. v. 23). The one is God’s love to us, the other is our love to God. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John iv. 19). The one is a judicial act complete at once, freeing the soul from the law as a cove- nant of works; the other is a spiritual change, enabling the believer to “delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. vii. 22), gradual and progressive, yet never here completed—‘“a light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. iv. 18). The one, in the Economy of Redemption, is the act of the Father, on the basis of the righteousness of His Son; the other is the work of the Spirit, “renewing” the whole man—the powers of the soul and the members of the body—‘ after the image of him that created him” (Col. iii. το). As Hooker well says: “ Now, concerning the righteousness of sanc- tification, we deny it not to be inherent: we grant that, unless we work, we have it not: only we distinguish it as a thing different in Ἂς ΤΕΣ the Scriptural proof, and full consideration of Justification, see under rt. . 74 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. nature from the righteousness of justification: we are righteous the one way, by the faith of Abraham: the other way, except we do the works of Abraham, we are not righteous. Of the one, St. Paul: ‘To him that worketh not, but believeth, faith is counted for righteous- ness’ (Rom. iv. 5). Of the other, St. John: ‘ He is righteous which worketh righteousness.’ Of the one St. Paul doth prove, by Abra- ham’s example, that we have it of faith without works. Of the other, St. James, by Abraham’s example, that by works we have it, and not only by faith. St. Paul doth plainly sever these two parts of Christian righteousness one from the other. For in the sixth to the Romans thus he writeth: ‘ Being freed from sin, and made servants to God, ye have your fruit in holiness, and the end everlast- ing life.’ Ye are made free from sin, and made servants unto God: this is the righteousness of justification Ye have your fruit in holi- ness: this is the righteousness of sanctification. By the one we are interested in the right of inheriting; by the other we are brought to the actual possession of eternal bliss.) And so the end of both 15 everlasting life” (Discourse on Justification). (d.) Finally, sanctification is the Holy Ghost’s new creation of the invisible Church on earth—the restoration of the soul, through the varied means of ordinances, providences, and intereommunion, to the likeness of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, by uniting us by faith to Christ, “till we all come unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” in the church triumphant. “ But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. viii. 11). Here the whole life of the redeemed, from their quickening from spiritual death, even unto their new and glorious resurrection bodies, is covered by the agency of the Πνεῦμα ξωοποιοῦν---ἰῃ Life-Giving Spirit. And in all this we are directly reminded of our ever-living and mystic Head—“ Christ.” The One Spirit who dwelleth in all His members, raising them up in and with Him. And this agency of the Spirit “helpeth our infirmities.” For example, in the chief ordinance of prayer. ‘‘ For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh inter- cession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom. viii. 26). And extends into the detail of all circumstances and events that can possibly befall us. For “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (v. 28). And thus being “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. i. 2), we enjoy the “fellowship of the Spirit” (Phil. ii. 1), and “ put on the new man, which after God is created in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness” (Eph. iv. 24; Col. 111. 10). All which blessings are summed up in the Apostolic Benediction : “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all, Amen” (2 Cor. xiii. 14). Cons ) ARTICLE VI. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH PATRISTIC AND SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.—Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation : so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite necessary to salvation. In the name of Holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose autho- rity was never any doubt in the Church. Of the names and number of the Canonical Books. Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. Joshua. Judges. Ruth. The First Book of Samuel. The Second Book of Samuel. The First Book of Kings. The Second Book of Kings. The First Book of Chronicles. The Second Book of Chronicles. The First Book of Esdras. The Second Book of Esdras. The Book of Esther. The Book of Job. The Psalms. The Proverbs. Ecclesiastes, or Preacher. Canticles, or Songs of Solomon. Four Prophets the Greater. Twelve Prophets the Less. And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine. Such are these following : De Divinis Scripturis, quod sufficient ad salutem.—Scriptura sacra continet omnia, que ad salutem sunt necessaria, ita ut quicquid in ea probari potest, non sit a quoquam exigendum, ut tanquam Articulus Fidei credatur, aut ad salutis necessitatem requiri patetur. Sacre Scripture nomine, eos Cano- nicos libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti intelligimus, de quorum auctoritate, in Ecclesia nunquam dubilatum est. De nominibus et Numero librorum sacre Canonical Scripture Veteris Testamenti. Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus, Numeri. Deuteronomium. Josue. Judicum. Ruth. Prior Liber Samuelis. Secundus Liber Samuelis. Prior Liber Regum. Secondus Liber Regum. Prior Liber Paralipomenon. Secundus Liber Paralipomenon, Primus Liber Esdre. Secundus Liber Esdre. Liber Hester. Liber Job. Psalmi. Proverbia. Ecclesiastes vel Concionator. Cantica Solomonis. IV. Prophetz Majores. XII. Prophetz Minores. Alios autem libros (ut ait Hierony- mus) legit quidem Ecclesia, ad exempla vitze, et formandos mores; illos tamen ed dogmata confirmanda non adhibet— ut sunt; a ὦ .-.-.-5-:- ““αοἷὑπὰὠὐ “αἶαν ““-“- παν πα ιν " μμνΝμκνμννννννεν νον ννννν .. 76 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. The Third Book of Esdras. The Fourth Book of Esdras, The Book of Tobias. The Book of Judith. Rest of the Book of Esther. The Book of Wisdom. Jesus the Son of Sirach. Baruch the Prophet. The Song of the Three Children. The Story of Susanna. Of Bel and the Dragon. The Prayer of Manasses. The First Book of Maccabees. The Second Book of Maccabees. Tertius Liber Esdre. Quartus Liber Esdre. Liber Tobie. Liber Judith. Reliquum Libri Hester. Liber Sapientiz. Liber Jesu filii Sirach. Baruch Propheta. Canticum trium Puerorum. Historia Susanne. De Bel et Dracone, Oratio Manassis. Prior Liber Machabeorum. Secundus Liber Machabeorum. All the Books of the New Testament, Novi Testamenti omnes libros, ut as they are commonly received, we do | vulgo recepti sunt, recipimus, et habe- receive, and account them Canonical. mus pro Canonicis. We here pass from the Catholic dogma of the Church to her polemi- cal and Protestant teaching. In other words, while the preceding five articles cover the battleground of earlier Christianity, we are here brought, in this Sixth Article, into direct antagonism with the Church of Rome, and which appears less or more in sharpened detail as we proceed. There is, therefore, no question about the true Protestant character of the Articles of the Church of England. We cannot explain them away. If the firm and decided wording of this Creed of the Church of England has any grammatical and historic meaning at all, Doctor Pusey and his school are simply dishonest and trifling when they attempt to read Romanism between the lines. There the Articles stand, unmistakably Protestant, either to be condemned and rejected, or proved by Holy Scripture and maintained. And it is well in the present day that we should be alive to all this, If Popery be a development of the truth of God, why then let us by all means heartily embrace it. But we must cease to be English Churchmen. So long as our Articles remain in the front, or form any part of the formularies of the Church of England, the plain issue is, the Bible and Protestantism against Tradition and the Papacy—the Queen of this Realm of England versus the Bishop of Rome. We are not for the moment here arguing this issue—that will be abun- dantly brought before us in the sequel. We are simply pointing to the two hostile camps—to say, no honest man can profess to belong to the one and hold parley with the other. Of course, if stratagem is lawful in religion there is at once a plea for eating the bread of the Church and undoing the work of the Reformation. But surely intrigue is as far from the spirit of the New Testament as it should be repugnant to the nature of an Englishman. If the triumph of our Christ is only to be won by Jesuitism, the sooner we cease to be Christians the better. But the Church of England is first Catholic, then Protestant, which accounts for this Sixth Article, defining the Rule of Faith, having its place here, and not as in the Helvetic Confession, and the Irish Articles of 1615, at the outset. The latter clearly is the more natural place, as the basis of all religious truth is the Word of God. But the pre- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 77 sent order has this advantage, that it links us, in the very threshold of our Confession, to primitive and Catholic Christianity ; and then proceeds, as by an historical protest, to pronounce against the great breach of Catholic faith and unity by the Church of Rome. Division. Three Subjects.—1. The Sufficiency of Holy Scripture for Salvation. 2. The Canon of Scripture. 3. The Apocrypha. 1. The Sufficiency of Holy Scripture for Salvation. Against Romanists and the Illuminati. (1.) What the Church of England teaches. “ Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite necessary to salvation ” (Art. VI.). ** Although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation” (Art. XX.). “ Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all Doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ? . . . I am so persuaded” (Ordering of Priests ; and Consecration of Bishops). (2.) What the Church of Rome teaches. “The most Holy Ecumenical and General Council of Trent, legiti- mately assembled in the Holy Ghost . . . perceiving that the truth and discipline (as promulgated by Christ and His Apostles) are contained in the written books, and in the unwritten traditions, which having been received by the Apostles, at the mouth of Christ Himself, or at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down to us, transmitted as it were by hand. . . receives and venerates, with equal pious affection and reverence, all the books of the Old and New Testament, since one God is the Author of them both, and also the Traditions, whether pertaining to faith or morals, as having been dictated, either by the mouth of Christ Himself, or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church” (Council of Trent, Session IV., Can. i., a.D. 1546). (3.) To these direct and authoritative statements we may add the following as semi-authoritative or corroboratory. (a.) Church of England : “Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable than the knowledge of Holy Scripture ; forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true Word, setting forth His glory, and also man’s duty. And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is (or may be) drawn out of that fountain and well of truth... Let us diligently search for the well of life [John iv. 14] in the books of the Old and New Testament, and not run to the stinking puddles of men’s traditions 78 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. (devised by man’s imagination) for our justification and salvation. For, in Holy Scripture is fully contained what we ought to do, and what to eschew, what to believe, what to love, and what to look for at God’s hands at length” (Homily the First, Part First). ‘The Popes, in not hearing Christ’s voice as they ought to do, but preferring their own decrees before the express Word of God, do plainly argue to the world, that they are not of Christ, nor yet pos- sessed with His Spirit . . . It is not then the duty and part of any Christian, under pretence of the Holy Ghost, to bring in his own dreams and fancies into the Church: but he must diligently provide that his doctrine and decrees be agreeable to Christ’s holy Testament : otherwise, in making the Holy Ghost the author thereof, he doth blaspheme and belie the Holy Ghost, to his own condemnation ” (Homily the Twenty-eighth, Part Second). “That the Holy Scriptures should be interpreted by their (the Fathers’) decisions, we do not allow. For the Holy Scriptures ought to be to us both the rules and judges of all Christian doctrine. Nay, moreover, the Fathers themselves refused to be so honoured, frequently admonishing the reader, that he should only admit their interpreta- tions and determinations as far as he should see that they were agree- able to the Holy Scripture ” (Reformatio Segum). “ M. Dost thou then affirm that all things necessary to godliness and salvation are contained in the written Word of God?—S. Yea: for it were a point of intolerable ungodliness and madness to think, either that God had left an imperfect doctrine, or that men were able to make that perfect which God left imperfect ” (Nowell’s Catechism). ** We receive and embrace all the Canonical Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament; and we give our gracious God most hearty thanks, that He hath set up this light for us, which we ever fix our eyes upon, lest by human fraud or the snares of the devil we should be reduced to errors or fables... They are the very might and power of God unto salvation ; they are the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets, upon which the Church of God is built; they are the most certain and infallible rule by which the Church may be reduced if she happen to stagger, slip, or err; by which all ecclesiastical doc- trines ought to be tried” (Jewell’s Apology). “We are sure that what is so written and so transmitted is God’s Word ; whereas, concerning other things, which were not written, we have no certain records, no evident proof, no sufficient conviction, and therefore it is not capable of being owned as the Rule of Faith or Life, because we do not know it to be the Word of God” (Taylor's Dissuasive). (6.) Church of Rome. “The controversy between us and the heretics consists in two things. The first is, that we assert, that in Scripture is not expressly contained all necessary doctrine, whether of faith or morals; and therefore that, besides the written Word of God, there is also required the unwritten Word of God, that is Divine and Apostolical Traditions. But they (the heretics) teach, that all things necessary for faith and EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 79 morals are contained in the Scriptures, and that therefore there is no need of any unwritten Word” (Bellarmine, De Verbo Dei non Scripto). (4.) What Reason teaches. (a.) Since “the world by wisdom knew not God,” if, therefore, and on that very account, God condescends to make a written Revelation of His will, that Revelation must, and only can, supply what, and all, that is needed to impart a saving knowledge of God. Otherwise, that Revelation is not only imperfect, and so unworthy of God, but fails im limine and de facto in the very purpose for which it was given and intended. (b.) Lf Scripture is incomplete, and Tradition incomplete, Salvation, or the Christian Faith, depends for its perfection upon two standards of acknowledged imperfection ! (c.) In the early ages of the world, the life of man extended over many hundreds of years; so that not not only were the grandchildren of Adam contemporary with Noah, but Methuselah lived with Adam 243 years, and with Noah 600 years. Here then Tradition had a fair field. It could not be lost. It had only to travel, as it were, the family circle. But yet Tradition failed even to save that family circle. For we read that in the days of Noah—and 120 years we may observe before the death of Methuselah—‘ God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Gen. vi. 12). Shall Tradition be more power- ful in the greatly altered, and infinitely more adverse circumstances of our race now ? (d.) Precisely analogous in principle to the oral and so-called divine traditions, claimed by the Church of Rome, as handed down from the days of the Apostles, were the oral traditions of the Jewish Church, also accounted divine, and handed down through the Great Syna- gogue, from the time of Ezra. Both proceed upon the same avowed principle of the incompleteness of God’s Written Word. If the only effect of the Jewish traditions was to ‘make the Word of God of none effect,” is that not likely to be the precise effect of the Romish traditions? Besides, if our Saviour had intended to supplant the Jewish traditions by Christian traditions, would He have condemned the former in terms which savour so very strongly of attacking the whole general principle of traditions? ‘‘ Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders? . . . Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the command- ment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. . . . Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition ” (Mark vii. 5, 7, 8, 13). (e.) Not only is it fair, but imperative to ask, Where are these Romish Traditions contained ? where are they to be collected? or how developed and transmitted? And when ascertained, where lies the authority to pronounce upon them? to distinguish between the pos- sible and very probable—yea, the actually acknowledged accretions and alloy of the lapse of centuries, and the pure virgin gold of the deposit of Christ and His Apostles? 80 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Now to the first of these questions—Where are these oral Traditions to be found ?!—Rome has no distinct, definite, or worthy answer. It is trifling to tell us that her Traditions are floating about in the bosom of her own Church. That is an answer which would at once damage business credit in the world; and religious credit should be at least just as tender. A floating capital of merchandise at sea, incapable of being reduced to any reliable figures, passes for very little in sound commerce. ‘True, it sometimes gains currency on ’Change ; but in the long run only ends in disaster. Then as to their development and transmission. Who is conscious of it? Do they come en masse, and are they sensibly transmitted from popedom to popedom? Or do they lie as a dead and unknown treasure somewhere, to be drawn upon when exigency requires? What, in all earnestness, do the words of the Tridentine Canon—“ The un- written traditions, which have come down to us, transmitted, as it were, by hand, and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church ”— explicitly and historically mean ? It is true we are told that there is an infallible authority vested in the Church of Rome, by which the truth or falsehood of Tradition may be tested; and an anathema is pronounced against those who dispute that authority. But without here anticipating argument upon Papal Infallibility, may we not ask, Is not this begging the whole question? The very claim, on the face of it, acknowledges, as we have said, the alloy of Romish Tradition. But there is a higher point. Does it look honest to claim a capital of Tradition, and then, to enhance its value, set up a plea of Infallibility on the part of the owner, and anathematise all those who are unable and unwilling to indorse that plea and method of valuation ? It is true also that when pressed, Romanists and Tractarians tell us the inspired communications delivered by Christ and His apostles over and beyond the Word written, and orally conveyed from generation to generation in the Church Catholic, ζ.6., in the succession of an Infallible Church, were ultimately enshrined in the tomes of the early Fathers. But if so, this at once clearly stamps out the special claim of Rome, or any other branch of the Catholic Church, to all manner and mode of tradition. To oral tradition, for we are concerned no longer with a Revelation handed down by word of mouth, but a professed tangible record—a second New Testament, or Third Seripture. And as obviously no longer with an additional New Testament belonging to Rome, but to the world. And even when we approach this venerable storehouse of Christian antiquity, what do we find? Why, that the great bulk of its treasures have been swept away! And not only so, but the Benedictine editors, themselves Romish, frankly acknowledge that Patristic Tradition has been largely adulterated and interpolated. And asa proof at once of this their own confession, and against Papal Infallibility, we may mention that they have declared passages even in the Romish Breviary, calling the Virgin “the sinner’s only hope,” to be spurious, as “read under the name of Augustine!” (Tom. v. 323, App). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 81 Indeed, if the mass of matter in the writings of the Fathers—the conceded shrine be it remembered of Romish Tradition—which these candid and painstaking scholars have marked “ Doubtful or Falsely Ascribed ”—that is, vitiated or forged by the Roman Catholic Church —be so, what, in all fairness, becomes of her honesty? what, in all honesty of argument or common sense, becomes of her boasted Infalli- bility ? where existed, or how exercised—“ talking, or pursuing, or in a journey, or peradventure sleeping ””—was that Infallible Authority claimed by the Church of Rome, by which the truth or falsehood of Tradition may be tested? What becomes even of the canon of Vicentius—“ Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus?” Since we have only fragments of the Fathers, and if these have been muti- lated, what portion of Tradition can we say was always? what are we sure was everywhere ? and has the universal whole which Rome or Doctor Pusey would claim, the consent of all the known and unknown writings of all the Mathers? We say “unknown,” for however absurd the factor, it is of vital importance to the Canon. Never perhaps has argument been put forward, more vulnerable along the whole line, than this line of Romish Tradition. (7.) But the fact is, Rome has but vague notions as to what she herself actually means by, and should include under, her “ Divine and Apostolical Traditions.” As the Fathers are accessible to the world, the Hearsay Doctrines of Priests must be added to the Fathers! But Hearsay and the Fathers, and the Fathers and Hearsay—for such is in reality Rome’s mode of argument in this slipping circle—is a Rule, not of any rational or well-informed Faith, but of Fantasy, at once absurd, impractical, inaccessible, yet viciously convenient. “The Bible, including the Apocrypha; written traditions, com- prising one hundred and thirty-tive folio volumes of bulls of Popes, decretals, acts of councils, acts of saints, and the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers for one thousand two hundred years, to be inter- preted by some living infallible judge, who has not yet been definitely pointed out in the Church of Rome, and about whom four conflicting opinions obtain to this day among Romanists; and the unwritten traditions or hearsay doctrines among the Romish clergy ” 1—this, assuredly, is more than a safe and tangible “standard and beam to try the weight of truth and falsehood :” the Word of God mixed up with the inventions of man and the devices of Satan. (g.) The claim of Tradition therefore ceases, whether as a Rule of Faith or of Practice. It cannot lead us to Christ. That alone is the province of Holy Scripture. Nor indeed is even any ceremony to be contended for, beyond certain limits, which is not directly probable or fairly deducible from the Revealed Word. ‘The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible,” must be the Document of Appeal, and the sole Authoritative Teacher of Christians. The right use oi Tradition then is wholly subordinate—that of a witness to the truth. Whenever and wherever it reflects the light of God’s Word Written, and just in proportion as it reflects that light, is it valuable. 1 Crompton’s Questions on the Thirty-nine Articles. 82 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. (z.) And this, as will have been less or more fully seen, is the plain and unmistakable doctrine of the Church of England throughout her standards. In the face of this Sixth Article, that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith ”—it is simply unblush- ing perversion of plain language, on the part of Tractarians to say, that while the Church may pronounce Scripture to be the Rule of Faith, yet she does not assert it to be the only Rule of Faith! Even the Three Creeds are only “to be received and believed,” because ‘they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” Again, our Twenty-seventh Article declares that ‘“ the Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church.” But why? Because it is ‘‘most agreeable with the institution of Christ.” And the Church of England holds, in her Preface to the Ordination Service, “ that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church ; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” Why ? Primarily, because “it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture,” and secondarily and as confirmatory, “ancient authors.” Here, and here only, is the true place and legitimate province of Tradition and the Fathers. (5.) What the Fathers themselves teach. Ignatius. ‘The Gospel is the perfection of incorruptness.” TRENZUS. “We know most assuredly that the Scriptures are indeed perfect, because they are dictated by the Word of God and His Spirit.” ** And indeed we have received the economy our salvation by no other but by those by whom the Gospel came to us; which truly they then preached, but afterwards, by the will of God, delivered to us in the Scriptures, to be the pillar and ground of our faith.” “We following the one and sole true God as our teacher, and having His words for the Rule of Faith, say always the same things concerning the same subjects.” CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. * We should not simply attend to the words of men, which it is law- ful for us to gainsay. But if it be not sufficient only to say what we think, but what is said ought to be confirmed, let us not wait for testimony from men, but let us confirm what is questioned by the voice of God, which is more certain than all demonstrations, or rather is itself the only demonstration.” “ Perfectly demonstrating out of the Scriptures themselves, con- cerning themselves, we speak or persuade demonstratively of the faith. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 83 Although even they that go after heresies, do dare to use the Scriptures of the Prophets. But first they use not all, neither them that are perfect, nor as the whole body and contexture of the prophecy does dictate ; but choosing out those things which are spoken ambiguously, they draw them to their own opinion.” TERTULLIAN. “Tet the shop of Hermogenes [who held that matter was co-eternal with God] show that it is written. If it is not written, let him fear the woe destined for those who add to or take from (the Word of God).” eee it is not lawful for us to bring in anything of our own will, nor to choose anything that other men bring in of their own will. We have the Apostles for our authors, who neither themselves chose to bring in anything of their own will; but the discipline (‘ disciph- nam,’ here = ‘doctrine,’ Hooker), which they received of Christ, they delivered faithfully unto the people.” “But they (the heretics) will believe without the Scriptures, so that they may believe against the Scriptures.” «Wherever a diversity in the doctrine is found, there it must be concluded that the Scriptures, and the expositions of Scripture, have been corrupted. They who purposed to teach otherwise, must needs have made another disposition of those instruments whence the doc- trine is to be derived. For they could not else teach any other doctrine, unless they had wherewithal to teach otherwise. As the corruption of the doctrine could not succeed with them without the corruption of the instruments of proof; so with us also, the integrity of our doctrine could not be ascertained, without the integrity of those things by means of which the doctrine is arrived at. For what have we that is contrary to our Scriptures? what have we inserted of our own, so that we should remedy, by taking away, or adding, or chang- ing anything that can be discovered in it contrary to the Scriptures ἢ What we are, that the Scriptures are from the first. We are from them, before there was anything otherwise than we are.” Notwithstanding these definite statements as to Scripture being the ultimate and only authoritative document of appeal, Romanists claim Tertullian especially as favouring their doctrine of Traditions ; and accordingly glean from his writings passages which at first sight, but only by a very cursory reader, might seem to be on their side. Thus in his book De Corona Militis, he says: “1 you demand a law taken from the Scriptures for these and other matters of discipline of the same sort, you will find none; we must answer, tradition has established it, custom has confirmed it, and faith has caused it to be observed.” And again: “ Even in civil affairs custom is admitted as a law, where the law fails” (Ibid.). But it must be borne in mind, that our argument here with Rome is not about “customs” of ritual and “matters of discipline,” but about Doctrine, as sanctioned by Tradition: things just as widely 84 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. apart, as that which may be convenient is from that which is vital. And the argument of Tertullian in these and like passages does not exceed the argument of our own Thirty-fourth Article. Indeed it is fairly open to question whether even he goes so far :— “Tf no Scripture has determined this observance, custom certainly has confirmed it, as having, without doubt, emanated from tradition. For how can any practice be observed, if it has not been first handed down? But you say, a written authority must be required to support a tradition. Let us ask, therefore, whether a tradition which is not written ought to be received. We must altogether deny that it is to be received, unless we can adduce examples of other observances, which without the sanction of any Scripture, on the ground of ‘tradition alone, we vindicate on the authority of custom.” HIPPouytus. “There is one God, whom, my brethren, we do not otherwise fully know (ἐπιγινώσκομεν), but from the Holy Scriptures. . . . Whosoever of us would exercise ourselves in piety towards God, can exercise our- selves in it from no other source, than from the Oracles of God. Whatsoever things, therefore, the Holy Scriptures declare, let us know ; and whatsoever things they teach, let us clearly learn... . Not according to our own will, nor our own mind, neither do violence to those things, which have been given to us by God; but as He by the Holy Scriptures hath vouchsafed to teach us, so let us understand.” ORIGEN. “The two Testaments—in which every word that appertains to God may be sought out and discussed. . . . But if there remaineth anything which the Holy Scripture doth not determine, no third Scripture ought to be recognised as of authority in knowledge... . But that which remaineth, we must commit to the fire, that is, reserve it unto God. For God would not have us know all things in the present life.” CyPRIAN. “Tet nothing be innovated but that is delivered. Whence is that Tradition? Does it descend from the authority of our Lord and the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and Epistles of the Apostles? For that those things are to be done, which are written, God testifies and propounds to Joshua, saying, ‘The Book of this Law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, and thou shalt observe all these things that are written in it to do them.’ The Lord, also, sending His Apostles, commands that ‘all nations should be baptized and taught, that they should observe all things whatsoever He commanded.’ If, therefore, it be either commanded in the Gospel, or in the Epistles of the Apostles, that they that come from any heresy should not be baptized, but that hands should be imposed upon them unto repentance, then let even this holy Tradition be observed.” EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 85 No wonder that Bellarmine pronounces these views “one of the errors of Cyprian!” CoNSTANTINE. Though not of course in the list of the Fathers, gives us most valuable testimony; whether we regard it in its completeness, or as the opinion of an Emperor, and that the first Christian and greatest of the early age, or as delivered before the Council of Nice :— “The Evangelical and Apostolical books, and the divine oracles of the ancient Prophets, do clearly teach us whatsoever we are to believe concerning God. . . . Let us take the solution of those things that are questioned from the divinely inspired Oracles; certainly accounting nothing as an Article of Faith, but what may be proved from thence.” ATHANASIUS. “The holy and divinely inspired Scriptures are of themselves sufficient to the enunciation of the truth.” “These are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them. In them alone is the doctrine of godliness set forth. Let no man add to them, nor take from them.” CYRIL OF JERUSALEM. “For nothing at all ought to be delivered concerning the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, without the holy Scriptures: nor ought we to be at all influenced by probabilities or prepared argu- ments. Nor in anywise believe me that say these things to you, unless you take the demonstration of the things that are declared, out of the Holy Scriptures.” “Hold fast to that faith alone which is now delivered to you by the Church, and which is fortified by all Scripture. For since all cannot read the Scriptures ; but some, incapacity, others, want of leisure, hinders from attaining knowledge; in order that poor souls may not perish through ignorance, we include the whole doctrine of the faith in a few lines, which I wish you to remember when read to you—engraving the memory of them in your hearts... . But ona fitting opportunity, draw from the Holy Scriptures the proof of every- thing that is laid down. . . . Take heed, therefore, brethren, that ye observe the traditions which ye have now received, and write them in the breadth of your hearts.” As an instance of their readiness to grasp at the shadow of an argu- ment, Romanists will have Cyril’s memorial lines to make for their Traditions! And consequently, as Cary informs us, here “in the old Paris editions, amongst the marginal notes, which stand as finger- posts to guide the reader to the true meaning of the author,” are the following : ‘‘ Fides ecclesia sola servanda,” which he somewhat ironi- cally translates, “‘The Pope is Infallible!” And: “Traditiones suas servare jubet,” which we suppose he would likewise read, ‘ Cyril’s memoria technica means Catholic Tradition.” 86 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES, Basi. “‘Every word and action ought to be confirmed by the testimony of the divinely inspired Scriptures, to the full confirmation of the good, and the confusion of the evil.” “Believe those things which are written; the things which are not written seek not.” “Tt is a manifest falling away from the faith, and a proof of arro- gance, either to reject any of the things that are written, or to intro- duce any of the things that are not written.” AMBROSE. “How can we use those things which we find not in the Holy Scriptures ?” THEOPHILUS OF ALEXANDRIA. “Tt is an instinct of the devil to follow the sophisms of human minds, and to think anything divine without the authority of the Scriptures,” JEROME. “As we do not deny those things which are written, so we reject those things that are not written. That God was born of a Virgin we believe, because we read it. That Mary was married after her delivery, we do not believe, because we do not read it.” AUGUSTINE. “Tn those things which are plainly laid down in Seripture, all things are found, which embrace faith and morals.” “When our Lord Jesus had done many things they were not all written, as the same holy Evangelist testifies, that the Lord Christ had both said and done many things which were not written ; but those things were chosen out to be written, which seemed sufficient for the salvation of believers.” “Whether it be a question concerning Christ, or whether it be a question concerning His Church, or of what other matter soever the question be, which appertains to faith, or our life; I will not say if we, but—lIf an angel from heaven shall preach unto you anything besides that you have received in the Scriptures, under the Law and the Gospel, let him be accursed.” “Tf it be established by the clear authority of the Divine Serip- tures, those I mean that are called Canonical in the Church, it is to be believed without any doubt. But other witnesses or testimonies which are used to persuade you to believe anything, you may believe or not, just as you shall see that they have or have not any weight giving them a just claim to your confidence.” THEODORET. ‘Bring me not human reasonings and syllogisms ; I rely on the Divine Scripture alone.” EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 87 VicEntTIUS LIRINENSIS. “The Canon of Scripture is perfect, and most abundantly sufficient in itself for all things.” JOHN DAMASCENE. “ All things, that are delivered tous by the Law, and the Prophets, and the Apostles, and the Evangelists, we receive, and acknowledge, and reverence, seeking for nothing beyond these.” Here then is a Catena of the Fathers down even to the eighth century, valuable not only for its distinctness, but also for its instinc- tiveness. Had the claims of the later Church of Rome and the Council of Trent been set up, we could not have had fuller Protestant testimony. The plain historical fact is, Christendom knew nothing of a Doctrina Tradita, independent of and equal in authority with Scripture, till the exigencies of Rome created it, to support her pre- tensions. And yet the early Fathers especially were wondrously sensitive, and providentially so, about the Sufficiency of Holy Serip- ture. It only remains under this head to note two exceptions which Rome takes against our argument. The first is that some of the Fathers speak of a Rule, outside of and distinct from the Scriptures, by which they are to be interpreted. Thus Irenzus speaks of “a Canon of Truth” (κανὼν τῆς ἀληθείας) ; Tertullian ‘‘a Rule of Faith” (Regula Fidei); Clement of Alex- andria “a Canon of Truth,” or ““ Kcclesiastical Canon” (κανὼν ex- κλησιαστικύς) ; and Vicentius Lirinensis of “the Rule of Ecclesiastical and Catholic sense.” But the Rule of Irenzus and Tertullian was simply the Baptismal Creed—an epitome of doctrine founded on Seripture, not a traditional Revelation. The Rule of Clement was in his own words “the argument and harmony of the Law and the Prophets with the Cove- nant of our Lord.” And the Rule of Vicentius was neither more nor less than the received and orthodox collective judgment of Christians, as against “the turnings and twinings ” of heretics—the Hermeneutics of the Church. All guards and guides, necessary and imperative ; but by no means independent and authoritative parallels with Scripture. Secondly, Romanists adduce instances where the Fathers preferred to argue from Tradition, in preference to Scripture. Thus Tertullian says: “ΝΟ appeal must be made to the Scriptures, no contest must be founded on them, in which victory is uncertain... . The grand question is, To whom does the Rule of Faith itself appertain? in whose keeping are the Scriptures? From whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was delivered the discipline, by which Christians are made Christians? For where it shall appear that the truth of the Christian discipline and faith is, there will be the truth of the Scriptures, and of their meaning, and of all Christian traditions, 88 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. But we must remember that this appeal to Tradition was the only possible argument which the Fathers could use against their adver- saries, the heretics. These had not only mutilated the Scriptures, rejecting whatever portion was opposed to them, but had also per- verted those portions they did receive to support their own doctrines. This is clear from Tertullian’s own words. ‘That heresy does not receive certain Scriptures, and what it does receive, by adding and taking away, it perverts to support its own doctrine. If it does receive them, it does not receive them entire.” No other course therefore, under such circumstances, was open to the Fathers, but to appeal to the received doctrines and living voice of the Apostolic Churches. But this assuredly is a different thing altogether from that for which the Church of Rome contends—a new Revelation independent of Scripture. It is merely the historical argument ; always legitimate, but of special value and force in the early age of the Church. It is the ever-laudable confirmation of Scripture: but not the awful venture and sin of adding to it. (6.) What the Bible teaches. (a.) Its own Sufficiency as based upon its Divine Authority. “ And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a Jaw, and commandments which I have written ; that thou mayest teach them ” (Exod. xxiv, 12). ‘‘Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes, and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live. , . . Ye shall not add unto the word which I com- mand you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deut. iv. 1, 2). ‘‘ Ye shall observe to do therefore as the Lord your God hath commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (Deut. v. 32). ‘And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God” (Deut. xvii. 18, 19). ‘The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple ” (Ps. xix. 7). “Every word of God is pure. . . . Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Prov. xxx. 5, 6). “ Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccles. xii. 13). “Τὸ the law and tothe testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. villi. 20). ‘* They have Moses and the prophets ; let them hear them” (Luke xvi. 29). ‘Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John v. 39). ‘‘ These were more noble than those in Thessa- lonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts xvii. 11). ‘ Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Serip- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES, 89 tures might have hope” (Rom. xv. 4). “From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim, ili, 15-17). N τὰ Ὁ (ἢ it is true that all these passages refer primarily to Old Testament Scriptures, yet obviously in their wider and more complete meaning they include retrospectively and prospectively the whole Written Word of God, as gradually revealed. For by restricting them to their primary reference—the Old Testament or portions of it—we thereby argue that such portions or the whole are sufficient for salva- tion ; and that therefore no additional revelation was required. Each portion, indeed, was sufficient for its own Economy of the Church ; and if so, the argument is abundantly enhanced, and beyond question conclusive, for the full sufficiency of the Completed Canon. (6.) The following passages stamp the New Testament Scriptures as part of God’s all-sufficient Word Written: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John vi. 63). ‘The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (ch. xiv. 26). “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (ch. xx. 31). Here we have the all-important reason why St. John was led to write, and not to leave to Tradition, “signs which Jesus did in the presence of his disciples ”—“ that ye might believe, and have life through his name,” But we have more. If we admit the inspira- tion of the Apostles, here indeed directly asserted, and the Canonicity of their Books, here also virtually proclaimed, these passages cover not only the Gospel of St. John, but the whole Scriptures of the New Testament as the Recorded Christ Words of Spirit and of Life. And if we have His Life Words thus secured to us in Writing, it is absurd, as well as blasphemous, to add to them by Tradition. “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Rev. xxii. 18, 19). (c.) St. Paul’s “ Traditions.” “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thes. ii. 15). From this and like passages, it is argued, that besides the Christian Scriptures, there was evidently an Apostolic deposit to be guarded in perpetuity—an oral tradition of the Church for all ages. But the go EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. argument at once breaks down, if we call to mind the actual circum- stances of the case. For the fact is, the Christian Scriptures were not, when the Apostle wrote, either collected or completed, and therefore could not form at the time a standard of reference and appeal. The ‘‘ word,” or oral sermons and inspired teaching of the Apostle, together with his ‘ Epistle,” constituted the “traditions,” that is doctrines (παραδόσεις) in question ; and were in reality all that existed to mould the faith, for example, of the Thessalonians, and so tn other cases. It was thus a phase of the infant Church, miraculously provided for— a temporary need, supplied by men under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and which only could be supplied by such. The argument, to be of any permanent force, must produce continuous successors of the Apostles, “full of the Holy Ghost,” and of miraculous power ; or, failing this, find us the traditions of St. Paul! To tell us, that the Apostles left us traditions, a rule of faith and morals, and yet to be able to give us no catalogue of those traditions, is more than suspicious ; it is an open and deliberate imposition upon the credulity of mankind—upon the weakness of men and women who have not courage or strength to think for themselves. The veil is so trans- parent, and the demand upon belief so gross, that one does wonder at the slavery of the human mind in the Church of Rome—at men not thinking, and at a priesthood “damning doubt.” But, above all, we wonder that the Oxford Divines, in the face of the enlightenment of the nineteenth century and the lessons of history, should attempt to un- protestantise our country, and seek to impose a yoke of tradition upon our necks, which Reason, and the Fathers, and the Bible, thus alike condemn. Is it the Nemesis of wrong, or the naked impotency of the argu- ment, that leads Mr. Keble and other eminent writers of the Rome- ward school, to build on the foundation of sand—“ Traditions, if they can be anyhow authenticated, must necessarily demand the same reverence from us as Holy Scripture?” Yes! “if they can be any- how authenticated,” then Rome and the Tractarians are right. But if they can’t! the battle of Tradition is lost, and God’s Word Written wins, all along the line! 2. The Canon of Holy Scripture. (1.) The word Canon (κανών), originally used in classic Greek to signify a straight rod, or measuring-rule; and so a standard; and in the New Testament, an apportioned line of life (2 Cor. x. 13-16), or rule of conduct (Gal. vi. 16), came in the first three centuries to be applied in an ecclesiastical sense, as designating the Creedal Law of the Church, or traditional Rule of Faith, and then passed to denote decisions of discipline. The transfer to Scripture itself was therefore easy : the sacred Books being first spoken of as canonised or canonical (‘‘ Canonical Serip- tures,” ‘“Canonised Books,” Origen), that is, admitted by rule; and then ultimately as setting forth the rule. Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, in the fourth century, was the first who applied the word to EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. ΟΙ a list of the Books of the Bible, though still more definitively in the proper sense of a measure, rather than a catalogue: ‘‘ This will be the most truthful Canon (ze., testing Rule) of the Inspired Scriptures, which if you shall obey you will escape the snares of the world.” But the meaning of the word was thus extended to the collection or catalogue of books forming the Bible of the Christian Church. 2.) Among the names of the Revealed Word, may be noted :— (a.) In Holy Writ. “The Law,” “The Book of the Law,” ‘The Law of the Lord,” “The Law and the Prophets,” “The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” The latter being the equivalent of ‘‘ The Law, the Prophets, and the (Holy) Writings”—the threefold division of the Hebrew title of the Bible: Torah, Nebiim, Cethubim (Gr. Hagiographa). “The Covenant,” ““The Book of the Covenant,” ‘The Covenant of the Lord God,” “Τῇ Old Testament” (or ‘‘ Covenant”). “The Scriptures” (the general form of quotation employed in the New Testament), ‘‘The Holy Scriptures.” The singular—‘ Scripture ἢ —being used with reference to a particular passage. “The Word,” “The Word of God” (perhaps the most complete title), “The Oracles of God.” ‘ Oracle ”—in the singular—being used to denote the place where God was graciously pleased, under the old dispensation, to reveal His will. So early as the days of St. Peter, the term “Scriptures,” as applied to the recognised Divine Word, would seem to have been given to St. Paul’s Epistles, as he wrote them (2 Pet. 111. 15,16). An important evidence to show that the writings of the Apostles were at once acknowledged by those to whom they came as the Inspired Word of God. (6.) In Christian Literature. From the foregoing paragraph we may see how, in the sub-Apostolic Church, the New Testament writings, and those of the Old Testament, were incorporated into one common whole, under the appellation of “Scripture :” the writings of the New Testament being grafted, as it were, on those of the Old, and thus both becoming one growth ; while, as In nature, the graft determined the kind of fruit. The Christian Scriptures were thus received as Divine, and with the Law and the Prophets on which they were built, were read in the religious assemblies ; and so the entire Record of God’s Revelation— the writings of the Old and New Testaments—were accounted, and received a collective title, in the early Church, as ‘‘The Whole Scrip- ture,” “The Two Testaments,” “The Divine Instrument.” Passing to the fourth century, we find Jerome applying the term, “The Divine Library,” to the whole Bible—but not, as Dr. Westcott states, “the first collective title given.” For Tertullian long before had used in the very same collective sense the titles just quoted— “Whole Scripture,” ‘Two Testaments,” “ Divine Instrument.” And the use of these terms by Tertullian was simply an embodiment of the thought and language of his own, and even of a still previous, age. In this century also the Greeks adopted the title, ‘‘The Books,” 92 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τὰ βιβλία, plural (“The Holy Books,” Chrysostom), which the bar barism of the thirteenth century read in the Western or Latin Church, as a singular noun, biblia, “The Book,” or Bible. Strange that the confusion of language, indorsed by the common consent of Europe, should thus at last give us one of the most expressive titles to show the pre-eminence of God’s Word Written. (3.) The Canon of the Old Testament. (a.) As a preliminary remark we may observe, that the historical evidence as such of Holy Writ is, and must necessarily be, identically the same in principle as the historical evidence of any other writings of a bygone age, while its very fulness demands the attention of every intelligent man. It is not a waif on the stream of time, it is an important stream itself— “Though deep, yet clear— Without overflowing, full.” Obviously, it might have pleased Almighty God, by a continuous extension or display of miracle, to support the authority of the books of the Bible, just as it pleased Him, by the miraculous inspiration of His Holy Spirit, to write them. But if we may reason from analogy, this “overflow” of evidence might have been attended with no more marked results than the visible and continuous puttings forth of Divine power in nature. What a very small proportion, even of those who professedly believe in a God, are struck with the proofs of His actual Presence in any one of the many fields of creation. But it does seem wisely ordained to foreclose, as it were, all objection, and so leave His rational creatures without excuse ; that in nature on the one hand, and in grace on the other, these two great elements of moral evidence should be respectively vouchsafed to us—the “ material work of His fingers,” and the human testimony of history. Even thus is man raised to be a ‘‘ worker together with God.” (b.) And this leads us at once briefly to state the grounds upon which the Canonicity of the Bible is based. We receive the Old Testament, or Jewish Scriptures, upon the authority of the recorded testimony of Christ and His Apostles—supplemented and aided by secular evidence. And we receive the recorded testimony of Christ and His Apostles, or the Christian Scriptures, upon the authority of the Primitive Church—the evidence of that Church being handed down to us in documents, customs, and institutions. (c.) Our Lord and His Apostles continually cite or refer to, as authoritative and Divine, a collection of sacred writings known in their days as “ The Scriptures,” “‘ The Law,” ‘‘The Law and the Prophets,” ἄς, The simple question, therefore, is, Of what was that collection of Scripture made up? What were the Books of the Jewish Bible? Now the first step in any such inquiry evidently is to take— The Evidence of Contemporary Authority. Philo, a contemporary of our Lord, and the representative of the Jewish Church at Alexandria on the Egyptian Dispersion, while laying particular stress on the Pentateuch, from its intrinsic and accidental EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 93 value—being the key-note of Revelation, and the first local biblical Greek volume—yet quotes almost every book of the Old Testament, as Divine or authoritative ; but does nut quote even one Apocryphal writing. Josephus the historian, born a.p. 37, and surviving the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore a contemporary of the Apostles, and who may be taken as the representative of the Jewish Church in Palestine, if not indeed a fair and legitimate representative of the whole Jewish Church, includes in his description of the Canon atu the Books of the Old Testament, under an artificial arrangement of twenty-two, cor- responding to the number of letters in the Hebrew Alphabet—but yet really in virtual and exact coincidence with our own list of thirty-nine. While he explicitly excludes the Apocrypha in these words: ‘ Books written since the time of Artaxerxes have not the same credit as those before that time, because the succession of prophets has failed.” He divides the sacred Books into three classes, thus: “‘ We have twenty-two books, containing the record of all time, which have been justly believed to be Divine. Of these, five are the books of Moses, containing the laws and tradition of the creation of man up to Moses’ death—a period little less than 3000 years. Next, the prophets wrote the acts of their times, from Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes [B.c. 450-410], the successor of Xerxes, king of Persia, in thirteen books. The remaining four books embrace hymns to God and admonitions to men for the conduct of their lives.” Now, if we carefully mark these definitions, we have the following detail :— Books of Moses.—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deutero- nomy—five books. The Prophets.—Joshua, Judges with Ruth, 1st and 2d Samuel (one book), 1st and 2d Kings (one book), Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel, the Twelve Minor Prophets (one book), Daniel, Job, Ezra, and Nehemiah (one book), Esther, 1st and 2d Chronicles (one book)—thirteen books. Hymns and Admonitions.—The Psalter, Canticles, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, four books—in all twenty-two books, counted differently with us, but including precisely the books of our present Canon. This evidence is conclusive, and our argument strictly requires little beyond. But still on each side of this contemporary testimony there lies most important corroborative evidence, which it is therefore of value to trace. Thus, ANTERIOR TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA, we have— Tue EvIpENCE OF THE APOURYPHA. In the Prologue to Eeclesiasticus, written by the grandson of the author of the Book, probably about 130 B.c., in the reign of Energetes 11., we read : “ And not only these things, but the Law itself, and the Prophets, and the rest of the Books have no small difference, when they are spoken in their own language.” Elsewhere we find “The Law, “‘The Law and the Prophets, ‘‘ The 94 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Book of the Testament,” ‘The Book of the Commandments of God,” “The Book of the Covenant of the Most High God, even the Law which Moses commanded for an heritage unto the congregations of Jacob,” ‘The Holy Books of Scripture in our hands,” &c. Now, from all this it is clear that at a date considerably prior to the days of Christ and his Apostles, the Jewish Church had a sacred code or canon of Scripture accounted Divine ; and from the well-known tenacity and reverential care of the Jews in clinging to and guarding the oracles of God, we cannot but conclude that these early Scriptures were identical with the Scriptures quoted and referred to in the New Testament, and set forth and defined in our Article. ΤῊΝ EVIDENCE OF THE SEPTUAGINT. Bishop Browne, in his Exposition of the Articles, falls into the common error of dating this Alexandrian Greek Version in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and assumes that “ the Apocryphal books, when written, were in all probability inserted into the Septuagint ;” and that our Lord and His Apostles thus cite from a volume contain- ing the Old Testament and “‘all the Apocryphal books ;” and so con- tends, that if the Apocrypha “ were so mischievous, or so to be rejected, as some argue, it is scarcely to be accounted for that neither our Lord nor any of His Apostles gave any warning against them.” Dr. Westcott also, in one part of his Bible in the Church, would incline to the opinion that in the time of Philo (contemporary of our Lord) the Septuagint at Alexandria “was already enlarged beyond the limits of the original Hebrew,” and that “the notion of a definite Bible was obscured” by the addition of “other books—for instance, 1st Maccabees, Ecclesiasticus,” &c. But he evades the conclusion of Bishop Browne as to our Lord’s sanction of a volume containing the true Scriptures and the Apocrypha, by assuming the existence of a Septuagint at Palestine, which threw out the Apocrypha—“a Pales- tinian Septuagint, revised by the Hebrew, the Greek Bible which was used by our Lord and the Apostles.” While in another part of the same work he distinctly states there is no indication that the enlarge- ment of the Septuagint took place before the Christian era (see pp. 31-35, 124, and Appendix A). But the truth is, the incorporation of the Apocrypha is one of the most obscure points in the whole range of biblical literature, which must excuse these seemingly negligent statements. Now, in the first place, the difference of style in the Septuagint proves that it could not have been written in any one period; and critical research tends to show that the Pentateuch was translated first, probably about 285 B.c., in the reign of Philadelphus, and the rest of the Old Testament at successive but uncertain intervals. I, however, we may credit Aristobulus, in the second century before Christ, and the first writer who mentions a Greek version of the Scrip- tures, the Pentateuch was translated as early as the time of Plato, who he alleges was indebted to it; and Demetrius Phalereus, the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 95 librarian of Philadelphus, promoted the translation of the remainder of the Old Testament during that king’s reign, Next, from the ‘all of the Apocryphal books” which Bishop Browne would insert in the Septuagint in the time of our Lord, we must certainly exclude at least the Second Book of Esdras, which was probably not written, and certainly not completed as it stands, much before the close of the first century of the Christian era. Then again, as to the existence of a Palestinian Septuagint revised by the Hebrew, we must freely confess, that it is one of those hypo- theses which are sometimes framed to bridge over a difficulty— the difficulty in this case being of course the Apocrypha and our Lord’s sanction of them—without the shadow of a proof. For we need scarcely say there is no record of a revised Septuagint, no trace whatever of it in history. Melito’s testimony, which we shall pre- sently discuss, and upon which Dr. Westcott relies, is indeed valuable, but as a link ina higher chain of evidence to show that “the notion of a definite Bible” was never ‘‘ obscured” by any section of the Jewish Church. We are thus brought face to face with the inquiry, What were the contents of the Septuagint prior and up to the Christian period? The evidence is circumstantial, but we think nevertheless complete and overwhelming to show that the Septuagint contained, only and as Scripture, the books of the Old Testament. Let us not be misunder- stood. We are not here inquiring into the value of the Apocrypha— that will come before us hereafter ; nor when or how these writings first appeared and were circulated—an interesting subject, but not within the scope of our Article. We are simply affirming, that the Canon of the Jewish Church, up to and during the time of our Lord and His Apostles, and as represented by the Septuagint, included, according to the evidence, only the true Scriptures, and excluded all Apocryphal pieces. And indeed, unless in the presence of the clearest and most direct proof, we do hold it to be most unjust to the Jew to insinuate even in the slightest degree his unfaithfulness to the trust committed him—that of ‘ The Oracles of God.” Our circumstantial evidence in order is as follows :— The author of the second Prologue to Ecclesiasticus wrote that preface in Egypt—the birthplace of the Septuagint and its alleged corruption—where he translated into Greek and published his grand- father’s work, Ecclesiasticus—an expression pure and simple, without any extraneous influence, of Palestinian theology. But here assuredly was an opening for Alexandrine influence and interpolation; or if filial faith and duty were too strong for this, here at all events was a temptation for a note or turn of expression to show the greater fidelity of the writer’s fathers of Palestine. Yet this man, writing under these circumstances, deviates neither to the right hand nor the left, but keeps, as we believe, to the simple path of history, and apparently knows of no “ enlargement of the Greek Bible beyond the limits of the original Hebrew Bible ”—no other standard but “The Law and the Prophets.” This brings us to 130 8.6, 96 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Philo follows, the great representative of the Alexandrian Church, and he brings the evidence down to the very lifetime of our Lord. Now he must have been acquainted with all, if any, incorporations of the Apocryphal books in his own Bible. He never mentions them: never makes a single quotation from them. It is difficult, if not impossible, from his writings to show even that he was aware of the existence of the books in question. But this negative evidence is rendered still more cogent by what we must call his all but direct formal testimony on the point before us. He lived at Alexandria actually “in the midst of the confusion,” and ‘‘surrounded by the disturbing influences,” which Dr. Westcott is pleased to assume pre- vailed there as to the Word of God. Yet, instead of being moved by those ‘‘ disturbing influences,” he meets, and prophetically as it were, anticipates all unworthy imputations by most emphatic and, as we think, silencing words. For he declares that such was the intense veneration of the Jews for their Bible, that nothing would induce them “to alter one word of their Scriptures, and that they would rather die ten thousand deaths than suffer any alteration in their laws and statutes.” In the face of all this, we cannot but strongly protest against the language of Dr. Westcott, who first imagines he can “easily see” in Philo “ἃ tendency to break down the boundaries of the Old Testa- ment, by an undue exaltation of the Pentateuch in comparison with the other books,” and then goes on bluntly to assert that “ this ten- dency was restrained by a familiarity with the opinions of his countrymen in Palestine!” Philo, it is true, drew the bulk of his illustrations from the Pentateuch, and for the very natural reason that the Pentateuch formed the subject of his great work ; but he by no means neglects the other portions of the Canon. And he had strength enough of mind distinctly to formulate and stand by his own opinion. Let us now turn to what ever should be the central figures of every Christian picture—Christ and His Apostles ; and see what Bible they read, and whether it is possible there was aught between the lines. The Bible of Christ and His Apostles, then, clearly, we think, was Greek—the Septuagint, Philo’s Bible. Greek was the language spoken by the communities addressed. And the Old Testament quotations agree generally with the Septuagint, less or more closely. The Septuagint therefore most probably was not only the common Bible of Palestine, but occupied, though perhaps without any formal enactment, much of the precise place among all Greek-speaking Jews which our Authorised Version does among us; while the Hebrew copies of the Canon, and above all the Temple Copy at Jerusalem, would serve valuable purposes of reference and verification in the same way as our Hebrew Bible and Greek Testament. Now our Lord and His Apostles quote as authoritative and repeatedly every one of the three great Sections of the original Canon, and so in reality cover the whole in detail, and every separate book in our different arrangement of Thirty-nine—except six, Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 97 Esther, Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s Song—but they do not quote, either as authoritative or direct, one single book or sentence from the Apocrypha. Yea, moreover, it cannot be shown, except on the very slenderest evidence, that our Lord (humanly) or His Apostles were even so much as acquainted with the Apocrypha. Again, our Lord and His Apostles, as they rebuke no Jew for tampering with the true Scriptures, or “obscuring the notion of a definite Bible,” so neither do they applaud any section of the Jewish Church for purging those Scriptures of Apocryphal pieces—for a revised Septuagint. Here they neither praise nor blame, counsel faithfulness, nor denounce unfaithfulness. If anything, the New Testament is on the side of Philo and, as we shall see, Josephus, who both declare the unalterable attachment of the Jews even to the letters of the law, and the oracles of God. ‘ Ye do search the Serip- tures” (Christ). The Bereans were “noble, in that they searched the Scriptures daily ” (St. Luke). Lastly, at the beginning of the Christian era, the Alexandrian Jews, though in great measure politically divided from the Pales- tinian party, and though long oppressed by their own taxes, still con- tributed to the temple-service at Jerusalem. Jerusalem, ‘‘the Vision of Peace,” was still, though Grecised, “ the Holy city ” of the Jewish people. And the Alexandrians had a synagogue there, whose zeal for “Moses and God” stoned the proto-martyr Stephen. Add, Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent [or learned] man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus” about 54 a.p., and pro- ceeded, as the loving ‘“‘brother” of St. Paul, to water what the ‘ Apostles had planted. Now, all this looks very like a common faith, and, as the bond of it, a common Bible. On the other hand, if the Alexandrians had an interpolated Bible, and the Palestinians an expurgated Bible, on what rational principle can we suppose that nobody knew it? How explain that our Lord and His Apostles never once refer to it ? that Stephen, in his life-defence, does not see that here is a main and triumphant charge against his murderers ? that Apollos forgets it? that there was not internecine war. Take then, at random, any one of these facts in connection with our Lord and the New Testament—and they are or must be univer- sally admitted facts—take them all, and is not the individual and cumulative evidence a demonstration, that the Jewish Church had but one faith—but one Canon—but one definite Bible—a Septuagint unobseured by the Apocrypha ? Two important witnesses remain, Josephus and Melito. Josephus carries the evidence over the destruction of Jerusalem. His devoted attention to all the concerns of his faith and Church is proverbial. Not only is he the great historian of the Jewish people, but what is valuable in the present case, the minute historian of Jewish details, Now he never speaks a word, nor throws out a single hint, either about the strange doings and innovations at Alexandria, or about any sacred revise at Palestine. Granted that he had in his eye, and does actually refer to, the Apocrypha, in the brief and incidental _ G 98 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. words—*‘ our history written since Artaxerxes ”—it is only as we have seen to pronounce against the Divine authority of all such books ; and the adjudication, be it observed, as in juxtaposition with the recital of the sacred Canon. If, then, the Apocrypha had been, to any extent, or in any way, incorporated with that Canon, is it at all likely that a circumstance of such moment could have escaped the notice of Josephus ? Then again, as in the case of Philo, the following testimony of Josephus is invaluable, as showing, not only the improbability, but what we must rather call the utter impossibility of change, at any time, or in any quarter, in the Jewish mind with regard to the sacred writings: “What firm faith we have placed in those books [the twenty-two recounted above] of one nation, is manifest by our con- duct. For during so many ages as have already passed, no one has dared to presume either to add anything to them, or to take anything from them, or to alter anything in them. But it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books as the oracles of God, and to remain constant to them, and if occasion be, willingly to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captive countrymen, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, rather than utter one word against our laws, and the records that contain them.” Melito, Bishop of Sardis, supposed by some to have been the Angel of that Church addressed in Rev. i. 1, but who most probably lived later on, in the latter half of the second century, is the earliest Christian writer who furnishes a catalogue of the Old Testament Scriptures, having expressly visited the East accurately to learn the number and order of the books; and he reports our present Canon. His words are :— “‘Melito to Onesimus, his brother, greeting. Since you have often, from your zeal for the Word of God, begged of me to make selections for you from the Law and the Prophets concerning the Saviour and our whole faith; and as you, moreover, wished to learn accurately of the old books, how many they are in number and in what order they are written, I have taken great pains to do it, well knowing your zeal for the faith, and your great desire to learn of the Word of God ; and that, through your earnest love towards God, you desire these more than all things, striving for your eternal safety. I went accord- ingly to the East, and coming to the very place where these things were preached and transacted, and having accurately learnt the books of the Old Testament, I have sent to you the subjoined list. Their names are as follows: Five Books of Moses, viz., Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy ; Joshua, Nane, Judges, Ruth, four Books of Kings, two of Paralipomena, a Book of the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon—which is also called Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Job, the Books of the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve one Book, Daniel, Ezekiel, Esdras.” Note.—“ Four Books of Kings”=our 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 99 2 Kings. ‘Two of Paralipomena” (or “things omitted”) = our 1 and 2 Chronicles, ‘‘ Esdras” = Ezra; to which was commonly attached Nehemiah, and probably Esther. While Lamentations was joined with Jeremiah. Now an all-important point in this testimony is, that Melito’s list is taken from the Septuagint—without, of course, one trace of the Apocrypha. Our evidence thus at last ceases to be merely circum- stantial, and becomes instead positive and direct. Whether Melito lived in the days of St. John or of Marcus Antoninus, he gives us the Table of Contents of the Jewish Canon, as he found it—a facsimile in outline of the Septuagint of his day, handed down without a single Apocryphal piece to mar or obscure it. Somewhat long and anxious therefore as our inquiry has been, it is satisfactory to arrive at this unmistakable result, and that all the lines of evidence converge to it. Dr. Westcott does not fail to notice this ‘important feature” of Melito’s list—“ evident from the names, the number, and the order of the books ”—but to meet the difficulty in which he finds himself he unhappily invents, as we have seen, with pious purpose we doubt not, a Palestinian Septuagint revised by the Hebrews. We can only add—painfully, but imperatively as a Christian duty—that the interests of truth are not served in this instance at least by fiction ; as indeed they seldom are by unwarranted deviation from the landmarks, the plain path and leadings of history. For granted there was a Pales- tinian revise, and we are inevitably driven to this very humbling conclusion, among others, that our Lord and Apostles, so the abrogators of the Jewish, and the founders and heralds of the Christian Dis- pensation, were, either ignorant of the spiritual and ecclesiastical status of an important section of the Jewish Church—of Alexandria and its Septuagint—or, connived at its corruption ! The value then of the subject of our argument—an uncorrupted Septuagint of the Jewish Church—is immense. It relegates the Apocrypha to their proper place. It vindicates our Lord and His Apostles. It is an unanswerable historical protest against Rome and the Council of Trent. It stops the sneer of the sceptic anent all human accretions. And the force of the evidence of the Septuagint itself as regards the Canon of the Old Testament is this, that it carries that Canon a marked stage higher in antiquity and value. Fora long period before Christianity—wherever the Greek language was spoken, wherever Jews were resident, or Gentiles attracted to their history, there there existed and was circulated the Septuagint Translation. Now what is the full bearing of this fact? This, that the Canon of Josephus, the Canon of Christ’s Bible and of the Jewish Dispersion, existed as a Written Published Book, long before the actual date of the Septuagint. A translation of course implies an original copy. And an original copy in this instance must have had a lengthened previous public existence, of acknowledged Divine authority. A nation does not accept a Rule of Faith ina day. And no nation, however anxious for a place in history, would have accepted the lowly pilgrim and slave- too EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. stained origin, and the stiff-necked character assigned to the Jews in the Old Testament, unless it had been convinced of the supernatural claims of the Book. Evidence from the Old Testament itself. On the threshold lies the question, If the Jewish Scriptures were not written and published as they stand in their entirety, and at periods somewhat such as assigned, how account for them—how were they handed down, or how came they to be accepted by the Jewish nation ? This is a question of vast importance, for we conceive it has no fitting answer but one which carries us back with our Canon, as a completed whole, to the period of the Return ; and down to that ter- minus, in successive and recognised stages of growth, from the days of Moses. Poetical and many historical pieces might be transmitted from generation to generation by memory. But the Old Testament is honeycombed with a very large amount of detail of personal names, numbers, places, and things which you cannot detach without hope- less confusion ; and which no rational mind could memorise in their varied and intricate connection. Annalists and duly appointed historiographers there may and must have been, but publicity and popular instruction are indispensable factors in any rational solution of the problem. The law must have been an open book; and the Prophets could have had no mission unless known to the people. Nor is it possible to believe that the Jews would indorse as a whole a production like the Old Testament, even if it was possible on any reasonable grounds to suppose it appearing at once, and offered as their history and for their guidance. And when we examine the book itself, we find abundant evidence of our argument. Once and again do we meet “The Book of the Law,” ‘‘The Book of Moses,” and explicit commands or references concerning the words of the Lord as written in an accessible (?) bool. Daniel “ understood by the books [the article is in the original] the number of the years.” And the burden of the Prophets is ‘‘ Hear.” While the office of the Scribe—the index to the genius and character of the religious system of the Jews—in its great ideal was, ‘‘to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments” (Ezra vii. 10). Nor must we forget that a Psalter is a Book for the Public Service of God. How strikingly corroborative of these features are the words of our Lord: “ All things must be ful- filled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their under- standing, that they might understand the [published and popular 1] Scriptures” (Luke xxiv. 44, 45). And the words of St. Paul: “ From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures” (2 Tim. 111. 15). And of St. James: ‘ Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day” (Acts xv. 21). But again, POSTERIOR TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA, we have— EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τοὶ Tue EvipENCE OF THE TALMUD. This written judgment of the Babylonian Dispersion is invaluable, inasmuch as it reflects and embodies the opinion of the Jews on the Canon from, probably, a very high antiquity down to 500 years after Christ ; and indeed, as it may be said, to the present day. It consists of two Parts. (1.) The Text, Mishna (repetition, or * second law,” δευτέρωσις), a digest of oral ritual law handed down, as the tradition is, from Moses on the mount, through the Sanhedrim, and ultimately to Rabbis of the second century (notably R. Judah, the Holy), or later, by whom, to guard against loss in the now unsettled state of the people, it was arranged and completed; and so remains, an object of the highest veneration. (2.) The Gemara (supplement or perfection), consisting of two commentaries—one compiled at Jerusalem between the third and fifth centuries, but little esteemed by the Jews ; and the other at Babylon, in the fifth century, and most highly valued. The Mishna with the commentary of Jerusalem is styled the Jerusalem Talmud ; with the commentary of Babylon, the Babylonish Talmud ; while the word “Talmud” alone is generally used to denote the Mishna with both Gemaras. Now a very valuable passage in the Talmud, Babylonish Gemara, is to the following effect : “Who wrote [that is, composed or redacted, as the case may be] the Books of the Bible? Moses wrote the Pentateuch and Job. Joshua his own Book, and the last eight verses of Deuteronomy. Samuel his own Book, and the Books of Judges and Ruth. David the Book of Psalms, but some were composed by the ten venerable Elders—Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Haman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah his own Book, and the Books of Kingsand Lamentations. Hezekiah and his college, the memorial Book Jamshak—that is, Isaiah, Proverbs, Solomon’s Song, and Kcclesiastes. The men of the Great Synagogue, the memorial Book Kandag—that is, Ezekiel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel, and Esther. Ezra his own Book, and the Chronicles down to his time. But who completed the Chronicles? Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah.” It is only necessary to remark here, that the Book of Nehemiah was commonly reckoned by the Jews, as noted above, with that of Ezra ; and that both indeed formed an Appendix to the Chronicles. Nothing therefore could be more satisfactory. Not only are the whole books, and only the books, of the present Canon included ; but the tradition is one of the very highest possible antiquity—a land- mark most probably just between the actual completion of the Canon and the development of the Synagogue. For there is no reference whatever to the usual threefold division of the Old Testament Scrip- tures—Law, Prophets, and Holy Writings—which there is every reason to conclude the Synagogue adopted for greater convenience in the services. Finally, with the New Testament in our hands, it is unnecessary to 1o2 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. examine in any detail the Testimony of our Lord and His Apostles to the Jewish Scriptures, as set forth in our present Canon of the Old Testament. Some of the chief heads have been already noticed. And it may suffice to add, that our Great Exemplar and His Inspired Followers ever refer to the Scriptures of that Canon, just as we refer to our own Bible—as a Book sui generis and Divine ; that the quota- tions, references, and allusions, in the New Testament, in proof or illustration, are immense ; and that if we could possibly cut away and extract the Old Testament from the New, we should have little or nothing left as a basis—a permanent-way of Christianity. Such then are the Contents of Christ’s Bible. Such the Canon of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament ; received by the Jewish Church, and indorsed by our Lord and His Apostles, as of God. And such the trust handed over to the Christian Church. How that Church has kept the sacred deposit, is an inquiry belonging more properly to the Section which treats of the use and abuses of the Apocrypha. (4.) The Canon of the New Testament. (a.) We have already briefly adverted to the fact, that the writings of St. Paul—and by fair and reasonable inference, the other books of the New Testament !—were accepted as authoritative and Divine, when first published :! that is generally by those to whom they were addressed, and among whom their circulation was directed. But a fact is simply an effect, with a cause. Now the question which we think lies at the root so to speak of the Canon, and which has been too much lost sight of is, How account for the reception of the books ? We confess we cannot, unless on the lines of a supernatural influence. Take the case as it stands. These books appealed on the one hand to the Jew, but blasted his earthly hopes ; gave him the Nazarene for his Messiah and justification by faith instead of a covenant of works. And they appealed in like to the Gentile, but denounced his idols ; gave him a Spirit to worship, Unseen as against his tangible gods, and One to replace an innumerable host. No human process could carry conviction here. Of course it may and must be alleged that the Gospel was first oral at the mouths of the Apostles, and then written and circulated by their hands. But this is just part, though not the whole, of the supernatural influence we contend for. It would in great measure secure the reception of the genuine writings in the East; but it could scarcely carry them, in plenary power and broadcast, to the West. Apostolic miracle would procure a certain amount of reverence for Apostolic teaching ; and Apostolic teaching would procure a certain amount of reverence for Apostolic books. But the Apostolic area was limited, in time as well asin extent. And beyond it, as to extent, Apostolic power would be little of a vital force ; and as to time, would decrease in a ratio rapid enough to leave, not an equal field for the genuine and the spurious writings, but a vantage-ground for the latter, 1 See p. gI. — πὰ υνοιι = EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 103 inasmuch as they pandered to prejudice and prevailing corruptions. Thus in the Apocryphal Gospels we have, besides evident heretical omissions, accretions, and divergences, Miracle not unfrequently prostrated to selfish purposes ; Prophecy and Parabolic Teaching alike ignored ; History as a sort of stiffened corpse, without a single pulse of spiritual life connecting it with the past or typically with the future; and the pure atmosphere of the Morality of the Synoptic Gospels, and the Divine Wisdom of St. John’s, clouded by the natural darkness and the wild or empty dreams of unregenerate man. The platform of the Canonical Gospels is that of the Spirit of Life in a Christ both God and Man ; the rdle of the Apocryphal it is true takes in the main the same historic platform, but with a motley admix- ture of earthly characteristics—now frivolous, now fabulous, often immoral. At this exact stage of our argument, we have little or nothing to do with the after judgment of Christendom. Its Homologoumena and Antilegomena had no place in the Apostolic Church. Nay rather, the very distinction itself and its date is plain proof, (1.) that there was handed down to the sub-Apostolie Church what we may call, and with little anachronism even of language, a definite and detailed list of New Testament Scriptures—the very Canon we possess ; and (2.) that the supernatural influence which first carried that Canon was now, comparatively, on the wane. The full supernatural influence then which we claim alike for Apostolic oral and written teaching was, the special “mighty power” of the Holy Ghost, working not only in and through, but with the Apostles—as One of them. “For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you” (Matt. x. 20). “For he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you ”—“ He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John xiv. 17, 26). ‘When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning” (John xy. 26, 27). No words more fully could show, the joint and actual Agency of the Holy Ghost on the Apostolic Mission Field. Here then, we conceive, we have the only and true key to the Formation of the New Testament Canon—a Divine influence which at once overcame Jewish antagonism, healed Gentile blindness, gave the Church of God an accepted and additional Revelation, and so bound up the New Testament in one volume with the Old. (6.) With this calculus we are enabled to pass to the post-Apostolic age, prepared on the one hand to find, as we have intimated, this supernatural influence relatively on the wane ; and unshaken on the other hand by any ecclesiastical development. God designs, completes, and offers His gifts, but leaves man to test, accept, or reject them. Not that His guiding and gracious influence is ever taken away from 104 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. the whole body of the Church of Christ, for that were to deny Him- self, and forget His promise sealed in the Mediatorial Person of Emmanuel. ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. xxviii. 20); but the withdrawal in measure of the extraordinary operation of Divine power is necessary—as God is pleased to administer the general government of the world—to enlist man as an intelligent co-worker, and constitute him a rational re- cipient of Divine grace and goodness. We use the qualifying coincident terms “comparatively,” ‘re- latively,” “in measure,” advisedly. For we are free to confess our belief, that the Bible—notwithstanding all its external and internal evidence, and as matter of argument the overwhelming force thereof —could not, because of its sharp and searching antagonism to the human heart, hold its way, even to-day, were it not for the still less or more sustained ‘energy of the might of the power” (Eph. i. 19) of God the Holy Ghost. This, we must ever bear in mind, is, in the Economy of Redemption, the New Covenant Dispensation of the Spirit—“ The Spirit of Life,” breathing and brooding on the Church of God. (c.) The formation or ratification then of the Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, was the work directly of God, not only in and through, but with His chosen and appointed servants : on the Divine side, of the Holy Spirit’s special “ mighty energy ;” and on the human side of men under His inspiration. The final and formal settlement of the Old Testament Canon being the work, most probably of Ezra, in the lifetime of the last of the prophets, at the end of the fourth century before Christ ; and of the New Testament Canon, doubtlessly of St. John, towards the close of his career, as chief pastor of the Asiatic Churches. It is a low view—and the fruitful parent of much of the neology of our day—to suppose that it was left for the post-Apostolic age to dig out of the Apostolic churches and depositories our five histories and twenty-two epistles, and with varying vote pronounce them authoritative and Divine—the Canon of the New Testament—the perfection of God’s Work, and even still more were it possible, the perfection of God’s Word, is of God, and not of man. The “documents of the primitive Church,” therefore, which we claim as part of our evidence of Christianity, are, first and especially, the Books of the New Testament themselves. The judgments and decisions of the Fathers and of Councils are valuable, but only of a secondary, and, as we shall see in some cases, feeble importance. Here as elsewhere these venerable representatives of Christian antiquity are indeed valuable as witnesses, generally agreeing ; but their very doubts, though not perhaps on the canonicity of any of the books, yet on the genuineness even of a few, clearly stamps them as unfit to be judges of Holy Writ. Right willingly and thankfully do we accept their testemony, so far as it goes, and rejoice that it is so uniform in the main; but we cannot accept them as authorities. There must be an infallible standard, infallibly ratified, above the ) EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 105 fluctuations of fallible men and “ councils liable to err.” And that standard we hold to be neither less nor more than the Canon settled and completed by St. John, and finally sealed by the anathema of the closing verses of Revelation. If we are asked for proof positive or probable that St. John affixes his seal to every book of the New Testament, we answer: (1.) that the aged Apostle must have been intimately acquainted with the books which his Church handed down, and their pretensions; (2.) that these books must have been before him in their entirety not less than thirty years before his death; (3.) that as matter of fact, the post-A postolic Church had no other books handed down for its accept- ance but our Canon, as witness its Homologoumena and Antilegomena —its Notha, or unauthentic and apocryphal books, being of later date, or rejected by all except heretics; and (4.) that as matter of fact also, open to verification by any one who pleases to undertake the task, St. John in his last great work distinctly quotes or refers to almost every book in detail of the Canon, but does not once quote any spurious unapostolic writing that may have been extant in his time. We must therefore protest not only against Rome’s dogma, that the Canon was first fixed by the Church, in its plenary authority, at the end of the fourth century ; but also against the like erroneous, though somewhat diluted view, that the formation of a New Testament was “an intuitive act” of post-Apostolic Christianity. The one is the gross form of the proposition that the Church is the Judge of Holy Writ, and superior to the Scriptures, which we have already through- out sufficiently controverted ; the other is a more subtle affirmation of the same doctrine, and needs some separate consideration. Thus Dr. Westcott writes: “The Apostolic Fathers did not re- cognise a New Testament, but prepared the way for it.” And: “The formation of a New Testament was an intuitive act of the Christian Body, derived from no reasoning, but realised in the course of its natural growth, as one of the first results of its self-consciousness.” This account differs only from that of the Church of Rome in this, that in the one case we are on the somewhat tangible ground of decretal judgment, however erring we may consider that judgment to be, and in the other case, in the at least theologically slippery domain of assumption without reasoning. But it is Man in both cases: Fallibility bringing forth Infallibility, or—nothing. For it is clear, as we have just seen, that the Canon of the New Testament, equally with that of the Old, must be stamped with Infallible—that is, as we are bound to hold, Divine authority, otherwise it has no shadow of a claim to acceptance by the Church of God. In the ninth chapter of his “ Evidences of Christianity,” Paley arranges the historical testimony to the reception of the Canon of the New Testament under eleven sections, summarised from Lerdner. An outline of the whole is not necessary to our argument, and would unduly swell our pages; but the following selections, in clear refuta- tion of Dr. Westcott’s theory, may be sufficient for the student, and interesting as well to the general reader. The “allegations” are ᾿ ἢ; 106 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. quoted entire ; the proof is considerably, but it is hoped not overmuch compressed, and follows with only some slight verbal or structural alterations the exact words of the Author. I. The historical books of the New Testament, meaning thereby the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, are quoted, or alluded to, by a series of Christian writers, beginning with those who were contemporary with the Apostles, or who immediately followed them, and proceeding in close and regular succession from their time to the present. Barnabas was the companion of St. Paul. In an Epistle ascribed to him, and bearing his name—which purports to have been written soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, and which bears the character of the age to which it professes to belong—we have the following remarkable passage :— “Let us, therefore, beware lest it come upon us, as it is written, There are many called, few chosen.” From the expression, ‘‘as it is written,” we infer with certainty, that at the time when the author of this epistle lived, there was a book extant, well known to Christians, and of authority amongst them, containing these words, “Many were called, few chosen.” Such a book is our present Gospel of St. Matthew, in which this text is twice found, and is found in no other book now known. Further, the writer of the epistle was a Jew. And the phrase “it is written,” was the veryform in which the Jews quoted their Scriptures. Clement, Bishop of Rome, whom ancient writers, without any doubt or scruple, assert to have been the Clement whom St. Paul mentions, Phil. iv. 3, in an epistle addressed by him to the Church of Corinth, and acknowledged by all the ancients, has the following valuable passage :— “Especially remembering the words of the Lord Jesus which He spake, teaching gentleness and long-suffering, for thus he said: Be ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be for- given unto you,” &e. Again : “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, for he said, Woe to that man by whom offences come; it were better for him that he had not been born, than that he should offend one of my elect; it were better for him that a millstone should be tied about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the sea, than that he should offend one of my little ones.” In both these passages we perceive the high respect paid to the words of Christ as recorded by the evangelists, “ Remember the words of the Lord Jesus ;—by this command, and by these rules, let us establish ourselves, that we may always walk obediently to his holy words.” We perceive also in Clement a total unconsciousness of doubt, whether these were the real words of Christ, which are read as such in the Gospels. This observation indeed belongs to the whole series of testimony, and especially to the most ancient part of it. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τὸ7 It is to be observed also, that, as this epistle was written in the name of the Church of Rome, and addressed to the Church of Corinth, it ought to be taken as exhibiting the judgment not only of Clement, who drew up the letter, but of these Churches themselves, at least as to the authority of the books referred to. It may be, and indeed has been said, that as Clement had not used words of quotation, it is not certain that he refers to any book what- ever. But that no such inference can be drawn is proved thus: First, Clement, in the very same manner, without any mark of reference, uses a passage now found in the Epistle to the Romans (ch. i. 29), which, from the peculiarity of the words and from their order, it is manifest he must have taken from the book. The same remark may be repeated of some very singular sentiments in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Secondly, there are many sentences of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians standing in Clement’s epistle without any sign of quotation, which yet certainly are quotations; because it appears that Clement had St. Paul’s Epistle before him, inasmuch as in one place he mentions it in terms too express to leave us in any doubt :— “Take into your hands the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul.” Thirdly, this method of adopting words of Scripture without reference or acknowledgment, was a method in general use amongst the most ancient Christian writers. These analogies not only repel the objec- tion, but cast the presumption on the other side, and afford a consider- able degree of positive proof, that the words in question have been borrowed from the places of Scripture in which we now find them. Hermas appears in the catalogue of Roman Christians saluted by St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 14). A work bearing his name, and in all likelihood rightly, is still remaining, called the Shepherd, or Pastor cf Hermas. In this piece are tacit allusions to St. Matthew’s, St. Luke’s, and St. John’s Gospels: that is, applications of thoughts and expressions found in these Gospels, without the place or writer from which they are taken being cited. There is also a probable allusion to Acts v. 32. Ignatius became Bishop of Antioch about thirty-seven years after Christ’s Ascension. In his smaller Epistles—generally deemed to be those which were read by Irenezus, Origen, and Eusebius—are various undoubted allusions to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John; yet so far of the same form with those in the preceding articles, that, like them, they are not accompanied with marks of quotation. In one place also Ignatius quotes St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians by name ; while, in several other places, he borrows words and senti- ments from the same epistle without mentioning it ; which shows, that this was his general manner of using and applying writings then extant, and then of high authority. Polycarp had been taught by the Apostles, and was by them appointed Bishop of Smyrna. We have one undoubted Epistle of his remaining, And this, though a short letter, contains nearly forty clear allusions to books of the New Testament; more frequently to the writings of St. Paul, but copiously also to the Gospels of St, 108 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Matthew and St. Luke. The following is a decisive, though what we call a tacit, reference to St. Peter’s speech in the Acts of the Apostles: “Whom God hath raised, having loosed the pains of death.” Papias, a hearer of St. John, and companion of Polycarp, expressly ascribes the respective Gospels to St. Matthew and St. Mark; and in a manner which proves that these Gospels must have publicly borne the names of these authors at that time, and probably long before. The writers hitherto alleged had all lived and conversed with some of the Apostles. The works of theirs which remain, are in general very short pieces, yet rendered extremely valuable by their antiquity ; and none, short as they are, but contain some important testimony to our historical Scriptures. Justin Martyr follows not much more than twenty years after Papias. Although the nature of his two principal writings—one addressed to heathens, and the other a conference with a Jew—did not lead him to much frequent appeals to Christian books, as in a discourse for Christian readers; we nevertheless reckon up in them between twenty and thirty quotations of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, certain, distinct, and copious; if each verse be counted separately, a much greater number; if each expression, a very great one. Moreover, what seems extremely material to be observed is, that in all Justin’s works, from which might be extracted almost a com- plete life of Christ, there are but two instances, in which he refers to anything as said or done by Christ, which is not related concerning Him in our present Gospels: which shows, that these Gospels, and these, we may say, alone, were the authorities from which the Christians of that day drew the information upon which they depended. All the references in Justin, too, are made without mentioning the author; which proves that these books were perfectly notorious. But although he mentions not the author’s name, he calls the books, “Memoirs composed by the Apostles and their companions :” which descriptions, the latter especially, exactly agree with the titles which the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles now bear. Hegesippus came about thirty years after Justin. He relates that travelling from Palestine to Rome, he visited, on his journey, many Bishops ; and that, ‘“‘in every succession, and in every city, the same doctrine is taught, which the Law, and the Prophets, and the Lord teacheth.” This is an important attestation. It is generally under- stood, that by the word “ Lord,” Hegesippus intended some writing or writings, containing the teachings of Christ, in which sense alone the term combines with the other terms “ Law and Prophets,” which denote writings ; and together with them admit of the verb “ teacheth ” in the present tense. Then, that these writings were some or all of the books of the New Testament is rendered probable from other passages in the fragment of his works. 1 “He cites our present Canon, and particularly our four Gospels, continually ; I dare say, above two hundred times” (Jones’s New and Full Method). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 109 Treneus, Bishop of Lyons, had been a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John. He says: ‘‘ We have not received the knowledge of the way of salvation by any others than those by whom the Gospel has been brought tous. Which Gospel they first preached, and afterwards, by the will of God, committed to writing, that it might be for time to come the foundation and pillar of our faith. Matthew, among the Jews, wrote a Gospel in their own language ; and afterwards, Mark also, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that had been preached by Peter ; and Luke, the companion of Paul, put down in a book the Gospel preached by Paul. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon His breast, he likewise published a Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia.” If any modern divine should write a book upon the genuineness of the Gospels, he could not assert it more expressly, or state their original more distinctly, than Iveneus hath done within little more than a hundred years after they were pub- lished. To the book of the Acts of the Apostles, its author, and credit, the testimony.of Irenzus is no less explicit. Observe also the broad line of distinction between our sacred books, and the pretensions of all others: in an author abounding with references and aliusions to the Scriptures, there is not one to any apocryphal Christian writings whatever. The force of the testimony of the period which we have considered, is greatly strengthened by the observation, that it is the testimony, and the concurring testimony, of writers who lived in countries remote from one another. Clement flourished at Rome, Ignatius at Antioch, Polycarp at Smyrna, Justin Martyr in Syria, and Irenzus in France. II. The Scriptures were in very early times collected into a distinct volume. Ignatius, who had lived and conversed with the Apostles, speaks of **the Gospel” and of “the Apostles” in terms which render it very probable that he meant by “the Gospel,” the book or volume of the Gospels, and by “the Apostles,” the book or volume of their Epistles. His words are: “Fleeing to the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus, and to the Apostles as the presbytery of the Church.” That is, as Le Clerc interprets, “In order to understand the will of God, he fled to the Gospels, which he believed no less than if Christ in the flesh had been speaking to him; and to the writings of the Apostles, whom he esteemed as the presbytery of the whole Christian Church.” It must be observed, that about eighty years after this, we have direct proof in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, that these two names, “Gospel” and “ Apostles,” were the names by which the writings of the New Testament, and the division of these writings, were usually expressed. Quadratus and some others, who were the immediate successors of the Apostles, travelling abroad to preach Christ, as Eusebius relates, 110 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. carried the Gospels with them, and delivered them to their converts. “Then travelling abroad, they performed the work of Evangelists, being ambitious to preach Christ, and deliver the Scripture of. the Divine Gospels.” What is thus recorded of the Gospels took place within sixty, or, at the most seventy years after they were published : and it is evident that they must, before this time (and, it is probable, long before this time), have been in general use, and in high esteem in the churches planted by the Apostles; and the immediate suc- cessors of the Apostles, they who preached the religion of Christ to those who had not already heard it, carried the volume with them, and delivered it to their converts. Treneus puts the evangelic and apostolic writings in connection with the Law and the Prophets, manifestly intending by the one a Code or collection of Christian sacred writings, as the other expressed the Code or collection of Jewish sacred writings. Melito, at this time Bishop of Sardis, writes to Onesimus, that he had procured an accurate account of the books of the Old Testament ; which term certainly proves that there was then a volume or collec- tion of writings called the New Testament. III. Our Scriptures were publicly read and expounded in the religious assemblies of the early Christians. Justin Martyr, who wrote in the year 140, which was seventy or eighty years after some, and less, probably, after others of the Gospels were published, giving, in his first Apology, an account to the emperor of the Christian worship, has this remarkable passage :— “The Memoirs of the Apostles, or the Writings of the Prophets, are read according as the time allows: and, when the reader has ended, the president makes a discourse, exhorting to the imitation of so excellent things.” A few short observations will show the value of this testimony. (1.) The “Memoirs of the Apostles,” Justin in another place expressly tells us, are what are called “ Gospels: ” and that they were the Gospels which we now use, is made certain by Justin’s numerous quotations from them, and his silence about any others. (2.) Justin describes the general usage of the Christian Church. (3.) Justin does not speak of it as recent or newly instituted, but in the terms in which men speak of established customs. Tertullian follows in about fifty years, and in his account of the religious assemblies as they were conducted says : “ We come together to recollect the Divine Scriptures ; we nourish our faith, raise our hope, confirm our trust, by the Sacred Word.” This writer also divides the Christian Scriptures into two parts, the “ Gospels and Apostles,” as does his contemporary Clement of Alex- andria in many allusions, and Ignatius, eighty years before ; and calls the whole volume, the ‘‘ New Testament.” Who can rise up from the candid perusal of this masterly argument, curtailed and in outline though it be, and say that the Apostolic EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. roy Fathers did not recognise a New Testament, or that the formation of our sacred Canon was left to the fitful and intuitive impulse of the post-A postolic Church—the “ intuition without reasoning” of Chris- tians ? It remains for us only to trace in a few brief lines the fluctuations of the early Fathers and Councils—the feebleness of man on the one hand, and the grace of Divine guidance on the other. Taking as round dates 200 a.D. to 400 a.D., the following catalogues may be enumerated :— DeEFIcIENT oR HESITATING. Caius (196 ?)—omits James, 2 Peter, 3 John, and Hebrews. Origen (230)—omits James and Jude, but elsewhere owns them. Origen’s is the first regular Catalogue. Eusebius (315)—marks James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation, as doubted by some. He himself received Revelation, and considered it Canonical. Eusebius divides all the writings which claimed in his day to be Apostolic into three distinct classes : ὁμολογούμενα, Books universally Acknowledged, viz., the 4 Gospels, 14 Epistles of St. Paul, 1 John, 1 Peter, and Revelation (if its authen- ticity is admitted). ἁντιλεγόμενα, Books generally Received, but controverted by some, viz., James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John. νόθα, Spurious Books, that is to say, those wanting in Authenticity or Apostolicity, as the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Teachings of the Apostles. To these he adds Apocryphal or Heretical Books, “ which no one of the succession of ecclesiastical writers has anywhere deigned to quote,” as the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew, John, and the other Apostles, Cyril of Jerusalem (340), the Council of Laodicea (364), and Gregory Nezianzen (375)—omit Revelation. Philaster of Brescia (380)—omits Hebrews and Revelation, but elsewhere acknowledges them. Jerome (392)—speaks of Hebrews as doubtful, but elsewhere receives it. Amphilochius (395)—marks the Antilegomena. CoMPLETE. Athanasius (315), Epiphanius (370), Ruffinus (390), Augustine (394), and the Third Council of Carthage (397)—all give Catalogues exactly corresponding with our present Canon of the New Testament. Of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.) These words, which our Article applies to the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, we need scarcely say, can only refer, primarily at least, to the Catholic or Universal Church; for, as we have seen, doubts were entertained in particular churches as to several books of the New Testament, viz., the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ἢ) 12 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, the second Epistle of St. Peter, the second and third Epistles of St. John, and Revelation. But the words, if we mistake not, have a deeper meaning, or are worthy of it. The “authority” of the books of the Bible is, as we have endeavoured to show, the authority of the Holy Ghost and of the “ holy men” of old who wrote them under His immediate inspiration, and handed them over as a deposit to the Church of God. The office of the Church therefore is simply that of a witness and keeper of Holy Writ. “ Hence,” as it has been well said, ‘ the historical demonstra- tion of the Canon of Scripture consists, in point of fact, of a collection of the testimony of individual divines and Churches to the reception of the several books from the first age of Christianity downwards.” Or, as another late writer equally well puts it: “ With respect to the Canonicity of the Sacred Books, the Church acted as a witness, not as a judge. It received the books from those who committed the words to writing under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, on the authority of the inspired writers themselves. It kept them, jealously excluding all writings which could not be traced to inspired men, and handed them down as of Divine authority to the next generation. Thus the inspired books have descended to our own time. The Church never decided what books should be Canonical, but what were and had been from the beginning, according to the historical evidence of their having been written by inspired men,” Of course in this excellent passage, by “the Church,” we must understand also, as in the Article, the Catholic or Universal Church. 3. The Apocrypha. (1.) The word Apocrypha (ἀπόκρυφα, pl., scil. βιβλία), primarily meaning hidden or concealed, seems to have been applied to the secret books containing the esoteric knowledge of the Greek mysteries and Gnostic sects; and in the early Christian Church to anonymous writings. In the time of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, however, it had passed into a secondary and bad sense of spurious, or forged, being by these fathers used of heretical writings, which claimed to be authoritative. With the exception of Cyril of Jerusalem and Jerome, the word does not appear to have been freely applied by leading writers to non- canonical books till the era of the Reformation, ecclesiastical being the term ordinarily used instead, whereas apocryphal denoted only such books as might not be publicly read. Thus the classification of Ruffinus runs: 1. Canonical; 11. Ecclesiastical ; III. Apocryphal. And though he speaks of “ Apocryphal Scriptures,” in deference pro- bably to Jerome, yet he tells us that these were called “ Ecclesiastical by most.” (Libriqui non canonict sed Lcclesiastici a majoribus appellati sunt.) (2.) The Non-canonicity of the Apocryphal Books is clearly proved as follows :— First, By External Evidence— EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τι3 (a.) Not one of them is extant in Hebrew, which language, it is admitted by all, was the Canonical language of the Old Testament. (ὁ.) They were posterior in time to the cessation of the Prophetic Spirit in the Jewish Church. (c.) They were never received into the Canon by the Jews. (d.) They are not once quoted by Philo, Josephus, our Lord, or His Apostles—at least, as Canonical. Second. By Internal Evidence against their Inspiration— (a.) They nowhere claim, in direct terms, to be the Word of the Lord. On the contrary, they sometimes acknowledge the departure (1 Mace. ix. 27), or hope for the return (ch. iv. 46), of the prophetic gift. And even when they simulate the prophetic tone, the solemnity and grandeur of the message of the Lord of Hosts is lost in the feeble and fallen cadence of the voice of man. (b.) They contradict the Canonical Scriptures— In History : Thus, the Story of Bel and the Dragon contradicts the account of Daniel’s being cast into the den of lions. In the Scripture account we are told, that Daniel was cast into the den, because of continuing his usual practice of praying to God, against the Decree of Darius the Median, but was taken up out of the den early the following morning. In the Apocrypha we read that, because he had “ destroyed Bel, slain the Dragon, and put the priests to death,” he was cast into the den by (permission of) Cyrus the Persian, “where he was six days.” Now, while we may reconcile the apparent contradiction as to Cyrus the Persian and Darius the Mede, by concluding, as we are probably warranted, that the former appointed the latter as his viceroy over Babylon ; we cannot on any rational grounds suppose that the author of Bel and the Dragon means the deputy Darius throughout his letter when he speaks of Cyrus and the close intimacy subsisting between him and Daniel, for no possible extension of the principle ‘‘ Qui facit per alium, facit per se,” could apply. Nor can we at all adjust the strangely opposite statements of the cause of Daniel’s being cast into the den—to say nothing of some of the ludicrous elements imported into the pseudo-history. But, above all, we cannot fit ‘six days” into one. Again, Baruch is said to have been carried to Babylon at the very time when Jeremiah tells us he was carried by Johanan into Egypt. “And these are the words of the book, which Baruch the son of Nerias wrote in Babylon, what time as the Chaldeans took Jerusalem, and burnt it with fire” (Baruch i. 1, 2). ‘ But Johanan took all the remnant of Judah, and every person that Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah. So they came into the land of Egypt” (Jer. xliii. 5-7). It is also alleged that no prophet was living at the time of the Babylonish Captivity. “‘ Neither is there at this time prince, or prophet, or leader, or burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incense, or place to sacrifice before thee to find mercy” (Song of the Three Children, xv.). H 114 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. In Doctrine : The Efficacy of Prayers for the Dead is taught. “And when he (Judas Maccabeus) had made a gathering through- out the company to the sum of two thousand drachms of silver, he sent it to Jerusalem to offer a sin-offering, doing therein very well and honestly, in that he was mindful of the resurrection. For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead. And also in that he perceived that there was great favour laid up for those that died godly, it was an holy and good thought. Whereupon he made a reconcilia- tion for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin” (2 Mace. xii. 43-45). The Efficacy of Prayers by the Dead is taught. “Ὁ Lord Almighty, thou God of Israel, hear now the prayers of the dead Israelites, and of their children, which have sinned before thee, and not hearkened unto the voice of thee their God: for the which cause these plagues cleave unto us” (Baruch iii. 4). The Transmigration of souls is taught. “For I (Solomon) was a witty child, and had a good spirit. Yea rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled” (Wisdom viii. 19, 20). Justification by Works is taught. « Alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin ” (Tobit xii. 9). “ Whoso honoureth his father maketh an atonement for his sins” (Kecclus. iii. 3). “To forsake unrighteousness is a propitiation ἢ (Ecclus. xxxv. 3). (c.) They contradict well-known ancient History. Thus we read that the Romans had but a single magistrate yearly. “And that they committed their government to one man every year, who ruled over all their country, and that all were obedient to that one, and that there was neither envy nor emulation among them” (τ Mace. vill. 16). True, it is only said that Judas had heard these things. But their relation in Maccabeus is equal to an his- torical statement, for it is asserted that Judas sent Eupolemus and Jason to Rome, and that the senate made a league with the people of the Jews, “written in tables of brass,” and the articies of which are given. Again, Daniel is said to have destroyed the temple of Belus (Bel and the Dragon), whereas it was pulled down by Xerxes; and the Babylonians are represented as worshippers of living animals (ibid.), which they never were at any period of their history—their idolatry being invariable, astral, and heroic. (d.) They contradict themselves. Thus no less than three widely different accounts, and each with a considerable amount of detail, are given of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. In the rst Book of Maccabees (ch. vi. 1-16) he is said to have died of grief in Babylon. In the 2d Book (ch. i, 13-16) he is said to have been slain in Persia. And afterwards, in the very same Book a whole chapter (2 Mace. ix.) is devoted to a description of | EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 115 his death from a loathsome disease “in a strange country in the mountains.” (e.) They approvingly narrate, or strongly commend, gross Im- morality, on the part not only of man, but of an Archangel of God. Lying. Some seven of the fourteen chapters of Tobit are devoted to the exploits and in most instances unwholesome counsels of Raphael, who declares himself at the outset to be “‘ Azarias the son of Ananias,” and at the winding up, to be “one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.” Magical Incantation. The same angel of God is reported as teach- ing Tobias to drive the Devil away with the smoke of the ashes of perfume, and the heart and liver of a fish (Tobit vi. 7, 16, 17). Assassination, cold-blooded Murder, and Deceit. Judith is painted a heroine to be adored, at once beautiful and bold, ritualistic and heart- less, of ferocious courage and deceitful lips, who enters upon her own murderous task with a prayer to God justifying the assassination of the Shechemites, which is condemned in Genesis (Judith vill. 16; Gen. xxxiv., and xlix. 5-7). Suicide. Razis is highly praised, and said to have died “ manfully,” for destroying himself in a manner the most determined, and revolting beyond precedent (2 Mace. xiv. 41-46). (3.) The Use of the Apocrypha. (a.) If these (specimen) charges are true—and the proof is patent— we honestly confess it does seem strange to teach that the Apocryphal Books are to be read in the Church “for example of life and instruc- tion of manners (as Hierome saith).” If we must plead antiquity, let us go back some centuries further than Jerome: to Justin Martyr and his ‘‘ Memoirs of the Apostles and Writings of the Prophets ;” but above all, and any merely human precedent, let us go back to Christ and His Apostles, and if we cannot find our Great Teacher and His Disciples reading the Apocrypha in the Church, then, we submit, the sooner we set aside the plea of any subsequent antiquity the better. Again, we cannot but consider it weak to plead for the reading of Apocryphal Books, which do contain error, because we allow sermons, &e., which may be erroneous—to argue from that which is possible, Jor that which is positive / There is no analogy. Moreover, pulpits and hymns which run counter to the teaching of Scripture, sooner or later find their level with Christians. And you see them all: there is nothing dangerous in the background, to tempt curiosity: they are whole wags, as a rule, or no wags. Nor does it much strengthen the case, that the more objectionable portions of the Apocrypha are not read of late: that Tobit and its superstitions ; Judith and its admixture of impieties; Susanna and its detail of indelicacies ; and Bel and the Dragon and its direct contra- dictions of Scripture, are at present suppressed. It is humiliating to cull, for a Lectionary of the House of God, passages from writings which—to say the least—as a whole you cannot indorse. It is dangerous and unprofitable to read them to the people. It places the a 116 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. minister in a false, if not a ludicrous position, to, call that the Apo- crypha at the reading-desk, which the Homilies oblige him to call the Scripture of the Holy Ghost in the pulpit. If “ Holy Scripture con- taineth all things necessary to salvation,” it is not wise to tamper in the Church of God with Books which may not be “applied to establish any doctrine,” and which in any part of them are directly contrary to the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament. “No truth can contradict another truth,” saith Hooker, whose ‘‘judiciousness ” yet fails him, but perhaps only in his strong advocacy of the Apo- crypha, and especially as read in his time. How strong is prejudice— how feeble is the strength of man. Here as elsewhere we would write not from the standpoint of party, but of truth. And we think we can see something of the leaven of our argument at work in the Church of England. At all events, our present Lectionary contains considerably fewer lessons from the Apocrypha than the last ; and has thrown out the more objectionable ones. (b.) The real use of the Apocryphal Books consists in this, that they form an important link in the history of the Jews—in all their fortunes ever dear to Christians. They display the current of Jewish thought between the close of Old Testament prophecy and the coming of Christ. In them we have, if not the absolute decay, yet the impaired tone and loss of the robustness of the national mind, when the scribe of the letter of the law, and not the prophet of its spirit, guided Israel. And though the contact with idolatry in Babylon failed to bow down the people of God again to “stocks and stones,” and the heart of the masses of the post-exilians was so far sound, as witness the spirit of resistance which led to the Maccabean victories, and the establishment of synagogues to preserve the purity of the faith; yet, superstition—emasculated idolatry—prevailed in high places, and laxity in all but the ‘‘jots and tittles” of God’s Revelation ruled in Palestine as well as in Alexandria. True, the Apocryphal Books contain some ennobling thoughts, and proverbial precepts for the conduct of life; but they are grains of gold, embedded in reprobate silver. (4.) The general history of the Abuse of the Apocrypha is lengthened, but must be briefly sketched. (a.) The early Christian Church, through its ignorance and neglect of the study of Hebrew—pardonable perhaps at the outset in its long unsettled state, and in the cradle of frequent and fiery persecutions— admitted in many instances the Apocrypha as Scripture. And not only so, but in the case of the New Testament Canon, where a know- ledge of Hebrew was in no way required, read not unfrequently as Scripture uncanonical books—a “stubborn fact” and unanswerable argument against the value of Dr. Westcott’s ‘‘intuitive” guide. (b.) A well-defined stream of Christian evidence takes up the Canon of the Old Testament (with which we are here more immediately con- cerned), and carries it down to the Council of Carthage; but far from intact. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 117 Thus Melito (second century), Origen (third century), Athanasius, Hilary of Poictiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, the Council of Laodicea, Gregory Nazianzen, Amphilochius, Epiphanius, Ruffinus, and Jerome (fourth century)—all substantially report the books of the Hebrew Bible, except Esther, which is (probably) omitted by Gregory (but may be included in Ezra), placed among the Apocrypha by Athanasius, and only inserted in the catalogue of Amphilochius under the doubtful phrase “some add Esther.” While Baruch and the Letter are admitted by Cyril, the Council of Laodicea, Epiphanius, and (perhaps) Atha- nasius. But this list is barely an index to the divergences. Irenzus quotes as Scripture—Baruch, Wisdom, and the Apocryphal Additions to Daniel. Clement of Alexandria—Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, and 2 Esdras, Tertullian—Baruch, Wisdom, and Ecclesi- asticus. Methodius, the same. Chrysostom the same. And innumerable instances occur, where the Fathers of the first four centuries casually, but nevertheless explicitly and really, do quote Apocryphal Books as Scripture, however safe we may be in saying in opposition to their more deliberate judgment, as indicated by the fact, that when pressed, or discussion arose, appeal was made to our Canon. But here, notably, Augustine wavered: at one time admitting into his Canon Apocryphal Books; and at another, disparaging even some of the Books thus admitted. And if with this renowned Father of the Church we enter the boasted Councils of Carthage, 397 and 4109, we find Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Judith, 2 Esdras, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, ratified as “ Canonical Scriptures ”—in exact keeping, as may be shown, with Augustine’s own general Canon. So much, alas! for the plenary authority of the Church, at the close of the fourth century, as advocated by Rome. So much for the theory of develop- ment and “intuition.” The very Council which, as the result of Dr. Westcott’s “ intuitive act of the Christian Body without reasoning,” pronounced for the unadulterated Canon of the New Testament, thus pronounced for a grossly adulterated Canon of the Old. But it is pleasing on this the eve of Christendom’s long night of unfaithfulness to the Word of God, which culminated in the Council of Trent—the darkest hour of her judicial blindness before the dawn of the blessed Reformation—to find one man asking for the Old Paths, and standing for the Law and the Testimony of Jehovah. Jerome devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures and their original languages, and laid on the altar of God and of Europe the noble fruits of his labours in the Vulgate—his New Translation of the Old Testa- ment, prefaced and fenced by its “ Helmed Prologue:” “following, by no means, the custom of this time, but the authority of ancient writers,” in telling off, distinctly, the Apocrypha from the Pure Word of God. Would to God he had gone one step further, and instead of conniv- ing at the Church in her reading of Apocryphal Books for the so- phrased ‘ ‘edification of the people, though not for the authoritative confirmation of doctrine,” he had raised his manly and scholarly voice 118 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. against Apocryphal Writings altogether, and consigned them to their own place—the library of the student. (c.) The sin of the Council of Trent is soon told. In its Fourth Session, 1546, the dominant party, without one scholar of note amongst them, carried, in blind and ignorant deference to former suspicious Papal decrees—the probably unauthentic lists of Innocent I. and Gelasius, repeated by Eugenius 1V.—the Canon of Augustine and of the Council of Carthage, with the exception of 2 Esdras and the addition of Baruch, against the Canon of Jerome and the Hebrew . Bible: thus impiously and authoritatively adding Tobit, Judith, Wis- dom, Ecelesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees to God’s Word. “The most Holy Ecumenical and General Council of Trent... following the examples of the orthodox fathers, receives and vene- rates, with equal pious affection and reverence, all the books of the Old and New Testament [including the above], and also the Traditions, whether pertaining to faith or morals. . . . If, however, any one does not receive, as sacred and canonical, the entire Books with all their parts, as they are accustomed to be read in the Catholie Church, and in the Old Latin Vulgate Edition, and knowingly and wittingly despises the aforesaid Traditions, let him be Anathema.” Let not our strictures, under this Article, on Dr. Westcott’s teach- ing, be misunderstood. That teaching, from his position, is the main supply, in its kind, of our two universities of Cambridge and Oxford ; and it is adopted elsewhere in quarters where we should have least expected. Painfully, but firmly in the interests of truth, we condemn it. Itis but a step removed from Neology and from Rome. It weakly and foolishly, though ingeniously, builds our most Holy Faith on the perilous sand of intuition and human authority, and not on the sure foundation of God. If the intuition of the post-Apostolie Church resulted in pronouncing clara voce for the New Testament at Carthage, how is it that it did not result in pronouncing in like manner for the Old? What if the still more enlightened nineteenth century Church should pronounce in its turn against the post-Apostolic Church both as regards the New Testament and the Old? And the Divines of Germany have !—mutilated not only the New Testament, but the whole Bible. Demonstrably, intuition has failed to save Christendom. And it is just this anchor, neither sure nor steadfast, of Human Wis- dom, whether weak and intuitive, or more philosophic, or arrogant and presumptuous, that is wrecking the churches of God. 1 Dr. Westcott unaccountably omits Baruch in his list of the Tridentine Coun- cil; and Bishop Browne omits 2 Esdras in his list of Carthage. Gero) ARTICLE VII. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of the Old Testament.—The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil Precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet, not- withstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral. De Veteri Testamento.—Testamentum Vetus Novo contrarium non est, quando quidem tam in Veteri, quam in Novo, per Christum, qui unicus est Mediator Dei et hominum, Deus et Homo, eterna vita humano generi est proposita. Quare male sentiunt, qui veteres tantum in promissiones temporarias sperasse confingunt. Quanquam Lex a Deo data per Mosen, quoad Ceremonios et Ritus, Christianos non astringat, neque civilia ejus precepta in aliqua republica necessario recipi debeant ; nihilominus tamen ab obedientia mandatorum que Moralia vocantur, nullus quantumvis Christianis est solutus. History. The Article, as it now stands, is made up, with some modifications, of the Sixth and Nineteenth of the Forty-two Articles of Edward VI. We subjoin these, as they tend to illustrate the history and nature of the controversy in which our Reformers were involved. Articte VI., 1552. The Old Testament is not to be refused.—The Old Testament is not to be put away, as though it were contrary to the New, but to be kept still; for both in the Old and New Testaments everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises, _ SS 10 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Article XIX., 1552. All men are bound to keep the Moral Commandments of the Law.— The Law, which was given of God by Moses, although it bind not Christian men as concerning the Ceremonies and Rites of the same ; neither is it required that the Civil Precepts and Orders of it should of necessity be received in any commonweal: yet no man, be he never so perfect a Christian, is exempt and loose from the obedience of those Commandments which are called Moral. Wherefore they are not to be hearkened unto, who affirm that Holy Scripture is given only to the weak, and do boast themselves continually of the Spirit, of whom (they say) they have learned such things as they teach, although the same be most evidently repugnant to the Holy Serip- ture. Ever since God revealed Himself to man, Satan has countermined against God by the power of infidel reason. ‘‘ Yea, hath God said?” is, in one shape or other, the virtual text with which the Destroyer has wooed and won the pride and heart of his captives, In Eden, with the Patriarch, the Jew, the Gentile Christian, these subtle words have worked, in life or faith, ruin of our race. They are Satan’s chief and greatest strength ; and so, you have only to look down the stream of the Church’s history to see, that wherever God more fully and graciously vouchsafes His blessing, there Satan again and more vigorously sinks and works this ‘‘ counter-mine.” It was so in the first age of Christianity, when ‘oppositions of science falsely so called” corrupted the infant Church. It was so at the Reformation, when Anabaptist lawlessness and contempt of the Word Written embarrassed the allimportant movement. It has been so of late years, when Rationalism and a lifeless or carnal Ritualism threaten to dis- place the Evangelical revival of Christendom—that fuller tide and outcome of Reformation attainments. And it is just here, as we may appeal to the inner consciousness of every intelligent believer, gathers the cloud that not unfrequently chills and darkens the phases of his love and light and joy. But we must not unduly diverge from the historic limits of our Article. Its wording, ‘The Old Testament is not contrary to the New,” reminds us, however, of the Gnostic terminology ; and we may not be altogether wrong in concluding that the compilers thus, in the first instance, had reference to Gnostic speculations—Satan’s formula in the early Christian age. In any case, a brief review of these heresies will enable us better to understand that against which the Article certainly does protest. Gnosticism (γνῶσις, science, or the so-called true knowledge of God) soon came to disturb and to mar the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Whether we hold with Tiltmann that Gnosticism as such had no existence in the first century ; or with Lewald, that notwithstanding many points of resemblance can be traced, it is essentially different EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 121 from any system of either Grecian or Oriental philosophy : still, we think it apparent that the seeds of a false philosophy in direct opposi- tion to the Gospel were sown in the days of the Apostles; and that that philosophy, whether formally coincident with previous or existent systems, contained and was contaminated with the virus of heathen theosophy, as well as the virtual germs of the future and historic Gnosis. We must go back for a moment to Plato and to the Orientals. The former held not only the unity of God, but that He is careful of the government of the world, and administers it as an independent, powerful, and intelligent Being. He also believed in a future state, and in the immortality of the soul. But with these sound and in- valuable doctrines he mixed up many fanciful and erroneous opinions ; such as that matter was co-eternal with God; and that to its native intractability or malignity was owing the origin of evil. The Oriental Philosophy, on the other hand, held the eternal existence of two oppo- site Principles, the Supreme God, the author of good; and the Demi- urge, or Creator of the world, the author of evil. And thus the origin of evil was the stumbling-stone at once of Platonism and Orientalism. Evil is the contrary of good, and therefore if contrary to and inde- pendent of the Supreme Good, must in one way or other be eternal. It is easy to see how Judaism first, and Judaic and Gentile Chris- tianity afterwards, won by Satan and the pride of the human heart to loose reasoning on the plain letters of Genesis—now swayed at Alexandria by the Platonic theory, and anon in Asia by the Oriental theory—begat and fostered vain and hybrid speculations, neither true Platonic nor Oriental, but a mixture at once of Platonism, Orientalism, and Revelation; embellished with extraneous notions from the heathen, or the fancies of individual founders. And accord- ingly we find at Alexandria the doctrine of “emanations,” or Eons— orders of intermediate agents, proceeding from or developed by the Deity, and varying in number according to the fancy of the several sects. While in Asia, we have the dualism of God and Matter—two hostile and eternal Principles or Personalities. But in each quarter, as might be expected, a jumble not unfrequently of both systems ; and invariably, in all subdivisions, a medley of crude philosophy, grossest or anile fiction, and obscured Revelation. And this we take it is the veritable Gnosticism unquestionably alluded to and reprobated in the New Testament—as yet we grant in embryo, but which soon, and in many forms, was so detrimental to the early Church. It is needless to follow in detail the development of Gnosticism. Let it suffice to note a representative of Alexandria and Asia, respec- tively, with a glance at the Manichean heresy, the new form in which Gnosticism seems to have perpetuated itself. Simon Magus was a Samaritan by birth, but studied philosophy at Alexandria, where he became imbued with the eclectic Gnostic notions. Returning to his native country, a fit place for the exercise of his powers, the Samaritans believing in uncreated angelic emanations from God, and Dositheus his master having preceded him as a teacher 172 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of Gnosticism there, he ‘bewitched the people of Samaria with sorceries,” and was recognised as an incarnation of “the power of God which is called (xaAcuwévyj—improperly omitted in the Received Version) great” (Acts viii. 9-11). Matter, with his class, was con- sidered eternally animated, and to have produced, by its inherent energies, an evil Deity who presided over it, surrounded by numerous attendants. Hence we may naturally infer that he held the con- sequent doctrines of the impurity of matter, the indifference of human actions, and the non-resurrection of the body. He also rejected the Law of Moses, and declared himself the Christ who had come to abolish it, But his crowning wickedness was the mode of his embodi- ment of the dualistic element of two original principles; the pretence that the greatest and most powerful of the Eons—the δυνάμεις, or uncreated emanations—resided in himself, while a corresponding Kon of the female sex resided in his mistress Helena—a former prostitute of Tyre. Thus in his hands the Magian theurgy passed into the most blasphemous egotism: “giving out that himself was” the Word of God, the Perfection, the Paraclete, the Omnipotent, the All of Deity. Marcion, son of the Bishop of Sinope, in Pontus, came to settle at Rome in the reign of Antoninus Pius, in the second century, there to propagate his opinions in a larger and more important field—Rome being the capital of the world, and as Facitus says, “everything that was bad upon earth finding its way to Rome.” Various and con- flicting accounts are given of his opinions. But we may conclude that, like the Orientals, he held the eternal existence of two first causes—the Supreme Good and the Demiurge ; that the latter was the God and Lawgiver of the Jews, therefore the Old Testament and all parts of the New founded upon it, were to be rejected, as incapable of bestowing sanctification ; that Christ was the manifestation of the Supreme God, and sent by him to destroy the work of the Demiurge, yet that he had the appearance (δόκησις) only of a body, and con- sequently the Jews were unable to hurt him; that matter being intrinsically evil, we are to mortify our bodies by fasting, abstinence from marriage, and deny ourselves the use of wine, flesh, and whatever is grateful and pleasing to the body; and that whoever will thus abstract the mind from all sensible objects, and obey these principles, renouncing the Old Testament Scriptures, shall after death ascend to the celestial mansions. To these general principles he added many peculiarities, as the administration of the cup with water only ; baptism in the name of the Son, excluding the Father and the Holy Ghost, and the living to be baptized for friends who had died un- baptized. Towards the close of the third century, when Gnosticism proper was on the wane, thanks to the labours of Tertullian, the investiga- tions and lucid confutations of the Jewish notions by Dionysius of Alexandria and Dorotheus of Antioch, and even perhaps the allegorical and tropological mode of expounding Scripture by Origen, a new and still more dangerous heresy appeared, which, despite persecutions, imperial edicts, and exterminating laws, spread over Europe, Asia, and EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 123 most parts of the world. Manes, or Manicheeus, one of the Persian Magi, was born about the year 240, in the reign of Probus. Of much ingenuity, considerable talent, and versed in all the learning of his country, he combined the Magian philosophy with Christianity and some of the more popular tenets of Gnosticism, so as to present a system sufficiently luring not only to absorb the still remaining Gnostics, but also to secure at one time even the mind of Augustine. He threw aside the doctrine of emanations, and inculcated the simple belief that God was the cause of good, and Matter the cause of evil. There are two first principles of all things, a subtile and very pure substance or Light, and a gross and corrupt substance or Darkness ; and over each of these a Lord has reigned from all eternity—two opposing Spirits, with numerous progenies, out of whose contexts arose the mundane confusion of good and evil. To relieve souls the creation of God imprisoned in bodies of vicious matter, God sent forth two majestic beings, Christ (the Mithras of the Persians) and the Holy Ghost. Christ explained to men their true origin, the cause of their captivity, and the means of their recovery, viz., ceasing to worship the God of the Jews, obeying Christ’s laws as expounded by Manes, and resisting lust. His body necessarily was in appearance only ; but his mystical crucifixion taught mankind how to mortify the flesh; and his mystical resurrection and ascension, that death destroys not man but only his prison, and restores to purified souls the liberty of re- turning to heaven. The Holy Ghost, diffused throughout the atmos- phere, enlightens and assists the souls of men, pouring over them his salutary influences. Manes, in fulfilment of the promise made by Jesus Christ, that the Paraclete should communicate to the world a fuller and clearer revelation, now explained by command of God the whole doctrine of salvation perfectly, without any concealment or ambiguity. As human souls cannot acquire complete purity in this life, there is, after death, for all those who have obeyed Christ, a purgatory of a twofold nature—first by sacred water, then by sacred fire; and for others, a transmigration of souls, to work out their salvation in new bodies —those who ultimately and utterly fail being handed over to the powers of darkness. The Old Testament was the work of the Prince of darkness, whom the Jews worshipped in place of the true God. The four Gospels were either not genuine, or inter- polated, and stuffed with Jewish fables. The Acts of the Apostles was to be wholly rejected. The Epistles of St. Paul were genuine, but not authentic. A book, called Erteng, or Arzeng, 1.6., the Gospel composed by Manes ina cave, where he spent a whole year, was dictated by God Himself. The body being the work of the evil spirit, is to be subjected to the most rigid mortification ; all the propensities and instincts of our nature are to be subdued; marriage is to be re- jected; and there is no resurrection. While hearers or imperfect Christians might possess property, and have sparing indulgences, the elect or perfect Christians were to adhere most rigorously to all the severe rules of the system—to drag out an inactive life of celibacy on bread and water, and to be devoid both of hatred and love. Though 124 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. without temple or altar, the ecclesiastical polity of the Manichees was framed on the lines of Christ and His Disciples—a president, re- presenting the Saviour; twelve rulers the twelve Apostles; and seventy-two bishops the seventy-two Disciples. Such was the system which replaced Gnosticism, caricatured the Gospel, and lived and lingered on to disturb the Church of God, till at last it gave birth to some of the more obnoxious tenets of Popery, and to the Anabaptism of the sixteenth century. Here then we find in Gnosticism and Manicheism, as we shall find in Anabaptism, and as we may also find in the Rationalism and Ritualism of our own day, a frivolous overlaying and superseding, or impious despising and questioning of God’s Word Written : in each a phase of Satan’s counter-work against God ; and each precisely and cunningly adapted to the era of its development. And it is well for the student to see this. Hitherto the histories of heresies have been too much rendered as separate individualities, and not, as they are veritable pieces, each shaped and fashioned to its purpose and age, of the great though complicated machinery of Satan in opposition to God and His Christ. God in History brings us more lovingly, and in more filial trust, to our Heavenly Father. Satan in History, if rightly written and wisely read, would put us more keenly on our guard. A pen fully and judiciously to portray both would be of infinite service to the Church and the world. Now to these and cognate heresies, some partly developed, and others only budding in the Apostles’ time, we should expect to find, and we do find, considerable allusions in the New Testament. Take the following examples :— St. Paul anticipates the rise of heresies at Ephesus. “ For I know this, that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them ” (Acts xx. 29, 30). And in his Epistles subsequently addressed to Timothy at Ephesus, the Apostle prophesies, through the present agency and power of the Spirit (τὸ πνεῦμα λέγει), the future success of Gnostic and allied heresies in after times (ἐν ὑστέροις καιροῖς), and points to their incipient budding. ‘“ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in after times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils. Speaking lies in hypocrisy ; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things [suggesting the coming Apostasy and the means of avoid- ing it], thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained. But refuse profane and anile fables (μύθους pointing, with the “ endless genealogies” of chap. i., most probably to the transitional state of EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 125 heretical speculation between Judaism and Gnosticism proper), and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise (σωματικὴ Avuwvacia—understood by Ambrose, Calvin, Grotius, and others, of corporal austerities for religion’s sake; by Chrysostom, Bengel, &c., of mere gymnastic training) profiteth little: but godliness is profit- able unto all things [bodily and spiritual, temporal and eternal], having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to’come ” (1 Tim. iy. 1-8). “Ὁ Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called (ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως---ἃ counterfeit of the true Chris- tian γνῶσις, and already at work), which some professing have erred concerning the faith” (1 Tim. vi. 20). ‘And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymeneus and Philetus ; who concern- ing the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already [consisting in a moral change—a denial of the resurrection was one of the errors of Gnostics subsequently]; and overthrow the faith of some ” (2 Tim. ii. 17, 18). And this false philosophy abounded also at Colosse. ‘‘ Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit [the vain and deceitful mixture of Judaic and Oriental philosophy which was so soon to ripen into the developed Gnosis], after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ [the only true gauge and measure of all philosophy]. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματι)ιῶς, all the Pleroma—the essential and personal Being of God in the incarnate and glorified Christ. He is therefore not an Eon). And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power [united to Christ, you want no supplement of vain philosophy ; and your Pleroma is not to be confounded with Emanation figments, for He Himself is the Head of all created existences]. .. . Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink [condemn you from his standpoint of selfish asceticism], or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days ; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels [a super- stition afterwards variously embodied in Gnosticism], intruding into those things which he hath not seen [how graphically descriptive of the whole future dreamland of Eons], vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God [a Divine anatomy of the Body of Christ, the Church, and the individual soul, tracing all Life to God, the only First Cause. Anda prophetic rebuke of Papal Mariolatry]. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world [the weak and beggarly elements of a sensuous Jewish and Gentile cultus], why, as though living in the world, do ye suffer your- selves to be dogmatized (Touch not, taste not, handle not [as the ascetics dogmatize]; which all are to perish with the using [all meats are given us by the Creator for our consumption]), after the 126 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. commandments and systems (διδασχαλίως) of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom (oofias—the higher and only true γνῶσις) in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body ; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh [what an inspired word-painting of and warning against Asceticism and Superstition— two of the main features of the coming Gnosticism] (Col. ii, 8-10, 16-23). In Crete too Titus was cautioned. ‘“‘ Not giving heed to Jewish fables [probably the germinating seeds of the Gnostic Mythology of Kons, in its abuse of Judaism], and commandments of men [as to meats and other ascetic injunctions], that turn from the truth. [For] Unto the pure all things are pure” (Titus 1. 14, 15). ‘‘ But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law [in idle fables about supernatural generations as grafted on the Law of Moses—most probably the mediate, if not the proximate cause of Gnostic doubt about its Divine authority]; for they are un- profitable and vain” (Titus iii. 9). Let us now turn to the heresies against which our Article is definitely set. The Anabaptism of the sixteenth century (including under this general designation for convenience’ sake the various law- less and fanatical sects of the Reformation period) was in the main _ neither more nor less than the natural outcome of the heresies we have sketched—adapted to the age. Thus a leading tenet of most Gnostic sects of Manicheism was, that Christ had an unreal body—docetic, ethereal, or emanative. And many of the Anabaptists of Munster, as well as the Mennonites, denied that Christ received from the Virgin Mary that human body which He assumed, and held that it was a divine and celestial body produced out of nothing in the Virgin’s womb by the Holy Ghost. Again, Gnosticism and Manicheism re- jected the Old Testament Scriptures as the work of the Demiurge. And this heresy, stripped of some of its fantastic fiction, repeated itself among the Anabaptist sects. “Here I note onely one thing, which is [the] temeritie, ignorance, and blasphemy of certaine phan- tastical heades, which hold y* the prophets do write onely to the people of γ᾽ old Testament, and that their doctrine did pertain onely to their time ; and would seclude al y® fathers y* liued vunder y° law from the hope of eternal saluation. And here is also a note to be gathered against them which vtterly reiect y° old Testament, as a boke nothing necessari to y® Christians which liue vunder y° Gospel. But as I haue said before, ther is no difference betwene the Old Testa- ment and the Newe, but onely in circumstance and nothing in sub- stance. And therefore the one is as wel to be allowed and receiued as the other” (Bishop Alley, ‘‘ Poore Man’s Librarie,” ii. 97). Thus the ten commandments were easily antiquated, and adultery was no sin. Even the dualistic quasi-Manichean distinction between the flesh and the spirit was introduced by one of the schools, who held that in the very act of the grossest bodily sin, the soul was free and uncontaminated before God. And if the Anabaptists could not like Manes literally forge upon the world a Gospel of their own, yet they EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 127 followed closely in his lines, and declared that the Sacred Volume had become so corrupted in its transmission that it was unworthy of credence, so that their preachers were at liberty to treat it, which in fact they often did, as ‘‘ mere dead letter.” Hooper writing to Bullinger, 1549, gives the following awful picture of Anabaptism in England. “The Anabaptists flock to the place [of my lecture], and give me much trouble with their opinions respecting the Incarnation of our Lord; for they deny altogether that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary according to the flesh. They contend, that a man who is reconciled to God is without sin, and free from all stain of concupiscence, and that nothing of the old Adam remains in his nature ; and a man, they say, who is thus regenerate, cannot sin. They add that all hope of pardon is taken away from those who, after having received the Holy Ghost, fall into sin. They maintain a fatal necessity, and that beyond and besides that will of His, which He has revealed to us in the Scriptures, God hath another will by which He altogether acts under some kind of necessity. How dangerously our England is affected by heresies of this kind, God only knows: I am unable indeed, from sorrow of heart, to express to your piety. There are some who deny that man is endued with a soul different from that of a beast, and subject to decay. Alas! not only are these heresies reviving among us which were formerly dead and buried, but new ones are springing up every day. There are such libertines and wretches who are daring enough in their conventicles, not only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world, but also to call that blessed Seed a mischievous fellow, and deceiver of the world. On the other hand, a great portion of the kingdom so adheres to the popish faction as altogether to set at naught God and the lawful authority of the magistrates; so that I am greatly afraid of a rebellion and civil discord” (Original Letters, ed. P.S. pp. 65, 66). Hardwick thus accounts for the (immediate) rise of the Anabaptists, and briefly delineates some of their deadly errors. “ The ramifications of these varied misbelievers may be traced, in many cases, to the scene of the original collisions between the ‘old’ and ‘ new learning.’ One of their distinctive errors, though not the grand characteristic of their system, was the absolute rejection of infant baptism; and from this peculiarity came the title ‘ Anabaptists.’ Mistaking or perverting what was urged by Luther, as to the necessity of active, conscious faith in all partakers of the sacraments, they soon proceeded to postpone the ministration of the initiatory rite until the subjects of it had com- plied with all the requisite preconditions. “But the points at which they had departed from the ground of the Reformers were not limited to infant Baptism. They proceeded to assail the Lutheran formula in which salvation was attributed to ‘faith only,’ and in agitating this, they fell into a further question respecting the two natures of our blessed Lord and His essential Divinity. John Denk, and others, now affirmed that man may earn salvation by his own virtuous actions, and regarded the Founder of Christianity chiefly in His character of Teacher and Exemplar. In Him, as one 128 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of the most spotless of our race, the Father was peculiarly manifested to the world, but to assert that Christ is the Redeemer, in the ordinary meaning of the term, was to convert Him into an idol. He was held to be a Saviour of His people, because He was the leader and fore- runner of all who would be saved. “While notions of this kind were spreading rapidly on every side, a second school of Anabaptists were devising a very different creed. The tone of thought prevailing in the former school was strongly rationalistic : in the latter it was more entirely mystical. They in- troduced a dualistic (quasi-Manichean) distinction between the ‘ flesh’ and ‘spirit’; and instead of holding, like the former sect, that man, though fallen, may be rescued by his natural powers, they alleged that the ‘flesh’ alone participated in the fall, and further that when the material element in him was most of al] obnoxious to the indigna- tion of God, the spirit still continued free and uncontaminated by the vilest of the outward actions. They attributed the restoration of harmony between these elements of our nature to the intervention of the Logos, but maintained that His humanity was peculiar, not con- sisting of flesh and blood which He derived from the substance of the Virgin. Not a few of these same Anabaptists afterwards abandoned every semblance of belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and so passed over to the Arian and Socinian schools, then rising up in Swit- zerland, in Italy, and in Poland ” (History of the Articles, pp. 85-87). Tf to all this we add the flesh or peculiar errors incorporated by the Anabaptists from the times, or which still lingered in the Church and were elaborated by them—such as the theory of universalism, or ter- minability of future punishment, the mystical and morbid interpreta- tion of Scripture, the sleep of the soul between death and judgment, the community of goods, the unlawfulness of military service and judicial oaths—we shall see the nature of the opposition which the Reformers had to encounter, and better understand many references in the Articles. One other most important circumstance must not be omitted in connection with this sketch, which may be of use in putting the student on his guard, and that is, the seemingly antagonistic yet complementary relation, as might be expected from their broad common heathen origin, which existed between Anabaptism and Romanism. The monstrous evils of the former caused a decided reaction in favour of the latter; while, at the same time, incredible as it may seem, and infamous as it was on the part of Holy Mother Church, the Anabaptist errors would appear to have been promoted by Popish agents! Thus a letter dated Delft, May 12, 1549, was addressed to Gardiner, advis- ing him that the best means of preventing the organisation of the Reformers would be the preaching up of the Anabaptist doctrines— an advice which there is some considerable evidence to show was actually taken, just as a like policy was adopted by the Jesuits and Dominicans in the reign of Elizabeth under the garb of Puritanism, and is probably re-enacted in our own day by the partisans of Rome under the cloak of ritual zeal and primitive Christianity. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 129 “History,” at least in heresy, priestcraft, and sin, “repeats itself.” Diviston. Two Subjects—1. One Condition of Salvation under the Old Testament and the New. 2. How far the Mosaic Law is Binding. 1. One Condition of Salvation under the Old Testament and the New. The Old Testament is not contrary to the New] The Revelation of God is an organic whole, of which the several and varied parts are reciprocally means and ends, and so intimately and closely united that if you take away one part you stultify and destroy another. And this is true even if we dissect the Bible into its multiplied sections ; but still more strikingly true of its great and leading divisions. Thus to take the Old Testament and its three familiar Jewish classes of writings, the Law would be a wearisome detail of sacrificial prescriptions, unmeaning ordinances, and dead genealogies, altogether unworthy of a Divine and intelligent Being, were it not for the Prophets that point us to the Lamb of God, bearing our griefs, carry- ing our sorrows, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and voluntarily pouring out His soul an offering for sin, to make intercession for the transgressors ; and were it not for the Psalms that tell us, “I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me. Offer unto God thanksgiving ; and pay thy vows unto the Most High: and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” Again, the Prophets and the Psalms would be utterly un- intelligible without the Pentateuch for our guide. Line after line and page after page of the former recall and are set upon the latter. Not only as a Divine revelation are they mutually inwrought, but the prophet and the hymnist of the Lord appeal to the spiritual faculty of man, and weave into the else colour-blind rites and ceremonies of the Law the eye and organ of faith. To suppose, if we could, the exist- ence of the Law without the Prophets, is to cut out the woof of a web, and of the Prophets without the Law is to strike out its warp. Or if we take the four elements into which moderns have resolved the Old Testament, we shall find the same interdependence—the historic, prophetic, poetic, and legal, all wondrously and harmoniously inter- changing, and beautifully interlaced. Moses, David, Hezekiah, and Ezra symbolising and representing the national life and sacred literature of the Jews, unifying and completing this first cycle of God’s Revela- tion. Then again if we take the New Testament, in the Gospels we find the announcement of a new kingdom, in the Acts its foundation-stone laid and superstructure vigorously begun, and in the Kpistles a detail of the doctrinal and practical Jaw—the working life of the kingdom. Cut off the Epistles from the Historical Books of the New Testament, I 130 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and you have a building without cement, left for any one to “daub with untempered mortar.” Cut off the History from the Epistles, and you have all the “joints and bands” of a body, but without a definite organism, and therefore ready to be “knit together,” at the will anc “sleight of men,” under any “ Head.” But all these relations also exist between the Old Testament and the New, only if possible still more closely and virtually drawn. The types, prophecies, and sweet songs of the one find, as an historic fact, their ideal in the other ; and this ideal would be an abrupt, and unnatural, unaccountable creation without them. ‘True the rites and ceremonies of the Old Testament have ceased to be sacraments, but they have nevertheless become symbols of deepest spiritual meaning and ever- lasting importance. Thus “1 the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh” no longer, by it we are taught, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” If after every commandment according to the Law had been rehearsed by Moses, “he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, and the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry ”—if thus “without shedding of blood there is no remission,” we are taught the deep and solemn truth, that “therefore it was necessary that the heavenly things themselves should be purified with better sacrifices than these:” that the uncreated and eternal, heavenly tabernacle of God needed, because of man’s sin, a καθαρίξεσθαι by the all-prevailing sacrifice and blood of Christ! If the High Priest has passed away, his consecration with a plentiful effusion of the holy oil typified under the Old Testament Economy, but now symbolizes what the theology of our day would seem to forget, the ever-continued communication of the Spirit “without measure” by the Father unto the Mediatorial Person of Christ. If a perpetual function of the Chief Priest was to bear the names of the children of Israel ‘upon his two shoulders, and in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he went into the holy place, for a memorial before the Lord “continually,” it symbolises the ascended Saviour passed into the heavens, upon the palms of whose hands the names of His people are graven, and sealed upon His heart forevermore. And even the very fact of the ‘‘many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death,” brings out to the mind of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews the glorious triumphant truth that “this Man, because he continueth for everlasting (εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα), hath an un- changeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Then again, all the leading doctrines con- cerning the nature and being of God—His unity, existence in more Persons than one, His spotless Holiness, His infinite Love, His Mighti- ness to Save, all 116 in embryo and germ in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, but find their full and wondrous development in the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 131 Gospel. And lastly, the Prophecies of the Old Testament are the standing miracles of the New Dispensation : only to be read, and ever increasing in value, in the kingdom of Christ and of God. And even as a negative argument, if the Old Testament is the work of the true God, there is no evading of the proposition that it is ‘‘not contrary to the N ew,” unless indeed we return to the blasphemy of a Demiurge, and so debase all philosophy, natural and Divine, by the absurdity of two First Causes. To quote Scriptural proof under this head would be to transcribe the Bible. But one or two suggestive passages may be selected. In passing, however, we would impress upon the student, that the most profitable way of reading God’s Holy Word, is prayerfully and care- fully to compare Scripture with Scripture—not only, after the sense of Chrysostom, explaining and proving difficult spiritual truths of the New Testament by testimonies of the Old, but systematically com- paring Bible History with Bible evolution of Doctrine: above all, taking Christ as the central figure, to Whom and from Whom all converges and flows. ‘“‘ Bene orasse est bene studuisse” (Luther). “Pectus est quod facit theologum” (Neander). Πνευματικοῖς πνευματκὰ συγκρίνοντες (St. Paul). “Think not that Iam come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil, For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt. v. 17, 18). We cannot refrain from quoting at length the valuable comment of Alford on this passage. ‘‘It is important to observe in these days how the Lord here includes the Old Testament and all its unfolding of the Divine purposes regarding Himself, in His teaching of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven. I say this, because it is always in contempt and setting aside of the Old Testament, that rationalism has begun. First, its historical truth—then its theocratic dispensation, and the types and prophecies connected with it, are swept away ; so that Christ came to fulfil nothing, and becomes only a teacher or a martyr: and thus the way is paved for a similar rejection of the New Testament,—beginning with the narratives of the birth and infancy, as theocratic myths—ad- vancing to the denial of His miracles—then attacking the truthfulness of His own sayings which are grounded on the Old Testament as a revelation from God—and so finally leaving us nothing in the Scriptures but, asa German writer of this school has expressed it, ‘a mythology not so attractive as that of Greece.’ That this is the course which unbelief has run in Germany, should be a pregnant warning to the decriers of the Old Testament among ourselves. It should be a maxim for every expositor and every student, that Scripture is a whole, and stands or falls together. That this is now beginning to be deeply felt in Ger- many, we have cheering testimonies in the later editions of their best Commentators, and in the valuable work of Stier on the discourses of our Lord. [Since, however, these words were first written, we have had lamentable proof in England, that their warnings were not un- needed. The course of unbelief which induced the publication of 132 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. the volume entitled ‘Essays and Reviews,’ was, in character and pro- gress, exactly that above described: and owing to the injudicious treatment which multiplied tenfold the circulation of that otherwise contemptible work, its fallacies are now in the hands and mouths of thousands, who, from the low standard of intelligent Scriptural know- ledge among us, will never have the means of answering them]” (Greek Testament zn loco, 6th Ed.). “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Is. xl. 8). ‘The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Pet. 1. 24, 25). Here the Apostle seizes upon the imagery of the Prophet, and interwreathes the Old Testament with the New into an imperishable coronal. “Search the (Old Testament) Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify (from first to last) of me” (John v. 39). A command certainly addressed at the outset to the Jews, but applying with even stronger force to Christians, who, having both Testaments, a double testimony to the office and work of Christ, may yet be in danger of the condemnation of the following verse, ‘‘And ye will not come to me (in personal knowledge and identity), that ye might have life.” ‘For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me: for he wrote of me” (John ν. 46). The Pentateuch was written by Moses: and the Pentateuch leads to Christ. “From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures (of the Old Testament), which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. [Here again we have the Divine unity of the Law and the Gospel expressly stated.] All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 111. 15-17). ‘Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture (Is. liii. 7, 8), and preached unto him Jesus ” (Acts viii. 35). “He (St. Paul) mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the (Old Testament) Scriptures that Jesus was Christ” (Acts xvii. 28). Both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man| Upon the head and front of the Law is written the Need of Inter- cession, as well as of Redemption. No other feeling could have bowed the Jew into its observance. And that conviction was and is universal in our race. We know not how, given a sinful world unable to recover itself, you are to bring it back to God, without fear and trembling, until you convince it of a Mediator, and thus teach it the doctrine of Propitiation and Substitution. Now herein lies the whole function of the Mosaic Institute. ‘‘ Wherefore the law was our School- master (παιδαγωγὸς 7uév—our pedagogue or tutor, true frequently a ἡ EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 133 superior slave, and therefore inferior in rank, but with the recognised duty of enforcing discipline) to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. i. 24). It gathered up probably the known rituals of families and peoples—undoubtedly that of Eeypt ; purified them of their abominations—for instance the element of human sacrifice ; appointed a reformed code, stringent or if you will severe, but requisite ; and on that inscribed Holiness to the Lord. It marked off and finally separated an already chosen race; placed it in the centre of the nations; and by the ceremonial cleansing of the blood of bulls and goats, taught it the lustration of the soul by the Blood of Christ. If it is objected, and it has been more or less, that this is wisdom after the event—that the Christian account is sickly prophecy after the history, we reply, in the first place, Given the conditions, and let infidelity find a better solution. ‘Take, at the present day, any tribe of heathens, with the avowed object of turning them from idols— and the children of Israel were gross idolaters to begin with—to serve the living God, and you will utterly fail until you bring them step by step to see the love, and the power, and the verity of the Atonement. But in the second place, we distinctly maintain, that the Law did verily point to the Sacrifice of Christ, or in the broader statement of our Article, that the Mediator of the Old Testament and of the New is one and the same Saviour. Not only are the rites of the Law types and figures of “ good things to come,” and its sacrifices a pur- posed foreshadowing of ‘‘ Christ our Passover” and “ set forth (προέθετο —historically manifested) Propitiation through Faith in His Blood,” as once and again asserted and implied throughout the New Testament, and amply demonstrated in the Epistle to the Hebrews—an indigenous argument of a Jew to Jews in favour of Christianity ; but, we are to remember that alongside the Law, and contemporary with it, were the Prophets, the Evangelists of the Law. Even before the Law, and for the first representative family of the Israelites, as well as for Gentiles within his circle, Abraham was a prophet, and an Intercessor before Jehovah. And though short-sighted commentators would so restrict as almost to nullify the prophetic gift of Abraham, interpreting it simply in the sense of a friend of God, or confining it to the vision and dream at Mamre, yet our Lord Himself expressly declares that “ Abraham rejoiced to see my Day (τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν éuqv—my appear- ance in the Flesh): and he saw it, and was glad” (John vill. 56). Which the Patriarch could only do, in the full blessing of full pro- phetic power, by a prophetic realising faith in the Atonement. But there were also prophets under the Law, from Moses, Aaron, and Samuel downward—thousands of prophets probably before, and hun- dreds contemporary with each of the sixteen prophets, the essence of whose teaching is recorded in the Canon. No sooner indeed was the priesthood defined by Moses, than a prophetic ministry was appointed in the Seventy Elders, “upon whom when the Spirit rested, they pro- phesied, and did not cease” (Num. xi.). In the time of the Judges too, prophecy exercised a most powerful, though fitful influence. But 134 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. at its close, Samuel gathered up the scattered embers of this fire of the Lord, and organised Schools of the Prophets, so that a due supply of these inspired men was never wanting till the close of the Old Testament Canon. Now whatever else may have been the employ- ment or attainments of the Prophets of the Lord, their great and chief function was to be in advance of the Law, and lead it on to the Gospel—Evangelical Teachers of, and Evangelical Intercessors for the Old Testament Church. Reformers they were in the true sense of the word ; but destroyers of the Law they were not. Impressed with its Divine sanction, and saturated as it were with the sacredness of its every detail, by their communion with God they were enabled to read deep withal into its inner meaning, and thus bring it home, in all its spirit, vital in every part, to the hearts of the people. So that when Christianity came, its Founder could historically appeal to the ‘all things, written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me” (Luke xxiv. 44). And Moses, Elias, and Christ could talk on the Holy Mount of the ‘‘decease which He should accomplish (*Az0dv—fulfil in accordance with Divine appoint- ment and prophecy) at Jerusalem” (Luke ix. 30, 31): most cogent proof that ‘‘ Moses with Elias,” the Law with the Prophets, ever pointed to a Coming Redeemer—the only Mediator between God and Man, now about to suffer—the Transfigured Christ. But another line of proof is equally striking. Thus if we examine some of the more fundamental truths of the Covenant of Redemption, we shall find the Old Testament equally explicit and assuring with the New. Take the following :— The Reality of Christ's Priesthood, and of the Atonement. Op TESTAMENT. “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool . . . The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Mel- chizedek” (Ps. ex. 1, 4). Jesus Christ a King and a Priest upon His Father’s Throne. And as such seen, our Lord Himself assures us in the Gospel (‘David said by the Holy Ghost’) by the Royal Psalmist—over a thousand years before the Incarnation. “It was a prophecy of Christ, and in Him it was fulfilled. The idea went forth necessarily from the spirit of the Old Dispensation, and from the organic connection of events in the Old Theocracy ; it was the blossom of a history and areligion that were in their very essence prophetical ” (Neander). “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong: because he hath poured out his soul unto death : and he was numbered with the transgressors: and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors ἢ (Isa. liii. 12). “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people : but because the Lord loved you” (Deut. vii. 7, 8). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 135 ‘*‘ Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit [consequently 1] there is no guile” [the inner cleansing of the heart, as the fruit and evidence of the remission of sin] (Ps. Xxxii. 1, 2). If St. Paul’s interpretation of this passage, as applied (Rom. iv.) to “Abraham the father of us all” is correct, then the non-imputing of sin, and the imputation of righteousness by faith, are convertible terms. But as we know of norichteousness that saves but the righteousness of Christ, we must conclude, notwithstanding all that Dean Alford and others have written to the contrary, that the saving Person and Work of the Coming Saviour was apprehended by Abraham, as well as by David, the writer of the Psalm. To speak of the implicit trust of Abraham, or the patriarchs, in God’s word, without the realisation of the ὁ ’Ezyéwevos, as the ground of their justification or righteousness, is clearly to invent a righteousness out- side the Covenant of Redemption. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. ... And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. xxxvi. 25-28). “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zech. xiii. 1). New ΤΈΒΤΑΜΕΝΤ. * Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Heb. ii. 17). “But Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come . . . by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 1x. 11, 12). ‘‘ Evenas the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. xx. 28). “1 am the Good Shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep... . And I lay down my life for the sheep” (John ἘΠ ΎΤ, 15), Christ endured the Curse of the Law, as a Substitute for His People. Oup TESTAMENT. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Heb. hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on him] (Isa. liii. 5, 6). ‘Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to 136 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and pro- phecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and under- stand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks. .. . And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself” (Dan. ix. 24-26). New TESTAMENT. ‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the (Old Testament) Scriptures ” (1 Cor. xv. 3). “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 111. 13). ‘‘ Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. v. 7). Christs Righteousness is the Plea of His People. Op TESTAMENT. “The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake; he will magnify the law, and make it honourable” (Isa. xlii. 21). “ Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength” (Isa. xlv. 24). ‘‘I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels” (Isa. lxi. 10). ‘In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness ” (Jer. xxiii. 6). New TESTAMENT. “ As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. . . . That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. ν. 19, 21). “ But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written (Jer. ix. 23, 24), He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Cor. i. 30, 31). ““ For he hath made him to. be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21). Faith is the Instrument by which we lay hold of the Salvation purchased by Christ. Op TESTAMENT. “And he (Abraham) believed in the Lord ; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. xv. 6). ‘* For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job xix. 25-27). “Ἰοὺ him take hold of my strength, that he may make EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 137 peace with me; and he shall make peace with me” (Isa. xxvii. 5). ‘‘Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste ” (Isa. xxviii. 16). New TESTAMENT. “ He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John iii. 36). “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of your- selves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. ii. 8). “Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. xii. 2). ‘‘ Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Pet. 1. 5). Good works therefore are excluded as the Ground of the Sinner’s Justification. Oup TESTAMENT. “T, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isa. xliii. 25). “1 have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee” (Isa. xliv. 22). ‘In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory ” (Isa. xlv. 25). “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied ; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. li. 11). ‘‘ And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me” (Jer. xxxili. 8). ‘‘ For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. ΧΧΧΙ. 34). New ΤΕΈΒΤΑΜΕΝΤ. “ Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses” (Acts xiii. 38, 39). ‘Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission ao sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. There- fore we conclude, that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. iii. 24-30). ‘‘ But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith” (Hab. ii. 4). Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. . . . Where- fore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. iii. 11, 21, 24). ‘For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are 138 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them (Jer. 31, 33—He further says, ver. 34), And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now, where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Heb. x. 14-18). Many other quotations might be adduced in proof of the spiritual identity of the two Dispensations, and other arguments advanced ; but enough perhaps has been said to show the Oneness of the Mediator- ship of each. We would only add two statements. First, not only was the Pro- phetic Function the corrector of abuses, and the avenger of the Law, but it actually grew out of it, “a different thing from it, yet not foreign to it—diverse, not contrary” (Tertullian)—the natural and necessary link between Judaism and Christianity. Second. Some theologians are accustomed to speak of the Patriarchal economy in its comparative liberty, and the Mosaic economy in its commandment, as designed by God to prove man’s inability to save himself. We would have higher views of God than to indorse such teaching. We dare not say that our loving Father thus experimented with generation after generation of His children, We believe the true state of the case to be, that each economy was the best fitted for its age—that the freedom of the one, and the tutelage of the other, were graciously adopted for purposes of good to each people, as well as wisely adapted to the circumstances and exigencies of each period. And only thus, by taking this higher ground, may we attempt to ‘vindicate the ways of God to man.” Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises | (1.) Bishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, com- mits himself to the strange hypothesis, that the Divine authority of the Pentateuch rests, for one of its main arguments, upon the ground- less if not irreverent assumption, that the Hebrew Lawgiver studiously concealed the knowledge of a future state from the Israelites. But, first, it is not the province of national legislation to propose future rewards and punishments. Second. The whole essence of the Jewish theocracy connected the present with the future, in God. It was a politico-religious institu- tion, with the Divine King for its centre and head, drawing man into close communion with God here, and therefore infallibly impressing upon the devout Israelite the sense and the bliss of eternal happiness with God hereafter. And this indisputable tendency and aim of the Theocracy will be abundantly manifest if we reflect upon the intimate relationship subsisting between the Divine Being and His people therein. Jehovah was not only their Creator, and therefore the director of their conscience ; their God, and they His peculiar people ; but He was also their Royal Sovereign, and Fountain of their civil life. The Palace of the Eternal One, the Tabernacle; His Presence, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 139 the Shechinah; and the Oracle, His audible living Voice, enacting and promulgating all their laws, ordering and guiding all the conditions of their being. It was impossible to be a Jew under the Theocracy, and not live in the atmosphere of a world to come. Third. The doctrine of a future state was one of the prominent features of the theology of Egypt, and therefore it is absurd—a plain historical blunder to speak of Moses concealing from the Israelites a doctrine with which they must have been so recently and familiarly acquainted. (2.) We are thus in some measure prepared for the broader question, whether the doctrine of a future state is revealed in the Old Testa- ment. Did the old Fathers look only for transitory Promises ? (a.) Innumerable pages have been written by all classes of theo- logians to show that the faith of a future life had but a dim and fitful, if any, existence till the New Testament times. It is even contended that the inferential argument used by our Saviour against the Sadducees was not only ‘‘the most cogent text in the Law” (sie —why this playing into the hands of adversaries, by minimising the defences?) He could produce; but that “it must be deemed pro- bable that the Sadducees, as they did not acknowledge the divine authority of Christ, denied even the logical validity of the inference, and argued that the expression that Jehovah was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, did not necessarily mean more than that Jehovah had been the God of those patriarchs while they lived on earth, without conveying a suggestion, one way or another, as to whether they were or were not still living elsewhere ” (Hon. Edward T. B. Twisleton, Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Article Sadducees). But in all such arguments there is, if we mistake not, a narrowness of view and survey which cramps the truth. In the one we have quoted, there is in addition a total misapprehension of the facts of the case. Good pleading certainly it might have been for the Sadducees, had they been able to appreciate it, or on any historic basis to advance it. Fitiable pleading, we must say, for Christ and His Bible. Granted, but only for argument’s sake, that the text quoted by our Saviour is the most cogent in the Law, it is not the most cogent in the Old Testament Scriptures; and there is no proof, even as acknow- ledged by the writer, and notwithstanding the opinion of Bishop Wordsworth, following Jerome, to the contrary, that the Sadducees rejected any portion of the Old Testament however highly with other Jews they may have naturally or justly esteemed the Pentateuch. And if we carefully read St. Luke with the other synoptic Gospels, the argument of our Saviour is an open challenge to other Scripture, though based on the Books of Moses, which His opponents had quoted—an argumentum ad ignorantiam, as wells as an argu- mentum ad hominem. ‘Ye do err, not knowing the whole Scripture (τὰς y2aa%s—Matthew and Mark), and even Moses (καὶ Mwvo%;—Luke) confutes you.” While, again, to write, ‘it must be deemed pro- bable that the Sadducees denied even the logical validity of the in- 140 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. ference,” is most clearly and unquestionably against the evidence ; for we read that “the Sadducees were put to silence!” And not only this, but so completely did our Lord’s answer to the Sadducees, and then immediately to the Pharisees, confound and overcome both, that, as we are told, after that there was an end to “questioning” the Saviour. But the fact is, that all these loose arguments and conclusions, with reference to the doctrine of a future life as contained in the Old Testament, would seem to be based in great measure on a weak rendering or misapprehension of certain passages in the New Testa- ment, and especially of words of St. Paul. Thus in 2 Tim. i. 10, we have an oft-quoted passage, as it runs in the Authorised Version, “Jesus Christ hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel ;” and which is accordingly made to convey the sense, that Christ first revealed the Resurrection. But the “life” here referred to is clearly the new life which the saints ever possessed in God; “the immortality,” its incorruptibility (a#Zéagoia); and the “brought to light,” certainly not the discovery of these glorious truths, but the additional and re-assuring light thrown upon them by the historic manifestation of Christ, and the Economy of His Spirit. (b.) Our contention then is, startling as it may appear to theologians who have of late been led away, however unconsciously, by Neologic schools, that the doctrine of a future life was axiomatical with the old Fathers, just as the existence or being of God was “axiomatical ;” and therefore the Holy Spirit, in the Old Testament, essays no elaborate proof of the one more than the other. What is brought out on either side is incidental. Furthermore, since these two truths —the existence of God and a future life—had a prominent and fixed place in almost all the theologies of the world, it would have stultified the very nature of a communication from God to prove them. The Bible we must remember is a Revelation and a Witness—two distinct features, which we are liable to confound; and which our so-called systems of theology do less or more confound. The Bible may witness to, but does not in any way assume to reveal, what is already known. It reveals the Origin of Evil (transgression in man, pride in Satan), Christ, and a Triune God. It witnesses to the Being of God, and a Life to Come. Its Divine Author, if we may put the phrase without profanity, never troubles Himself unnecessarily. If in the New Testament, the Witness of a Resurrection is liable to be mistaken for a Revelation, and has been very widely mistaken, it is only because the Witness becomes so strong. And there was need for this. Heresy had sprung up and denied it. And indeed the very same may be affirmed of the other doctrine of general, if not universal, knowledge—the existence of a God. The truth is, the enemy, under guise of philosophy and boast of wisdom, had begun to “come in like a flood,” and “the Spirit of the Lord lifted up a standard” of pronounced and guiding testimony “ against him.” (c.) What then is the Evidence of the Old Testament to a Future State? The question is one fora volume; but we must examine a EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 141 few of the more salient passages. As ἃ preliminary observation, how- ever, and an important confirmation of our argument that the whole evidence is incidental, we may remark that in the account of the creation of man there is no explicit statement, nor even any implied assertion whatever of his immortahty—just the place where most of all, if the demonstration had not been wholly superfluous, we should have expected to find it. The account runs: “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness. . . . And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living animal” (Gen. i. 26; 11. 7). Here we have the Organic Life (T'MW5}—the “living creature,” as Gen. 1. 24, &c.,—and not as our Authorised Version, “living soul”); “in the image and likeness of God”—righteousness and holiness, with knowledge, wisdom, and power. JBut that is all. The existence of an immaterial and immortal spirit, however pre- supposed, forms no part of the Revelation. “πα Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. v. 24). The very brevity of the account shows that it was fully understood at the time—and understood too, all along, for there is no subsequent attempt to expand or elucidate it, as the “Jewish” author of the Epistle to the Hebrews understood it, of translation to heaven. In other words, the old Fathers must have lived in the full familiar conviction of a life hereafter ; and further, so far from looking only for transitory promises, must have felt that eternal life with God gloriously com- pensated for Enoch’s comparatively short life on earth. Here then, in the first age of mankind, we have an historic witness not only to the possibility of a resurrection of the body, but also to the certainty of a true human existence in heaven. “Then Abraham died, and was gathered to his people” (Gen. xxv. 8). Abraham was buried in the cave of Machpelah (ver. 9); but his fathers in Chaldea and Mesopotamia. The expression therefore can only mean that his soul passed into the invisible world to join the congenial society of the blessed. See parallels in Job xxvii. 19g— “The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered ;” Ps. xxvi. 9—‘ Gather not my soul with sinners ;” and Isa. xlix. 5—‘‘ Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.” “For I will go down unto Sheol unto my son mourning” (Gen. XxXvil. 35). It could not be Joseph’s grave that Jacob meant, for he believed that “an evil beast had devoured him” (ver. 33). Then in Num. xvi. 30, we read that Korah, Dathan, and Abiram “ went down alive unto Sheol.” And thus in like manner, Sheol or Hades, in its two “compartments,” is witnessed to in the language of Inspira- tion down through the Old Testament; and endorsed by the New. Proof in itself sufficient that the doctrine of a life beyond the grave was a doctrine of the witness of God from the outset in the Jewish Church. See also under Article III. “1 have waited for thy salvation, O Lord” (Gen. xlix. 18). Jacob could not have meant the coming of the Shiloh, for that glad event he 12 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES, declares was to transpire “in the last days.” The expression there- fore could have no other meaning but the obvious one—the salvation of his soul. “JT am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. iii. 6). Our Saviour’s comment on this passage brings out in a few words its meaning: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto Him.” “No one is dead to Him, or in His sight” (Wordsworth). ‘ Meyer, in reply to Strauss and Hase, finely says, ‘Our Lord here testifies of the conscious intent of God in speaking the words. God uttered them, He tells us, to Moses, in the consciousness of the still enduring existence of his peculiar relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ The groundwork of His argument seems to me to be this:—the words ‘I am thy God’ imply a covenant ; there is another side to them: ‘Thou art Mine’ follows upon ‘I am Thine.’ When God therefore declares that He ts the God οὖ Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He declares ther continuance, as the other parties in this covenant. It is an assertion which could not be made of an annihilated being of the past. And notice also (with Bengel), that Abraham’s (&c.) body, having had upon it the seal of the covenant, is includedin this. Stier (after Lavater) remarks that this is a weighty testimony against the so-called ‘sleep of the soul,’ in the intermediate state. . . . Thus the burden of the Law, ‘I am tHE Lorp ΤΗΥ Gop,’ contains in it the seed of immortality and the hope of the resurrection ” (Alford, Greek Testament 7m loco). We would only add, that the pregnant reasoning here of our Saviour, ‘‘ For all live to Him,” con- tains an irrefragable argument against the lately revived theory of the Annihilation of the wicked. The gloss, all the Patriarchs live to Him, is as weak as to interpret the words of the Apostle, “For in him we live and move and have our being,” of believers only. “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his” (Numb. xxiii. 10). This testimony in the mouth of Balaam, the prophet-king from Mesopotamia, is of great value, for it is a Scriptural proof that the belief in a blessed immortality awaiting the just, was held (also) by the heathen. “ And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2 Kings ii. 11). This public event, and we may so call it, inasmuch us it was witnessed by the sons of the prophets who “stood in sight” (2 Kings ii. 7—Heb.), and Elisha, and seems to have been well known at the time by the idolaters at Bethel (2 Kings ii. 23), transfused itself into the whole national mind down even to the Galilean peasant for centuries.” “Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom Τ shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another ; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job xix. 23-27). Not- withstanding all the criticism that has been brought to bear on the translation of this passage, we may safely say that the Authorised EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 143 Version here is correct. Nothing but personal identity in his flesh on the part of Job, and a personal manifestation on the part of his Redeeming God, at the latter day upon the earth, and after that worms shall have destroyed the present body of the outward man, can fully or fairly satisfy this declaration of Job’s conviction. And to add to the value of the testimony is the antiquity of the Book. For whether Moses was the author or not, there is little reason to doubt, from its language, its grand yet bold abrupt archaic and lapidary style, and from the simplicity of its subject, the external evidences of God’s providence, that it is one of the oldest, if not indeed the oldest Book of the Canon. “‘T have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One [better thy Beloved—* The word 12M never means ‘holy,’” Perowne] to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; fulness of joy in thy presence, pleasures at thy right hand for evermore” (Ps. xvi. 8-11). We have St. Peter’s testimony that this was a conscious prediction on the part of David of a resurrection—the Resurrection of Christ (Acts ii. 30, 51---προφήτης---εἰδὼς-- προϊδών). But the patriarch’s foresight of the Messiah was just that which gave gladness to his heart, rapture to his soul, yea and hope also to his flesh, for in the Life and Resurrection alone of his Son and Lord could he see his own blessed immortality. “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead” (Isa. xxvi. 19). Strong resurrection imagery; which must have been familiar to and well understood by those among whom the prophet exercised his ministry. “|, . Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord” (Ezek. xxxvii, 1-14.) The Resurrection of Dry Bones, so vividly and minutely traced in the fourteen verses of this solemn grand glorious prediction, could only have cheered a people well versed in the faith of the resurrection. “And at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many 144 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. xii. 1-3). Clear and distinct, though brief, is this final Old Testament trumpet sound of the general Resurrection and last Judgment, as any in the New Testament itself. Now if to all this abundant testimony we may add that of the inspired author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we may safely conclude of the saints of the Old Testament: ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek aftera home . . a better home, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God : for he hath prepared for them a city.” The Old Fathers looked beyond ‘‘transitory promises,” and God for that eye of faith hath given them the permanent and eternal “city which hath the founda- tions (τοὺς θεμελίους), whose Architect and Master-builder is God.” (d.) Finally; we are not here concerned with what has been too frequently pointed at as the doubts and fears par signe on mépris of the “Old Fathers.” The same doubts and fears—we appeal to the consciences of our readers — exist, in our own more desponding moments, under the Gospel. Faith, our hearts know full well, hath its phases. Now we feel with the Psalmist that “When we awake we shall be satisfied with thy lkeness;” and anon we ask, Who shall praise thee in the grave? Or with holy Job “we know that our Redeemer liveth ;” and yet withal at evening time we often trill the plaintive dirge, “So man lieth down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” To preach immortality is one thing: to live immortals is another. Dogma and Faith, whether under the Old Dispensation or the New, are not parallels. 2. How far the Mosaic Law is Binding. Although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Cere- monies and Rites, do not bind, &c. (to the end of the Article)] We need only have recourse to a few very simple and obvious first principles of theology and of reason to see the truth of this pro- position. Holiness, and the will of God, are synonymous terms. What therefore God wills under any dispensation, must be conducive to holiness, however economical and temporary may be the means. Thus even in the Christian dispensation, we have “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace ”—the one economical and temporary, the other conducive to “ the will of God, even our sancti- fication.” A ceremony therefore in the very nature of it is for a time and transitional That time may be a day, or an age; but it passes sooner or later away. Baptism is once. The Sacrament of the Supper may be once, or often repeated ; but neither our modal admin- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 145 istration nor participation of it can possibly and fully obtain even in the next and millennial development of the ‘“ Father’s kingdom.” While the husk therefore of the Law given of God by Moses was doomed necessarily to perish, the kernel as necessarily endureth for ever. The holiness of God impressed on the Law was a part or reflex of Himself, and consequently unchangeable; but its economical surroundings, like Baptism and the Supper, had only an economical value. They were not part of God’s essential nature. Again we are to remember, that the holiness of the Law, founded in the holiness of God, existed, relatively to man, antecedently to any Divine precept, being originally inscribed on the heart of man ; and therefore, as the law of nature, is of immutable obligation. Thus then we have only to distinguish between what is positive and what is natural in God’s revealed laws to see what is alterable and changeable by God, and what of necessity abideth for ever. To take for example the fourth commandment, its naturally moral element, founded in the nature of God, originally written on the heart of our first parents, and still in some measure engraven on the minds of men, even where no written law exists, is that it appoints God to be worshipped ; but its positively moral element, founded only in the will of God, and not universally engrained in man’s nature, is that it enjoins that worship on a particular day—the seventh, or Sabbath-day. And the same remarks apply to the Judicial Law, in its distinctive Jewish character. Its Sabbatical Year; its Jubilee and great libera- tion of service and of lands; its Cities of Refuge ; and its tri-yearly Male Feasts at Jerusalem, have all passed away and are abrogated: but the Law of God and of nature which underlay the whole—love to and unity with Man as flowing from love to and unity with God—is of perpetual force. ‘‘ Ye shall not therefore oppress one another ; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God” (Lev. xxv. 17). Besides, the whole Civil Polity of the Jews, whether in its embodi- ments of the patriarchal law, or in its new and circumstantial growths, was founded on a theocratic basis, and adapted to the past condition of an isolated people. And although we are free to hold that much of it adumbrated the Laws of Persons of Things in the coming Kingdom of Christ, yet we are to remember that our Lord’s express declaration for the present is, “ My kingdom is not of this world ;” and that St. Paul, in conformity with that declaration, teaches us in the meantime : “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no [established] power but of God: the powers that be are ordained (or ordered with reference to a definite end—rerayuévor) of God” (Rom. xiii, 1). SormpruraL Proor. (1.) Of the Abrogation of the Ceremonial Law. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day K 146 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Jer. xxxi. 31, 32). ‘* And the people of the Prince that shall come (or, Messiah’s future people) shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. . . . And he shall confirm the (or, a) covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate (or, and upon the battlements shall be the idols of the desolator), even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate (or, upon the desolator) ” (Dan. ix. 26, 27). We have included the marginal readings, well worthy of consideration, of this marvellous passage, written some five centuries and a half before Christ. But however translated, it clearly foretells the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the cessation of the sacrifice and oblation, which could alone be lawfully offered there ; and, consequently, the abolition of the whole Ceremonial Law. It is hardly necessary to adduce passages from the New Testament, inasmuch as all the typical Ceremonies of the Law had their full accomplishment in the death and satisfaction of the Great Antitype ; and no less than three of the most closely reasoned Epistles— Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews—have, for their leading subject, Justification by Faith, without the Law. But a few of the more pointed texts are subjoined. It is most important however to observe, that at the First Christian Council, held at Jerusalem probably a.D. 50, it was decided by the Apostles and Elders and Brethren, guided by and acting under the immediate and express influence of God (“it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us”), that the Gentile converts should be wholly unburdened by the Rites and Ceremonies of the Mosaic Law. (Acts xv.) ‘Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven ? (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) [In other words, Let not the man who sighs for deliverance from his own sinfulness suppose that the accomplishment of some impossible task is required of him in order to enjoy the blessings of the Gospel. Let him not think that the per- sonal presence of the Messiah is necessary to ensure his salvation. Christ needs not to be brought down from heaven, or up from the abyss, to impart to him forgiveness and holiness. Our Christian message contains no impossibilities. ‘‘ We tell the sinner that Christ’s word is near to him: so near, that he may speak of it with his mouth and meditate on it with his heart... . Is there anything above human power in such a confession and in such a belief? Surely not. It is graciously adapted to the necessity of the very weakest and most sinful of God’s creatures.” —Ewbank, Comm. Ep. Rom.] But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart : EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 147 that is, the word of faith which we preach ; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. ... For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. x.). “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Seythian (‘barbaris barbariores’), bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. iii. 11). “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision ; but Faith which worketh by Love” (Gal. v. 1-6). ‘ Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross... . Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy- day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days ( ‘7.e., yearly, monthly, or weekly celebrations,’ Alford), which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ” (Col. ii, 14, 16, 17). “For he is our peace, who hath made both (Jew and Gentile) one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us (the whole legal system and condemnatory law of the Mosaic economy) ; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances ; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in (His) one (mystical) body (the Church) by the cross, having slain the enmity (between God and man, with its resultant of separation between Jew and Gentile) thereby” (Eph. ii. 14-16). ‘‘ For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. . . Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and ear- nal ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation ” (Heb. vil. 12; ix. 10). ‘* Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added (to the promise, propedentically) because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made... Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by Faith” (Gal. 111. 19, 24). ‘‘ Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by Faith without the deeds of the Law” (Rom. iii. 28). (2.) Of the Perpetual Obligation of the Moral Law. (a.) Being a copy of the will of the all-perfect and righteous God, and adapted to and based on the nature of man, it is unchangeable. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is 148 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord (another name for Law) is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether ” (Ps. xix. 7-9). (6.) Fulfilled by Christ, both in spirit and letter, in the room and stead of His people. **The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake: he will magnify the law, and make it (or, him). honourable” (Isa. xlii. 21). “ And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him” (Matt. iil. 15). ‘‘Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matt. v. 17). “ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. . . . That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the pro- mise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. v. 13, 14). ‘ Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of right- eousness quietness and assurance for ever” (Isa. xxxii. 15-17). See also Isa. xliv. 3; Jer. xxxi. 33, ἄς. “There is therefore now no con- demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending hisown Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit ” (Rom. viii. 1-5). (c.) Summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments, which are again reduced by our Lord to Love to God and Love to Man. “ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. xxii. 37-40). (d.) Yet consists moreover in a corresponding quality of Divine teaching imprinted less or more distinctly on the heart of mankind. “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are the law (God’s law) unto themselves ; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Rom. il. 14, 15). (e.) A rule of duty and obedience to believers, but not a covenant of works. ‘His delight is in the law of the Lord: and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Ps. i. 2). “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. vii. 22). “Ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. vi. 14). ‘Being not without law to God, but under law to Christ” (1 Cor. ix. 21). ( 149 ) ARTICLE VIII. HISTORY, Of the Three Creeds.—The three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’s Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. De Tribus Symbolis.—Symbola tria, Niceenum, Athanasii, et quod vulgo Apostolorum appellatur, omnino recipienda sunt, et crendenda, nam firmissinis Scripturarum testimoniis probari possunt. (1.) The sixth Article being the enunciation of the Rule of Faith, we may take the seventh as a corollary—that the two parts of that Rule are not contrary the one to the other, with a necessary note touching the Ceremonial and the Moral Law; while our present Article must be viewed as a supplement, to the effect that the Creeds are to be received, not merely because they are the voice of the Church, but inasmuch as they derive their authority from the Bible. The Holy Scriptures therefore are the gauge of faith, independent of the authority of the Church; by which the Church is to measure all doctrine : and so in the exercise of a free and impartial judgment, accept or reject the decisions of all Councils. The truly Protestant character moreover of this eighth Article will be further apparent, if we remember that the Ten Articles of Henry VIII.—the result of a compromise between the Romish and the Reforming party—included the Creeds with Scripture as the Rule of Faith. (2.) The word Creed (Credo, I believe) or Belief, means simply a definite summary of the more important parts of our religion, as deduced from the Bible. In the early Church the Creed was described by a variety of names, Among the Greeks— ἡ πίστις, ὁ κάνων τῆς ἀληθείας, ὁ πίστεως ἀρχαίας κάνων, τὸ κήρυγμα σὺ αποστολικὸν, ἡ εὐαγγελικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ παράδοσις, τὸ μάθημα, ἡ γεαφή, τὸ σύμβολον. Among the Latins— Fides, regula fidei, fides apostolica, fidei clavis, tessera fidei unanimis, signaculum cordis, sacramentum fidei, symbolum. But the name which, first mentioned by Cyprian, became commonest, = ee ee τ. ς“- τ ςΦςὦὃ} 130 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. was Symbol (σύμβολον, Symbolum). A designation which has given rise to various conjectures, and been explained in one or other of the following senses :— 1. A Collation, because each of the Apostles contributed one Article to the Creed. ‘*Conferendo in unum quod sentiebat unusynisque ἢ (Rufiinus). But the tradition only dates from the 4th century. 2. Like the Tessera Militaris of the Roman soldiers—the square tablet on which the watchword was written—a sign or watchword by which Christians were distinguished. ‘A symbol is, as much as to say, a sign, mark, privy token, or watchword, whereby the soldiers of the same camp are known from their enemies” (Catechism of Edward VI.). The most probable origin of the appellation, 3. The Sacramentum, or military oath of allegiance by which the Roman troops were bound to their general. ‘‘Symbolum cordis signaculum, et nostra milita sacramentum” (Ambrose). A deeply significant and spiritual explanation, but not ranking perhaps in historic value with the foregoing. 4. The Password of the initiated into the ancient heathen mysteries. A far-fetched and seemingly unnatural suggestion. 5. An Epitome of Christian doctrine. Which rather describes the Symbol, than interprets the word. (3.) Creeds are necessary as a bond of union and as a safeguard against error. It would seem a self-evident proposition that the con- tinuity and well-being of any, and especially an antagonistic, society must depend in great measure upon a common and tangible basis of opinion, And it is at the same time a matter of historic evidence, that creeds originated in the antagonism of Christianity, and were expanded part passu with the development of heresy. And yet notwithstand- ing there exists at the present day a widespread prejudice against the principle of dogma—a rebound from the safe and time-honoured lines of the definite, to the lawless and dangerous region of the indefinite. Is not the key, that Faith is less on the earth? (Luke xviii. 8.) (4.) Dogma, unhappily, thanks to the Church of Rome, has acquired in our language a somewhat repulsive sense ; but perhaps if we could strip it of the idea of undue assumption, and associate it simply with that of definite belief, the word might still pass not unprofitable muster. If we follow the exact idea of the Greek primitive (δοκεῖν = videri), dogma would express the subjective estimate which we form of things without any approach to the alien notion of overbearing or self-asser- tion. Nor indeed can the word well exceed in the Christian Church the meaning we usually attach to “decree” or “judgment.” Hence our Authorised Version reads, Acts xv. 28, ‘It seemed good (ἔδοξε) to the Holy Ghost, and to us;” and at ch. xvi. 4, well translates the derivative word for those decisions arrived at in the First Christian Council, as “decrees” (δόγματα). (5.) To the New Testament and Baptism we must look for the Origin of Creeds. (a.) “Go ye therefore, and teach (wa@yrevoare—make Disciples or EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. ΧΕΙ Christians of) all nations, baptizing them for (εἰς) the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20). With all due deference to Dean Alford, and Bishop Words- worth who substantially agrees with him, we would just reverse his comment on this passage, that ‘the μαθητεύειν consists of two parts— the initiatory, admissory rite, and the subsequent teaching.” This mode of interpretation may be convenient to cover the present practice of the Church; but infant baptism does not require such straining of words and history. There is no evidence whatever in the New Testament—except by inference, the value or strength of which we would not in any way dispute—but that they were adults who were baptized. And there is no evidence in all history, that instruction, as preparatory to a Creed, has not preceded baptism. And indeed it is upon this very principle that the Church ever demands, in the case of infants, sponsorial vows and confessions. And therefore the plain argument we build upon this text is, that our Lord’s language in the institution of baptism implies a baptismal profession—the first origin of and only legitimate authority for Creeds; and had respect unto discipleship, as the rule, not, as Alford alleges, “from baptism to instruction,” but from instruction to baptism. ‘‘ Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” may be extended, and rightly does extend, to the continued catechetical office of the Church among the baptized; but extension supposes previous existence, and has a retrospective, as well as a prospective side. Granted, as we willingly do, that infants were baptized in the Apos- tolic Church, our clear contention is, that they were not baptized until their parents or representatives had believed, or accepted Chris- tianity—in other words, had professed a Creed; and thus brought their households and children into a federal covenant with the Lord. The Church of Rome may and does busy herself to snatch the children of ‘‘heretics” and heathens to baptism, but the practice has no warrant or precedent in Scripture or in the records of the Churches of Christ. And these views we shall find fully borne out as we proceed. (6.) Baptism and the Creed in the Acts. Christian Baptism begins properly in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, after the Ascension of our Lord; and here we are, therefore, to look for the first historic traces of a Creed. Previous to the formal institution of baptism by Christ, it is true we find His disciples baptizing; but what formula was used by them, or what expression of faith they required on the part of the baptized, we are not informed, but may safely conclude that coaverts were baptized into the Name and Faith of Jesus as the Messiah. Now the first baptism recorded in the Acts was that on the day of Pentecost, by St. Peter; and we have a clear enough account of the manner of its administration from the Apostle’s exhortation : ‘‘ Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are 12 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts ii. 38, 39). Here the rendering should unquestionably be “On the Name of Jesus Christ” (ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι) ; the preposition ἐπὶ, elsewhere ἐν, specifying the ground on which baptism rests—the Confession of His Name; just as the preposition εἰς (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν) specifies the purpose for which baptism was administered—a participation in the blessings which that Name implies—‘‘the remission of sins.” In other words, the first Christian Baptism was administered after a Creedal Confession (by “every one” of the “three thousand” pro- bably en masse) of Christ as the Messiah and Saviour. Instruction, Confession, Baptism. And this is the character of all the other baptisms recorded in the Book, so far as any detail is given. (c.) The Creed in the Epistles—in the probable order of their publi- cation. Tue EpistLE To THE RoMANs, A.D. 57 OR 58. τύπον diday7s—‘that form of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom. vi. 17). κατὰ τὴν Kvarhoyiay τῆς siorews—‘according to the proportion of faith” (lit. the analogy of the faith) (Rom. xii. 6). τὴν διδαχὴν---““ἴΠ6 doctrine which ye have learned” (Rom. xvi. 17). Without entering into the various glosses with which certain schools have read these allusions, we think we may safely say, that their fair and unbiassed interpretation points to some definite formulary of belief already well known in the Christian Church, even at Rome, and within 27 years from the foundation of that Church. And that this was a Baptismal Symbol would appear evident from the careful wording of the Apostle, “ the doctrine which ye learned” (ἐμάθετε, Aorist, one act); and from the fact that the first quotation is found in close connection with a solemn passage upon baptism “ for Jesus Christ and His death.” Tue EPIsTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS, A.D. 62 OR 63. τῷ αὐτῷ xavd—‘let us walk by the same rule” (Phil. iii. 14). κανόνι is omitted by some MSS.; but if we follow the analogy of Gal. vi. 16, “‘as many as walk according to this rule” (τῷ κανόνι τούτῳ), it is evidently the proper word to supply. And this key- word of both passages can only be taken from a baptismal rule or Canon of Faith, history knowing of no other. Tue Epistle To THE HEBREWS, A.D. 63 OR 64. τὰ στοιχεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς τῶν λογίων τοῦ bcov— the first principles of the oracles of God” (Heb. v. 12). And what some of these were, we are told in the beginning of the next chapter :— τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ )ιόγον----“ the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ” (lit. the Word of the Beginning [of the Doctrine] of Christ), Or, 6:vAs0v— the Foundation ” of Christianity. ““ Wherefore leay- ing the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfec- tion ; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 153 and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judg- ment” (Heb. vi. τ, 2). σὴν ὁμολογίαν τῆς ¢Axidoc—“ the profession of our faith” (Heb. x. 23). That the Creedal Confession of Baptism is here meant, is indubitable from the context: ‘‘ Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water (λελουμένοι τὸ σῶμα ὕδατι καθαρῷ---γοΥ] 4 16 Christian baptism, and so not to be spiritual- ised away, with Calvin, Owen, and others). Let us hold fast the pro- fession of our faith without wavering.” Tue Two EpistLeEs To TrmorHy, a.D. 64 OR 65, AND 65 oR 66, RESPECTIVELY. τὴν παραθήκην --- “the deposit.” “Ὁ Timothy, keep in safety (pvaaEov—guard) that which is committed to thy trust [the deposit], avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith ” (1 Tim. vi. 20, 21). Here Timothy is solemnly reminded of the Creed as that which would most effectually guard him against the errors of false teachers. ὑποτύπωσιν ὑγιαινόντων λόγων---τὴν καλὴν παραθήκην.--““ ἴΠ6 form of sound words ”—* that good deposit.” ‘Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard (ἤκουσας, heardest, Aorist) of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good deposit guard, by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us” (2 Tim. 1. 13, 14). Here the “good deposit” is in direct parallelism with ‘‘the form of sound words ”—the Baptismal Creedal Confession. REsuvLt. From all this we gather :— 1. That the Formula of Baptism ran: “1 baptize thee for the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 2. That Instruction preceded Baptism. 3. That fully within 35 years after the Ascension, there existed some such well-known Symbol, as the following— APosToLic CREED. I renounce my own righteousness, and submit to the righteousness of God, in faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. [“ Repentance from dead works, and faith toward God.”} I accordingly renounce the doctrine of Jewish washings, and imposition of hands as practised under the Law. {[‘ The doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands.” { believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, and in Eternal Judg- ment. (d.) We have omitted, as will be noticed, from the above inquiry, two passages which are frequently set down as traces of a Creed :— 1 Cor. xv. 3-8: ‘‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which 154 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once ; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James ; then of all the Apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” 1 Tim. iii. 16: “ And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness : God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” In the first of these passages we can see little more than a detail of the heads of St. Paul’s preaching at Corinth, as it centred in the Resurrection of Christ—far too lengthened and minute to form a portion of any Creed in the Apostolic Church. In the second, we have it is true a remarkable parallelism and concinnity (the latter very beautiful in the Greek, all the verbs ending in -θη, &c.); but the sentences, we think, are too rhetorical, and perhaps too majestic for a Confession ; and their apparent abruptness and insulation from the context, urged by some commentators, would seem to be in reality only an example among others of impassioned sequence and expansion of thought on the part of the Apostle. Thus we have a similar instance in Rom. viii. 38, 39: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (6.) The Creed in the Post-Apostolic Church. Τὸ is essential here to remark that no one certain form of a Creed would seem to have been prescribed by Christ and His, Apostles for adoption by the Church at large. Hence we find the early churches in different parts of the world framing their own creeds as well as their own liturgies; which they would evidently be at liberty to do, so long as they kept to the analogy of the faith. It is interesting therefore to exhibit those early creeds, so far as they are traceable ; and necessary also in order intelligibly to understand the basis and cast of the creeds of our Article. But as the earliest of these ancient creeds only dates from the end of the second century, there is thus left a break in the History of the Creed, which we cannot sufficiently explain. That a Creed existed in the Apostolic Church before the historical books of the New Testament were written, is clear from the quotations already given ; and we have been able to approximate to something of its form. Wor is it to be supposed that the Church would remain till the days of Irenzus without some definite elaborations of that Creed. Still the fact remains, as is widely attested by the Fathers, down to the fifth century, that the Creed was, as a Tule, jealously guarded as a secret. ‘“ The Sacrament of Faith (sacramentum fidei) is not to be profaned ” (Cyprian, f 258). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 155 ‘Whatever you hear in the Creed may not be written” (Augustine, + 430). ‘‘Let the mind hold and the memory guard this pledge of hope, this decree of salvation, this symbol of life, this safeguard of faith, lest vile paper depreciate the precious gift of the Divinity, lest black ink obscure the mystery of light, lest an unworthy and profane hearer hold the secret of God” (Peter Chrysologus, ἡ 456). The origin of this secrecy has been attributed by some to the language of St. Paul, “ Keep in safety that which is committed to thy trust,’ &c. But we are inclined to think that such words rather indicate a secret guardian- ship already in existence than created it. And if so, the question is only rendered more intricate and obscure. Again it has been alleged that the period between the close of the New Testament history and the appearance of the first dated Creed, was the age of Apologies, and that the battle of the Creeds had afterwards to be fought. There is much truth in this. But it does not help us to account for the “deposit” and secret guardianship of the Pauline Epistles—the age, as must be allowed, peculiarly and especially of doctrine. GAUL (AND ASIA MINOR). Tue Creep oF St. IRENmZUS, A.D. 180. Bishop of Lyons. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them. And in one Christ Jesus our Lord, the Son of God, who was born of a Virgin for our salvation: suffered under Pontius Pilate: rose from the dead: ascended into heaven: and who will come again in the glory of His Father to raise the dead, and for the consummation of all things. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, who preached through the prophets. In setting forth the above as the (probable) Creed of Ireneus, culled from his work against Heresies, we are sorry to differ from Dr. Lumby, who quotes this Father’s exposition of the Creed for the Creed itself. Actual early Creeds must ever have been short; nor can we suppose that Ireneus would so soon forget, or ignore, the secret guardianship of the Creed, as to give its formal and precise ipsissima verba. ven two centuries later, St. Augustine writes of his own treatise of the Creed : ‘The Dissertation is of such a form, that the combination of words which is given to catechumens to commit to memory does not occur,” NORTHERN AFRICA. Creep OF TERTULLIAN, BEFORE A.D. 200, Presbyter of Carthage. We believe in one God the Creator of the world, who made all things out of nothing, a 156 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. And in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary: crucified under Pontius Pilate: rose again the third day from the dead: taken into heaven: now sits at the right hand of the Father: and will come with glory to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Add— CrEED oF Sr. Cyprian, $258. Bishop of Carthage. I believe in God the Father. In Christ the Son. And in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the remission of sins and eternal life through the Holy Church. ROME. Creep oF NovaTIAN, A.D. 250. Presbyter. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things. And in Christ Jesus, our Lord God, the Son of God. And in the Holy Ghost. NORTHERN EGYPT. CREED OF ORIGEN, 1254. Master of the Catechetical School at Alexandria. We believe in one God, the Creator of all things: the God of the Old and New Testament. And in Jesus Christ, born of the Father before every creature: who though God became Incarnate of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost: He truly suffered and died: truly rose from the dead: and was taken up. And in the Holy Ghost, of honour and dignity with the Father and the Son. PONTUS. CREED OF GREGORY THAUMATURGUS, 270. Bishop of Neocesarea. T believe in one God the Father. And in one Lord, the only begotten Son of the Father, One of One, God of God. And in one Holy Ghost, perfect of perfect, Life of all living. Perfect Trinity undivided and uncreated, ever the same in glory, eternity, and power, unvarying and unchangeable. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 157 ANTIOCH. CrEED oF Lucran, THE Martyr, t311. Presbyter. We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things. And in one Lord Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, One of One: by whom all things were made: who was born of a Virgin according to the Scrip- tures, and became man: who suffered for us, and rose again the third day : and ascended into heaven: and sitteth on the right hand of the Father: and is coming again with glory and power to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete and Sanctifier of them that believe. Three persons, but agreeing in One. We have thus endeavoured to trace the Creeds of the leading ante- Nicene Churches, so far as we are able to glean them from the expositions and writings of men on the spot. Of course they are only to be taken as approximate Symbols. But we are not aware of overlooking any point of importance ; and we have carefully avoided adding anything. It may be objected that we have studied brevity too much. But brevity here is, we feel assured, just one of the best guides to historic truth, On reviewing these Creeds, we have the following main features. The true Western type is the briefest—little more than the words used by our Lord at the Institution of Baptism; while the Eastern type shows traces of conflict with philosophic subtleties. They all recognise the great central doctrine of the Trinity in Unity—more sharply defined at Alexandria, Neocesarea, and Antioch. Each article is couched in the exact words of Scripture, or what is readily deducible therefrom. And their similarity, amounting almost to sameness (except the self-evident expansions against Docetic and other like errors), and this without any Synodical authority whatever, argues a common Apostolic basis—the Rule of Faith “come down from the commencement of the Gospel.” As Irenzus says: “ For the Church though scattered throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, yet having received from the Apostles and their disciples that faith which is in One God the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth and the seas and all that is in them; and in one Christ Jesus the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation ; and in the Holy Ghost who preached through the prophets the Econo- mies and the Advents, and the birth [of Christ] of a Virgin, and His suffering, and His rising from the dead, and the ascension into heaven, in the flesh of our beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His coming again from heaven in the glory of the Father, for the consummation of all things, and to raise all flesh of the whole human race from the dead; that according to the good pleasure of the Father invisible, ς 158 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. every knee of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth may bow to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Saviour and King, and every tongue may confess to Him, and He may execute just judgment on all; that He may send into eternal fire the spiritual powers of wickedness, and the angels who have transgressed and become apostate, and the impious and unjust and lawless and blasphemous among men: but, graciously bestowing life on the just and holy who have both kept His commandments and continued in His love, some from the beginning and some from the time of their repentance, He may confer on them incorruption, and make them partakers of eternal glory. Having received this doctrine and this faith, as we said before, the Church though scattered through all the world carefully keeps it as though dwelling in one house ; and believers in ike manner as though she had but one heart and one soul; and in accord therewith she preaches and teaches and delivers as though she had but one mouth. For the languages of the world are dissimilar, but the power of the doctrine is one and the same, And in no otherwise have either the Churches established in Germany believed and delivered, nor those in Spain, nor among the Celts, nor in the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor those established in the middle of the world. But as the sun, God’s creature, is one and the same in all the world, so too the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men who wish to come to the full knowledge of the truth. And neither will he who is very powerful in language among those who preside over the Churches say other than this (for the disciple is not above his Master), nor will he who is weak in speech impair the doctrine. For as the faith is one and the same, neither he who is very able to speak of it adds thereto, nor does he who is less powerful diminish there- from ” (Contr. Her. i. 10).} (7.) The Three Creeds of our Article. THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED, a.p. 381, COMMONLY CALLED THe NicENE CREED (A.D. 325), as it stands in our Service Books. ‘I believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, be- gotten of His Father before all worlds: God of God: Light of Light: very God of very God: begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven: and was Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary: and was made Man: and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried: and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures: and ascended into heaven: and sitteth on the right hand of the 1 The above polemic exposition is that which Mr. Lumby rather loosely calls the Creed of St. Ireneeus. See p. 155. “ ' ) ~ Η ε ~ ain ἀορατῶν ποιητήν. Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν, τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, γεννηθέντα ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς, μονογενῆ, τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, θεὸν ἐκ i ἐξ pee : Ἢ ἐν , ᾧ , θεοῦ. φως ἐκ φῶτος, θεὸν ἀληθινὸν εκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ. γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα ? 9 2 steal 4 Z ' d i Wes πὰ , ant eee ΄ > re > msi 2 3 ὁμοούσίου τῷ πατοί. Ai οὗ τὸ πάντα ἐγένετο, τάτε ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ τὼ ἐν τῇ YN τὸνδ' ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ διαὶ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα, nol σαρκωθέντα, καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα' παθόντα, καὶ ὠναστάντα τῇ τριτῇ ἡμέρῳ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐράνους" καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον κοῖαι ζῶντας καὶ ~ iy ‘ a? 2, [ νεκρούς. Καὶ εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον. Τοὺς δὲ λέγοντας ἤν ποτε ὅτε οὖκ ἤν, καὶ πριν γεννηθῆναι οὐκ ἤν, καὶ ὅτε ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐγένετο, ἢ ἐξ ἑτερας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσκοντας εἶναι, ἢ τρεπτὸν ἢ ἀλλοιωτὸν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ "7 56 > 5 ; : a Oe ae ἢ τούτους ἀναθεμάτιζει ἡ καθολικῆ καὶ ἀποστυλικὴ ἐκκλησία. We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is of the substance of the Father: God of God: Light of Light: very God of very God: begotten, not made: consubstantial with the Father. By whom all things were made both in heaven and earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down, and was Incarnate, and was made Man. He suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven: and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. And for them that say [concerning the Son of God], There was a time when He was not; and, He was not before He was begotten ; and, He was made of things that are not; and, He is of another sub- stance or essence, or that the Son of God is subject to conversion or mutation : these men the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematises. THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED AS IT STANDS In tue Acts oF THE CounciL or CHALCEDON. Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα θεὸν Πατέρα παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων, Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον ᾿Ιησοῦν Χρίστὸν, τον ὙἱἹὸν 160 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ ἸΤατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων' pas ἐκ paros, θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ" γεννηθέντα, οὗ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρὶ" δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο, τὸν δι’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ διὼ τὴν ἡμέτεραν σωτηρίαν, κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ ΤΙνεύματος ἁγίου, καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου, καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα" σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπέρ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ ΠΠοντίου Πιλάτου, καὶ παθόντα, καὶ ταφεντα, καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρῳ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς" καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς, καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ ἸΠατρός᾽ καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς" οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος. Καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἄγιον, τὸ Κύριον, καὶ τὸ ζωοποιὸν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευομενον, τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον, καὶ συν δοξοζόμενον, τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν. Εἰς μίαν ἁγίαν καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν ὁμολογοῦμεν ἕν βαπτίσμα εἰς ἄφεστιν ἁμαρτιῶν, προσδοκῶμεν ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν, καὶ ζωὴν τοῦ μελλοντος αἰωνος. ᾿Αμῆν.- We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, be- gotten of His Father before all worlds: Light of Light: very God of very God: begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven: and was Incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary: and was made Man: and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried : and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures : and ascended into heaven: and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead. Whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord; and the Giver of life: who proceedeth from the Father: who with the Father and the Son to- gether is worshipped and glorified: who spake by the prophets. In one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. We look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED AS IT WAS SAID In ΤῊΝ Mepisevat Encuiso CHuRcH. Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem cceli et terre, visibililium omnium et invisibililium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia secula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri: per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salu- tem descendit de ccelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine. Et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato: passus et sepultus est. Et resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas. Et ascendit in celum: sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 161 iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos. Cujus reeni non erit finis. Et in Spiritum Sanctum Dominum et vivifican- tem. Qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur : Qui locutus est per prophetas, Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum bap- tisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mor- tuorum. Et vitam venturi seculi. Amen. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all worlds: God of God: Light of Light: very God of very God: begotten not made: of one substance with the Father: by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven : and was Incarnate from the Holy Ghost out of the Virgin Mary: and was made Man. Was cruci- fied also for us under Pontius Pilate: He suffered and was buried : and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures : and ascended into heaven: sits at the right hand of the Father: and will come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead. Whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Life-giver: who proceedeth from the Father and the Son: who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified: who spake by the prophets. And one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the Resurrection of the dead: and the life of the world to come. Amen. It will thus be observed, that our English text follows the Medieval Use ; that we recite after the Western form, ‘I believe,” instead of the Eastern, “‘ We believe ;” that the clause, θεὸν ἐκ θεοῦ, Deum de Deo, “God of God,” was omitted in the Constantinopolitan Creed ; that the original Nicene Creed ended with “And in the Holy Ghost ;” that the additions (excepting of course the Filioque) are first found in the Constantinopolitan Creed ; that the Holy Ghost is described as τὸ Κύριον, καὶ τὸ ζωοποιὸν, Dominum et vivificantem=The Lord, and the Life-Giver, and should be pointed and read “The Lord; and Giver of Life;” that the Greek only has “in” (εἰς) before “one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ;” that the English only omits “Holy ;” and follows the Latin, incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, rather than the Greek, σαρκωθέντα ex ΤΙνεύματος “Ayiou καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου. THE ATHANASIAN CREED. Fives Sanotr ATHANASIL. Σύμβολον τῆς πίστεως τοῦ ἁγίου ᾿Αθανασίου. 1. Whosoever will be saved [is desirous of being saved], before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. L 162 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Quicunque vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat catholi- cam fidem. "Oorts βούλεται σωθῆναι πρὸ πάντων χρὴ αὐτῷ τὴν Καθολικὴν κρατῆσαι Πίστην. 2. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. ; Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in eternum peribit. ἣν et μὴ τις σώαν καὶ ἄμωμον τηρήσειεν, ἄνευ δισταγμοῦ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἀπολεῖται. - 3. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. Fides autem Catholica hee est, ut unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in Unitate veneremur. Πίστι δὲ Καθολικὴ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἵνα ἕνα Θεὸν ἐν Τριάδι καὶ Tpiads ev Movade σεβώμεθα. 4. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. Neque confundentes Personas, neque Substantiam separantes. μήτε συγχέοντες Tas ὑποστάσεις μήτε THY οὐσίαν μερίζοντες. 5. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. Alia est enim Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti. ἄλλη yap ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ ἸΙατρὸς ὑπόστασις, ἄλλη τοῦ Υἱοῦ, καὶ ἄλλη τοῦ ᾿Αγίου Πνεύματος. 6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Sed Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, una est Divinitas, equalis Gloria, co-eterna Majestas. ἀλλὰ Πατρὸς καὶ Yiod καὶ ᾿Αγίου Tvetpatos pia ἐστὶ θεότης, ton δόξα, συαΐδιος ἡ μεγαλειότης. 7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. Qualis Pater, talis Filius, talis et Spiritus Sanctus. οἷος ὁ Πατὴρ, τοιοῦτος καὶ ὁ Yids, τοιοῦ το καὶ τὸ ΠΙνεῦμα τὸ “Αγιον. 8. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. Increatus Pater, increatus Filius, increatus et Spiritus Sanctus. ἄκτιστος ὁ ΤΠατὴρ, ἄκτιστος ὁ Yids, ἄκτιστον καὶ τὸ “Αγιον Πνεῦμα. 9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. Immensus Pater, immensus Filius, immensus et Spiritus Sanctus. ἀκατάληπτος 6 Ilarnp, ἀκατάληπτος 6 Υἱὸς, ἀκατάληπτον καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ “Aytov. το. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. fEternus Pater, zeternus Filius, eturnus, et Spiritus Sanctus. αἰώνιος ὃ ἸΤατὴρ, αἰώνιος ο Ὑἱὸς, αἰώνιον καὶ τὸ "Αγιον Πνεῦμα. 11. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal. Et tamen non tres eterni, sed unus eturnus. πλὴν ov τρεῖς αἰώνιοι, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς αἰώνιος. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τό3 12. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, not three un- created, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible. Sicut non tres increati, nec tres immensi, sed unus increatus, et unus immensus, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τρεῖς ἄκτιστοι, οὐδὲ τρεῖς ἀκατάληπτοι, ἀλλ᾽ εἷς ἄκτιστος, καὶ εἷς eae So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the ae Ghost Almighty. Similiter, Omnipotens Pater, Omnipotens Filius, Omnipotens et Spiritus Sanctus. ὁμοίως παντοκράτωρ 6 Ἰ]ατὴρ, παντοκράτωρ 6 Yids, παντοκράτωρ τὸ Τ]νεῦμα τὸ “Αγιον. 14. And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. Et tamen non tres Omnipotentes, sed unus Omnipotens. πλὴν οἱ τρεῖς παντοκράτορες, GAN εἷς παντοκράτωρ. 15. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. Ita Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus et Spiritus Sanctus. οὕτω θεὸς ὁ Πατὴρ, θεὸς ὁ Υἱὸς, θεὸς καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα 7d” Αγιον. τό. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. Et tamen non tres Dii, sed unus est Deus. πλὴν ov τρεῖς Θεοὶ, ἀλλ᾽ εἷς Θεός. 17. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. Ita Dominus Pater, Dominus Filius, Dominus et Spiritus Sanctus. ὡσαύτως Κύριος ὁ Πατὴρ, Κύριος ὁ Yids, Κύριον καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἤΑγιον. 18. And yet not three Lords, but one Lord. _ Et tamen non tres Domini, sed unus est Dominus. πλὴν ov τρεῖς Κύριοι, ἀλλ᾽ εἷς ἐστὶ Κύριος. 19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords. Quia sicut singillatim unamquamque Personam, Deum et Dominum confiteri Christiana veritate compellimur ; ita tres Deos aut Dominos dicere Catholica religione prohibemur. ὅτι ὥσπερ μοναδικῶς ἑκάστην ὑπόστασιν Θεὸν καὶ Κύριον ὁμολογεῖν Χριστιανικῇ ἀληθείᾳ ἀναγκαζόμεθα οὕτω τρεῖς Θεοὺς ἢ τρεῖς Ἐν τοῦς λέγειν Καθολικῇ εὐσεβείᾳ κωλυόμεθα. 20. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. Pater a nullo est factus, nec creatus, nec genitus. 6 Πατὴρ am’ οὐδενός ἐρτι πεποιημένος, οὔτε δεδημιουργημένος, οὔτε γεγεννη- μενος 21. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. Filius a Patre solo est, non factus, nec creatus, sed genitus. ὁ Yids ἀπὸ μόνου τοῦ Πατρός ἐστιν οὐ πεποιημένος οὐδὲ δεδημιουργήμένος; ἀλλὰ γεγεννημένος. 164 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 22. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio, non factus, nec creatus, nec genitus est, sed procedens. τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Λγιον ἀπὸ τοῦ Iarpds καὶ τοῦ Yidu ov πεποιημένον οὔτε δεδημιουργημένον οὔτε γεγεννημένον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκπορευτόν. 23. So there is one Father, not three Fathers ; one Son, not three Sons ; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. Unus ergo Pater, non tres Patres; unus Filius, non tres Filii; unus Spiritus Sanctus, non tres Spiritus Sancti. εἷς οὖν ἐστι Πατὴρ οἱ τρεῖς ἸΠατέρες, εἷς Υἱὸς οὐ τρεῖς Yiol, ἐν Πνεῦμα "Aytov οὐ τρία ΤΙνεύματα "Αγια. 24. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other, none is greater, or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together, and co-equal. Et in hae Trinitate nihil prius aut posterius, nihil majus aut minus, sed tote tres Persone co-zterne sibi sunt, et co-equales. καὶ ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ Τριάδι οὐδὲν πρῶτον ἢ ὕστερον, οὐδὲν μεῖζον ἢ ἔλαττον; ἀλλ᾽ ὅλαι αἱ τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις συνδιαιωνίζουσαι ἑαυταῖς εἰδὶ καὶ ἴσαι. 25. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. Ita ut per omnia, sicut jam supra dictum est, et Unitas in Trini- tate, et Trinitas in Unitate veneranda sit. ὥστε κατὰ πάντα, ὡς εἴρηται; καὶ Τριὰς ἐν Μονάδι καὶ Movas ἐν Τριάδι λατρεύεται. 26. He therefore that will be saved [is desirous of being saved], must thus think of the Trinity. Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de Trinitate sentiat. 6 θέλων οὖν σωθῆναι οὕτω περὶ τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος φρονείτω. 27. Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sed necessarium est ad eternam Salutem, ut Incarnationem quoque Domini nostri Jesu Christi fideliter credat. πλὴν ἀναγκαῖον ἔτι ἐστὶ πρὸς αἰωνίαν σωτηρίαν ὅπως καὶ τὴν ἐνανθρώπησιν τοῦ Κυρίον ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ ὀρθῶς πιστεύη. 28. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man. Est ergo Fides recta, ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus periter et Homo est. ἔστιν οὖν ἸΤίστις ὀρθὴ ἵνα πιστεύωμεν καὶ ὁμολογῶμεν ὅτι ὃ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Θεὸς καὶ ᾿Ανθρωπός ἐστι. 29. God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance of His mother, born in the world. Deus est ex substantia Patris ante secula genitas: Homo, ex sub- stantia matris in seculo natus. Θεός ἐστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Tlatpds πρὸ αἰώνων γεννηθείς, καὶ "Ανθρωπὸς ἐστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τῆς μητρὸς ἐν χρόνῳ γεννηθείς. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 165 30. Perfect God, and perfect Man of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Perfectus Deus, perfectus Homo ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens. τέλειος Θεὸς καὶ τέλειος "AvOpamos ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ ἀνθρωπίνης σαρκὸς ὑποστάς. 31. Equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead ; and inferior to the Father, as touching His Manhood. fEqualis Patri secundum JDivinitatem, minor Patri secundum Humanitatem. ἶσος τῷ Ilarpl κατὰ τὴν Θεότητα, ἐλάττωντοῦ Ilarpos κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρω- πότητα. 32. Who although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. Qui licet Deus sit et Homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus. ὃς εἰ καὶ Θεὸς ὑπάρχει καὶ ἤΑνθρωπος ὅμως ov δύο ἀλλ᾽ εἷς ἐστι Χριστός. 33. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God. Unus autem, non conversione Divinitatis in carnem, sed assump- tione Humanitatis in Deum. εἷς δὲ οὐ τροπῇ Θεότητος εἰς σάρκα ἀλλὰ προσλήψει ἀνθσωπότητος εἰς Θεότητα. 34. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by Unity of Person. Unus omnino, non confusione Substantiz, sed unitate Persone. εἷς πάντως οὐ συγχύσει φύσεως GAN ἑνώσει ὑποστάσεως. 35. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ. Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo, ita Deus et Homo unus est Christus. ὥσπερ yap ψυχὴ λογικὴ καὶ σὰρξ εἷς ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, οὕτω Θεὸς καὶ Ἄνθρωπος εἷς ἐστι Χριστὸς. 36. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. Qui passus est pro salute nostra, descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis. ὁ παθὼν διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν, καὶ κατελθὼν εἰς τὸν Αἵδην, καὶ τῇ πρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστὰς ἐκ των νεκρῶν. 37. He ascended into heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty ; from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Ascendit ad ccelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris; inde venturus judi- care vivos et mortuos. [4 MSS.: Dexteram Dei P. Omnipotentis.] nai ἀνελθὼν εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς, καὶ καθήμενος ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Tlargis τοῦ παντοκράτορος, ὅθεν ἐλεύσεται κριναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς. 38. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. Ad cujus adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corpori- bus suis, et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem. 166 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. οὗ τῇ παρουσίρῳ πάντες ἄνθρωποι ἀναστήσονται σὺν τοῖς ἑαυτῶν σώμασιν ἀποδώσοντες or. περὶ τῶν ἰδίων ἐ ἐργῶν λόγον. 39. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting ; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eeternam ; qui vero mala, in ignem sternum. καὶ οἱ μὲν τὰ ἀηγαθὰ πράξαντες πορεύσονται εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον, οἱ δὲ τὰ φαῦλα εἰς τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον. 40. This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faith- fully, he cannot be saved. Hee est Fides Catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit. αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ Καθολικὴ Πίστις, ἣν εἰ μή ris πιστῶς τε καὶ βεβαίως πισ- τεύση, σωθῆναι οὐ δυνήσεται. ΠΡΕ AIPOSSIVIL IOS? Ὁ 1B BUD). SympBotum AposTroLorum. Σύμβολον τῶν ᾿Αποστόλων. 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Credo in Deum Patrem Omnipotentem, Creatorem cceli et terre. Tliorevw εἰς τὸν Θεὸν Πατέρα παντοκρατορο ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς. 2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Et in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum. αἱ ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν Ὑἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ τὸν Κύριον ἡμῶν. 3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. Qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancti, natus ex Maria Virgine. τὸν συλληφθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος ᾿Αγώου, γεννηθέντα ἐκ Μαρίας τῆς 1 παρθένου. 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, ot sepultus, παθόντα ἐπὶ ἹΤοντίου Πιλάτου, σταυρωθέντα, θανόντα, καὶ ταφέντα. 5. He descended into Hell, the third day He rose again from the dead. Descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis. κατελθόντα εἰς ἄδου, TH τρίτῃ ἡμέρῳ ἀναστάντα ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν. 6. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Ascendit ad ccelos, redet ad dexteram Dei Patris Omnipotentis, ἀνελθόντω εἰς τοὺς οὐρανούς, καθεζόμενον ἐν δεξιᾷ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς παντοδυ- νάμου. 7. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead, Inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos. ἐχεῖθεν ἐρχόμενον κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, 8. I believe in the Holy Ghost. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum. πιστεύω εἰς τὸ Τινεῦμα ro” Ayiov, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 167 9. The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints. Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam, Sanctorum communionem. ἁγίαν καθολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν, ἁγίων κοινωνίαν. το. The Forgiveness of Sins. Remissionem peccatorum. ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. 1τ. The Resurrection of the Body. Carnis resurrectionem. σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν. 12. And the Life everlasting. Amen, Vitam eternam. Amen. ζωὴν αἰώνιον. ᾿Αμήν. In order not unduly to swell the text of this Article, and for the sake of fuller discussion, we refer the reader to the Appendix for the historic details of the Three Creeds; and for their analysis also, as this will more clearly come out in connection with their history.— We would strongly advise the student who is preparing for theological examinations, to make himself master of the Greek especially of the Creeds, as set forth above. This, with due attention to the notes and details of the Appendix, may prove of very material advantage. As the Scriptural Proof of the main clauses of the Creeds is fully drawn out under other Articles, it is unnecessary to adduce it here. ( 168 ) ARTICLE IX. DOCTRINE AND HISTORY. Of Original, or Birth Sin.—Original Sin standeth not in the fol- lowing of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk); but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from origmal righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit, and therefore in every per- son born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated ; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek φρόνημα σαρκὺς, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God. And, although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin. De Peecato Originali.—Peccatum Originis non est (ut fabulantur Pelagiani) in imitatione Adami situm, sed est vitium, et depravatio nature, cujuslibet hominis ex Adamo naturaliter propagati: qua fit, ut ab originali justitia quam longissime distet, ad malum ma natura propendeat, et caro semper adversus Spiritum concupiscat, unde in unoquoque nascentium, iram Dei atque damnationem meretur. Manet etiam in renatis hee nature depravatio. Qua fit, ut affectus carnis, Greece φρόνημα σαρκὸς (quod alii sapientiam, alii sensum, alii affectum, alii studiam carnis interpretantur), legi Dei non subjiciatur. Et quan- quam renatis et credentibus nulla propter Christum est condemnatio, peccati tamen in sese rationem habere concupiscentiam, fatetur Apostolus. We here pass from the Rule of Faith to what that Rule teaches us concerning Sin and the Saviour, Arts. 9-18. It is well thus to notice, as we proceed, the structural composition of the Articles. It shows us, not only the systematic lines upon which they are based, but the clear grasp of Scriptural truth which our Reformers possessed. Leaving the profitless and vain speculations of heathen philosophy as to the origin of evil, and without also entering on the argument in proof of this innate corruption deducible from the death and sufferings of infants, we propose—tr. To examine the Development of the Doctrine of Original Sin in the Old and in the New Testament; 2. To trace the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. τόρ Progress of Heresy in the Christian Church; and 3. Briefly to analyse the Theses and Wording of the Article. This is a departure from our usual arrangement; but we think the gain upon the whole will be apparent. We shall thus have a more connected view of the subject in its twofold bearings—the mind of the Spirit as revealed to the Churches, and the spread of error; and so be enabled more fully to appreciate the doctrinal positions assumed by the Reformers, and the better understand their somewhat scholastic phraseology. 1. The Scriptural Development of the Doctrine of Original Sin. In THE OLp TESTAMENT. “So God created man in his own image. .. . And the Lord God said unto Adam, Because thou hast eaten of the tree, of which I com- manded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for unto dust shalt thou return, . . . And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [as before] in his own [sinful] likeness, after his ae image “(Gen 1. 27 ‘ii. τῇ; Το]; Ν᾿ 3). * And God saw [before the Flood] that the wickedness of man was ereat in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. vi. 5). Or rather, according to the Hebrew, The whole imagination—the purposes and desires, every day. “And the Lord said in his heart [after the Flood], I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake ; for (or, though) the imagi- nation of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. viii. 21). “ Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one” (Job xiv. 4). ‘‘ What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?” (Job xv. 14.) “ Behold, I was shapen in iniquity ; and in sin did my mother con- ceive me” (Ps. li. 5). ‘‘Sin is now regarded in its source. From my very earliest being, from the hour when I was conceived, sin has been with me. Sinfulness consists not merely in so many several sinful acts, but in a sinful and corrupt nature.”—Perowne. ‘He lays on himself the blame of a tainted nature, instead of that of a single fault: not a murder only, but of a murderous nature. ‘Conceived in sin.’ From first moments up till then, he saw sin—sin—sin: nothing but sin.”—Robertson. ‘If a man will speak and teach aright of sin, he must consider it in its depth, and show from what root it and all that is godless springs, and not apply the term merely to sins that have been committed. . . . According to this Psalm then, we must say that all is sin which is born of father and mother, and from so evil a root nothing good can grow before God.”—Luther. “Here at length he confesses himself guilty, not of one sin only or of many, but he rises to the fountain-head, (acknowledging) that from his mother’s womb he has brought nothing with him but sin, and that by nature he is altogether corrupt and as it were smeared over with vices, —— 170 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. . And of a truth we do not thoroughly acknowledge our sins unless we condemn our whole nature as corrupt.”—Calvin. ‘ Men may say what they will, the doctrine of original sin is contained in this pas- sage.”—Stier. (See Perowne, under Ps. li. 5.) “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (Ps. lviii. 3). Their whole life and habit of sin dates from their native depravity. “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright ; but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccles. vii. 29). “ The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores” (Is. i. 5, 6). ‘‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (W2N—morally corrupted and depraved) : who can know it?” (Jer. xvii. 9. ἢ In these Old Testament Scriptures, therefore, whether couched in the direct words of Jehovah Himself, or spoken under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, or uttered as the heartfelt experience of the authors, we are clearly taught, that man is born in a state of aliena- tion from God; that this birth-sin is propagated by natural genera- tion, in consequence of the Fall; and that it runs throughout the whole being—body and soul, the members of the one, and the faculties of the others. “ And this infection of nature doth remain,” moreover, “yea, in them that are regenerated ” :— “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, Iam pure from sin?” (Prov. xx. 9.) ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags ; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away ” (Is. lxiv. 6). “Tf thy people sin against thee—for there is no man that sinneth not” (1 Kings viii. 46). “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” (Eccles. vii. 20). Finally, “coneupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin” :— “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s” (Exod. xx. 1). “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and ‘work evil upon their beds” (Micah ii. 1). ‘“ Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetous- ness to his house” (Hab. ii. 9). In toe New TESTAMENT. Here, and especially in the Epistles, as might be expected, we have the teaching set out more fully and systematically ; and it may be fitly arranged under the various and consecutive heads of the Article. (1.) Original Sin infects all men, naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam, that is to say, Christ alone excepted. ““There is none good but One, that is God” (Matt. xix. 17). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 171 “ Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man” (John 11. 24, 25). “Jesus answered (Nicodemus), Verily, verily, I say unto thee [a form of words not only signifying the firm certainty of what is about to be said, but used by our Lord, as Stier remarks, in his coequality with the Father], Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That (τὸ, neuter) which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye (ὑμᾶς) must be born again (or, from above— ἄνωθεν) " (John iii. 5-7). This most solemn passage stamps the stain and guilt of Original Sin upon all flesh. As Alford writes: “6.] The neuter denotes not only the universal application of this truth, but (see Luke i. 35) the very first beginnings of life in the embryo, before sex can be predicated. So Bengel : ‘notal ipsa prima stamina vite.’ The Lord here answers Nicodemus’s hypothetical question of ver. 4, by telling him that even could it be so, it would not accomplish the birth of which he speaks. In this ca} (‘flesh’) is included every part of that which is born after the ordinary method of generation: even the spirit of man, which, receptive as it is of the Spirit of God, is yet in the natural birth dead, sunk in trespasses and sins, and in a state of wrath. Such ‘flesh and blood’ cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, 1 Cor. xy. 50. But when the man is born again of the Spirit (the water does not appear any more, being merely the outward form of reception—the less included in the greater), then just as flesh generates flesh, so spirit generates spirit, after its own image, see 2 Cor. 11]. 18 fin. ; and since the Kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom, such only who are so born can enter into it. 7.] The weightiest word here is ὑμᾶς (‘ye’). The Lord did not, could not, say this of Himself. Why %— Because in the full sense in which the flesh is incapacitated from entering the kingdom of God, He was not born of the flesh. He inherited the weakness of the flesh, but His spirit was not, like that of sinful man, alien from holiness and God; and therefore on Him no second birth passed ; when the Holy Spirit descended on Him at His baptism, the words spoken by the Father were indicative of past approval, not of renewal. His obedience was accepted as perfect, and the good pleasure of the Father rested on him. Therefore he includes not Himself in this necessity for the new birth” (Greek Testament, 2m loco). Gentiles and Jews included :— The Gentiles rejected the objective knowledge of God in creation, and so lost its internal or subjective teaching— “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them [the testimony of nature conveyed to man’s heart by the senses]; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his Eternal Power and Divinity (θειότης —not θεότης, or “Godhead,” as A. V.; but His high and moral attri- 12 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. butes, as displayed in Creation and Providence—the universal Father- hood of God); so that they are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became vain in their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened. . . . And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind (ἀδόκιμον νοῦν---- not devoid of ‘knowledge’ or discernment, but judicially abandoned to its own natural and fostered depravity), to do those things which are not convenient” (Rom. i. 19, &c.) On the other hand, the Jews had the superadded knowledge of Revelation in the Law of Moses—the real reflection, so far as it went . —the μόρφωσις of the holiness and character of God ; and yet, by their breaking of the law not only was God dishonoured, but the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them (Rom. ii.) Hence the inevitable conclusion is, that the inherent sinfulness of man is universal ; and appertains to the whole human race individually. “ Jews and Gentiles are all under sin ; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable ; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. 111.) Well may Luther in commenting on the 14th Psalm (again appearing in the Elohistic 53d), from which this quota- tion is taken, say: ‘“‘See how many words he uses that he may compre- hend all, excluding none. First he says all, then together, and then no, not one.” And St. Paul, in his free quotation, would make the lan- guage if possible even still more emphatic—repeating none, no, not one. (2.) This universal’ depravity is not derived from imitation — “standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk) ;” but is inherited by birth. Following up the argument of the Apostle as above in the Epistle to the Romans, we find that, having introduced reconciliation by Christ, or justification by faith, as the only ground of peace with God, he proceeds to explain the original source and spring of sin and condemnation by one of the strangest and strongest kaleidoscopic reiterations in any language: “ By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin—through the offence of one many be dead— the judgment was by one to condemnation—by one 1nan’s offence death reigned by one—by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation—by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Rom. v.) And as if to meet the Pelagian objection, he inserts in the very middle of this statement the words: ‘ Neverthe- less [notwithstanding what I have said about sin not being fully reckoned where there is no Written Law] death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (v. 14). That is, the sin and condemnation must be universal, and inherited by birth, inasmuch as, in the interval between Adam and Moses, they died who had not broken any posi- tive Revealed Law. And this force of the reasoning remains, whether we thus interpret the words, or with Beza and others refer them to EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 173 infants and idiots, or even (if not indeed more strongly) with Grotius, to those who lived pious lives. Then further on, the Apostle still yet advances another and final step, and traces home—clearly and expli- citly brings out the individuality, consequent on the generic oneness, of the seat and fountain of corruption. ‘“ For they that are after the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh. . . . For to be carnally minded is death. . . . BrcaAUsE THE CARNAL MIND IS ENMITY AGAINST GOD. For it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (ch. viii. 5-8). The mind of the flesh (τὸ φρόνημα τῆς ougnis)—the mind in a state of nature— the whole unconverted man—having its element in that which is opposed to the Spirit of Life, is, and cannot but be morally and spiritually Dead, ard so alienated from God. “Hic locus maxime refutat Pelagianos et omnes qui iImaginantur homines sine Spiritu Sancto legi obedire ” (Melancthon). And precisely similar is the teaching of the New Testament else- where :— ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 111. 6, 7). “In Adam all die” (τ Cor. xv. 22). “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 11. 14). “From within, out of the heart (x«gé/a—the seat, centre, and labora- tory of the whole moral life) of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasci- viousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark vii. 21-23). ΑἹ] evil in its fountain-head and development of actual transgression pro- ceeds from the innate corruption of the human heart; in other words, from Original Sin. “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins ; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of our flesh and of our thoughts (διανοιῶν, plural) ; and were by nature (fice:—being, not accessory influence of another, not acquired, but inherent state and inclination) the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. ii. 1-3). (3.) Original Sin in itself is deserving of the wrath of God. “In Adam all die” (1 Cor. xv. 22). “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, because (2f’¢—or, in whom [Adam]) all sinned (jm«2rov—Aorist) ” (Rom. v. 12). “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. vi. 23). ‘We were by nature the children of wrath ” (Eph. ii. 3). (4.) This infection of original sin, or fleshly nature, remains even in the regenerate. “Tn many things we offend all” (James iii. 2). “11 we say that 174 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1. 8). “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but to perform that which is good, is not. For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . I find then this law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me, For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man: but I see another law (ἕτερον vowov—a different law) in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. .. . So then with my mind I myself serve the Law of God; but with my flesh [subjectively, though not energetically] the law of sin’ > (Rom. vii.) (5.) Nevertheless, there is no condemnation for the true believer. This is expressly stated in so many words by the Apostle at the opening of the following chapter: ‘“‘ There is therefore now no con- demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of Life hath made me free (7A¢vb¢gwoev—Aorist, one past act—/freed me, at my con- version), in Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death” (Rom. viii. Ἐ δὴ). And elsewhere: ‘‘O wretched man that Tam! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God [for deliverance] through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vii. 24, 25). ‘* The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory (6:dévr1—present, and therefore for ever certain) through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. xv. 56,57). “‘ Being justified by Faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. v. 1). And especially also by Christ: “‘ He that believeth on the Son 15 not condemned (οὐ xgiveras—enters not into the judgment of God” (John iii. 18). ‘‘ Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation (εἰς κρίσιν οὐκ eeyerai—comes not into the final judgment, as to the condemnatory part of it; but is passed (uweraSz8yxev—Perfect, has already passed over) from death unto life” (John v. 24). (6.) “‘ Concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.’ “Evil concupiscence and covetousness, which is idolatry ” (Gol lil. 5). ‘Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy” (James iv. 5). “ The flesh lusteth against the spirit” (Gal. v.17). “1 had not known sin but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Rom. vii. 7). ‘ When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1. 15). All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John ii. 16, 17). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 175 2. The Rise and Progress of Heresy. To the Gnostics in general, and especially the two great families of Marcionites and Manichees, in their attempts to reconcile Philosophy so-called and Revelation, we owe, as our readers will remember, erroneous views on the origin of evil; which alike with their other heresies tended materially to disturb and harass the Church. Florinus and Blastus, about the end of the second century, pres- byters of Rome, seem to have been the first Christians of note or official standing who publicly identified themselves with the heterodox teaching. At all events, both were excommunicated by Bishop Eleutherius ; and it is certain that Florinus, though he had enjoyed the friendship of Irenzus, and been a disciple of Polycarp’s, taught that God was the author of evil, as a letter remonstrating with him, from the pen of Irenzus, is preserved by Eusebius. But error is hydra-headed ; and the flagrance of heresy was soon evaded by baseless dreams of the imagination, modified figments of Gnosticism ; and the subtleties of Creatiainsm and Traducianism— that souls are created by God on their union with the body, or that souls are produced through generation by parents to their children. Thus, notably, in the first half of the third century, the over-acute mind of Origen sought to conciliate an eternal philosophy, without if possible disturbing the unity of the faith ; and taught the pre-existence of human souls, and their present imprisonment in bodies more or less gross according to the offences committed in a former state: and so in reality removing, or attempting to remove, the question of the propagation of evil out of the category of practical and important Christian doctrine into that of comparatively unimportant speculation. Thus, and in like human elements, divorcing the mind of the Church from Christ and the simplicity of the Gospel, were laid the founda- tions of Pelagianism—a heresy that probably never will be wholly rooted out. Pelagius (Brito)—a name Latinized from Morgan = Marigena, sea- born, in reference to the British Isles—was in all probability of Welsh extraction. Trained and educated in a monastery (most likely the celebrated monastery of Bangor), it has been freely and perhaps truly alleged, that he became indignant at the hypocrisy of the monks and their moral indolence, and so by his own earnest strivings after ex- cellence, and his progress in supposed spiritual self-improvement, was led unduly to esteem the energy of the human will, and pride him- self upon a sort of quantitative religion. A recoil from the deadness of monkish profession and the slothfulness of Christian life—from the opus operatum of the Sacraments, landing him eventually in a like recoil not only from the prevalent repose upon the opus operatum of faith, but from justification by faith altogether. At all events, he began his heretical career, by disputing, more covertly than in public, against the grace of God. “ We need no inward grace, for we have no inborn sin,” was the motto by which he sought, for himself and 176 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. then for his friends and the world, to bridge over the gulf between Christianity and Paganism. Coming to Rome about the year 400, by his earnestness and perhaps insinuating manners—coluber Britannus is an uncharitable epithet of Prosper’s—he gained the confidence of Ceelestius, said to have been a co-islander, a man much younger than himself, of good parts and noble birth, with considerable dialectic abilities, a rismg advocate, bold and outspoken. This was just the spokesman which the timid precursor of modern Rationalism wanted —“Ceelestius apertior, Pelagius occultior . . . certi 1116 liberior, hic astutior ” (Augustine). When the Goths were laying waste Italy, the two friends retired to Sicily, and afterwards to Carthage. Here first in 412, Pelagius having quietly departed, Coelestius was summoned before a Council, on the two following charges of false doctrine. That the sin of Adam had injured only himself ; and that infants come into the world in the same sinless state as Adam was before the Fall. The scapegoat was condemned, and banished from the fellowship of the African Church. “ Auditum, convictum, confessum, detestatumque ab Ecclesia, ex Africa profugisse ” (Orosius). We need not follow his fortunes, nor those of the heresiarch. Suffice it to say, that after various successes and disasters, owing in some measure to personal influences, but chiefly to the ignorance or knowledge of the subjects in dispute on the part of their judges, they were both finally con- demned at the Third General Council of Ephesus in 431; and so per- sonally disappear from history. But it is of more importance to have a clear and correct view of the Pelagian system. And it may fairly be reduced to one leading and original element—the Denial of the Need of Supernatural Grace. In this the whole really centred ; and from this blasphemous formula everything naturally followed. It cut out the Mystery of Godliness and the New Creation ; and fostered the pride of the human heart not only in Heathendom but in Christendom. God had created man and left him to the development of his natural powers. By these he is able, if he will, to merit eternal life. The Fallis only hurtful from the possibility of imitating Adam’s sin: which explains all the passages in the New Testament bearing on the connection between the first transgression and the sins of ourrace. Sin, being a thing not of nature but of the will, cannot be transmitted. Moreover, the propagation of guilt conflicts with the justice of God. All which is plain proof that there can be no such thing as derived and innate corruption. As the word Grace could not be extirpated from the Bible, nor from the vocabulary of Christians, the term only meant the ~ gifts bestowed on mankind and their preservation, or the revelation of our duty, or the forgiveness of actual transgression—anything in short but the internal, evangelical renewal by the Holy Ghost. Christ too was a constant factor of Revelation, yet not a Redeemer from the captivity of sin and the curse of the law, but a higher Exemplar than any who had gone before—a sort of excelsior stimulus to the human will. Baptism is commanded—a signatory pass into the kingdom: but there its efficacy begins and ends. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 17 Augustine was the chief and most successful opponent of Pelagianism. Taking his stand upon the express declarations of Scripture, and the general belief of the Christian Church from the beginning, he vigorously and exhaustively vindicated the truth. And though we may easily detect some shortcomings, owing to the age, his bent of mind and imperfections of Greek education, yet upon the whole his twelve books against the Pelagians, are a noble contribution to theological learning —a lasting monument of his systematic thought, patience, and industry. His thesis is to the effect, that the sinful condition of Adam, his death in body and soul, incurred by the Fall, is transmitted, through natural generation, to all his posterity ; that we need the grace of God, not only to do, but to will, that which is good; and that this divine, regenerating life is freely communicated by God, through Christ, and shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost—an internal and con- straining, creative energy of likeness and love. The following details, carefully gleaned and lucidly arranged by Professor Robertson, will well repay the diligent perusal of the student :— “The fundamental question between Pelagius and his opponents related to the idea of Free Will. By this term, Pelagius understood an unbiassed power of choosing between good and evil; and sucha faculty he maintained man has, since the power of choice is essential to responsibility, and there can be no sin or guilt unless where there is voluntary evil. Augustine, on the other hand, taught that freedom must be distinguished from the power of choice. God, he said, is free, although his nature excludes the possibility of his choosing or doing anything that is evil ; hence a natural and necessary limitation to good is higher than a state of balance between good and evil; and such a balance cannot be, since the possibility of inclining to evil is a defect. Man is not free to choose between good and evil, but is governed either by grace or by sin. Our free will, without grace, can do only evil; the direction of the will to good must be God’s gracious gift. Grace does not take away freedom, but works with the will, whose true freedom is the love of that which is good. “Since Scripture undeniably refers all good to Grace, Pelagius acknowledged this in words; but he understood the term grace in senses of his own, as meaning merely external gifts and benefits—the being and constitution of man ; free-will itself ; the call to everlast- ing happiness ; the forgiveness of [actual 1] sins in [adult 1] baptism, apart from any influence on the after spiritual course ; the knowledge of God’s will, the Law and the Gospel, the example of the Saviour’s life ; or, if he sometimes used the word to signify the influence of the Holy Spirit on the soul, he did not represent this influence as necessary to the work of salvation, but only as rendering it easier. Pelagius laboured to exclude from the notion of grace anything that might be inconsistent with free-will; Augustine, everything that might savour of merit on the part of man. Distinguishing three stages in good,—the capacity, the will, and the performance,— Pelagius referred the first to God’s gift, but regarded the others as M 18 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. within the power of human nature. Augustine, on the contrary, refused to admit the idea of a grace bestowed according to the previous receptivity of the soul; because this, as he thought, placed the determination in human merit. Grace must, by its very name, be gratuitous ; the will to do good must be God’s gift, as well as the capacity. “While Augustine held that the Fall had injured man, both spiritually and physically ; that by communion with God Adam was enabled to live a higher life ; that he might have avoided sin, and, if he had not sinned, would have been raised to perfection without tasting of death, even as the angels, after having borne their proba- tion in a lower degree of grace, were endowed with that higher measure of it which lifts above the possibility of falling, and confers immortality :—Pelagius maintained that man’s original constitution was mortal ; that Adam was originally placed as we are, and that we are not inferiorto him. The passages in which St. Paul speaks of death as the punishment of sin, he interpreted as meaning spiritual death only. Augustine taught that in Adam all men sinned ; that, im punishment of the first sin, sin is transmitted by generation to all mankind ; that although under the guidance of grace directing his free will, man might live without sin, this sinless life has never been actually realised. Pelagius, on the contrary, supposed that Adam’s sin did not affect his posterity otherwise than as an example; that there is, indeed, a deterioration of the race through custom of sinning, even as an individual man becomes worse through indulgence in sinful habits; that this comes to affect us like a nature, and has required occasional interpositions of the Divine mercy by revelations and otherwise ; but that man had all along been able to live without sin; that some men had in fact so lived ; and that, if this had been possible under the-earlier dispensations—nay, even in heathenism— much more must it be possible for us under the Gospel, which gives additional motives, higher rules of righteousness, and the light of a brighter Example. According to Pelagius, the saints of the Old Testament were justified by the Law; but Augustine held that in spirit they belonged to the New Testament; that they were justified through faith in Christ, and through his grace which was bestowed on them by anticipation. Pelagius saw mainly in Christ nothing more than a teacher and a pattern. His death, although it was allowed to be efficacious for sinners, could not (it was supposed) confer any benefit on those who had no sin; the living union of the faithful with Him was an idea as foreign to the system of this teacher as the union of the natural man with Adam in death. Pelagius, however, did not deviate from the doctrine of the Church with respect to the Saviour’s Godhead. “The practice of infant baptism, which was by this time uni- versally regarded as apostolical, was urged against Pelagius. His opponents argued from the baptismal rites—the exorcisms, the renunciation of the devil, the profession of belief in the remission of sins. Why, they asked, should infants be baptized with such cere- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 179 monies for the washing away of sin, if they do not bring sin into the world with them? The Pelagians answered that infants dying in their natural state would attain ‘ eternal life,’ which they supposed to be open to all, whether baptized or not ; but that baptism was necessary for the higher blessedness of entrance into ‘ the kingdom of heaven,’ which is the especial privilege of the Gospel; that, as baptism was for all the means of admission to the fulness of the Christian bless- ings, the baptismal remission of sins must, in the case of infants, have a view to their future life on earth... . With respect to baptism, Augustine held that it conveys forgiveness of all past sins whatever, whether original or actual: that by it we receive regenera- tion, adoption, and redemption ; but that there yet remains in us a weakness against which the regenerate must struggle here through God’s help, and which will not be done away with until that further ‘regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory.’ The doctrine of this remaining infirmity was represented by the Pelagians as disparaging the efficacy of the baptismal sacrament. *‘Pelagius supposed that God had furnished man naturally with all that is needed for living without sin and keeping the command- ments, and that the use of these gifts depends on our own will; Augustine, that at every point man needs fresh supplies of Divine and supernatural aid. Pelagius understood justification to be merely the outward act of forgiveness ; whereas Augustine saw in it also an inward purification through the power of grace. Grace, he held, does not constrain the will, but delivers it from bondage, and makes it truly free ; he distinguished it into—(1.) the preventing grace, which gives the first motions towards goodness; (2.) the operating, which produces the free will to good ; (3.) the co-operating, which supports the will in its struggles, and enables it to carry its desires into act : and lastly (4.) the gift of perseverance.” —(History of the Christian Church, 1, 438, &c.) Out of this conflict arose Semi-Pelagianism, at the head of which stood John Cassian, of Scythian extract, born at Athens 351, ordained presbyter at Rome, and finally settling at Marseilles in France—an illiterate and superstitious, but active and pious monk. He adopted for the most part Augustine’s positions as to original corruption, &c., without his systematic development of doctrine, but eliminated the element of the constraining power of grace ; or rather, in his inability to decide whether free-will depends on grace, or grace on free-will, seems to strike the balance in favour of the latter. “Until Pelagius, whose opinions he strongly reprobated, Cassian acknowledged that all men sinned in Adam; that all have both hereditary and actual sin; that we are naturally inclined to evil; and that for every good thing—the beginning, the continuance, and the ending—we need the aid of supernatural grace. But, although he maintained that grace is gratuitous—although he admitted that, in the infinite varieties of God’s dealings with men, the first call to salva- tion sometimes proceeds from preventing grace, and takes effect even on the unwilling—he supposed that ordinarily the working of grace i ————— 180 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. depends on the determination of man’s own will; that God is the receiver of the willing, as well as the Saviour of the unwilling. As examples of those who are called without their own will, he referred to St. Matthew and St. Paul; for proof that in some cases the will precedes the call, he alleged Zaccheus and the penitent thief,—as to whom he made the obvious mistake of regarding the visible part of their story as if it were the whole. He held that God furnishes man’s nature with the seeds of virtue, although grace be needful to develop them ; that Christ died for all men, and that grace is offered toall.... Faith and good works (it was said), although they do not deserve grace, are motives to the bestowal of it. Grace must work with our own will and endeavour; it may be lost, and is to be retained by man’s free will—not by a gift of perseverance. God’s purpose and calling, according to Cassian, bring men by baptism to salvation ; yet the benefits of the Saviour’s death extend to persons who in this life were never made members of Him—their readiness to believe being discerned by God, and reckoned to their credit. In like manner children who die in infancy are dealt with according to God’s fore- knowledge of what they would have become if they had been allowed to live longer: those who would have used grace rightly are brought by baptism to salvation; the others die unbaptized.”—(Robertson, i. 445, &e.) Passing to the Scholastic doctrine of original sin, as expounded by Bellarmine, it may be sufficient to quote the following :—“ The state of man after the fall of Adam differs from the state of Adam in what was purely natural to him (in puris naturalibus), no more than a man who is stripped differs from a naked man. Nor is human nature worse, if you take away original sin, nor does it labour more with ignorance and infirmity, than it would be and would labour in what is purely natural as it was created.” In other words, and as the Schoolmen abundantly and explicity teach, Adam was created mortal, and spiritually naked. He was then clothed with immortality and a superadded original righteousness—ornaments bestowed upon him, but not as parts of himself. These he lost in the Fall, and was so re- duced back to his primitive state and condition ; but with this material and formidable difference: he was now, having trifled with and lost the precious gift of immortality and righteousness, an object of Divine displeasure ; and so transmitted to his seed the poison or infection of his body—fomes peccat?, a fuel that might be kindled into sin, and the guilt by imputation of his soul. Thus then original sin consists not in a positive quality of evil, but in an absence of original righteous- ness ; in a defect of the soul, liable to pollution through the body, rather than in an inherent evil disposition, or direct power and dominion of sin. Concupiscence, or man’s tendency to sin, has in it no necessary guilt, for man in this respect is precisely in the same predicament since the Fall as he was before, and consequently in a state of innocence. Baptism therefore cannot, and does not, touch either concupiscence or mortality—these being two of the characteristics of the creature man; but it takes away original sin, inasmuch as it EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 181 restores the spiritual adornment which was lost by the Fall—original righteousness. The Anabaptists follow in the order of time ; and are referred to in the corresponding Article of Edward, 1552: “ Originall sinne standeth not in the folowing of Adam, as the Pellagianes doe vainelie talke, whiche also the Anabaptistes doe nowadaies renue.” The reader will find, under Article 7, the Pelagian errors which were “ renewed ” or expanded by the Anabaptists. They may be briefly recounted here: It is possible for man to earn salvation by his own virtuous actions. The Flesh alone participated in the Fall. Or, even granting that man is fallen, he may be rescued by his natural powers. Christ was one of the most spotless of our race; a Teacher and Exemplar ; a Saviour in the sense of our leader and forerunner; but to call Him the Redeemer, in the ordinary sense of that term, is to convert Him into an idol. And as to concupiscence, a man who is reconciled to God, is without all stain thereof, nothing of the old Adam remaining in his nature. Finally, we come to the Council of Trent. On the subject before us we find, as usual, truth mixed up with deadly error. Our business however is with the points directly or inferentially opposed by our Article. Thus we find it decreed in the Fifth Session :— “Tf any one denies that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in Baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted ; or moreover asserts that the whole is not taken away of that which has the true and proper nature (ratio) of sin; but says that it is only cut down or not imputed. Let him be Anathema. “ Nevertheless, this Holy Council doth confess and "15. of opinion that Concupiscence, or the fuel of sin, remaineth in the baptized ; which being left for the purpose of trial, cannot hurt those who do not consent to it, but manfully through the grace of Christ resist it. “The Holy Council declares that the Catholic Church hath never understood that this concupiscence, which the Apostles sometimes eall sin, is called sin because sin is truly and properly in the re- generate, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin. If any one hold a contrary opinion, let him be Anathema.” It was also expounded and determined: That the perfection of Adam consisted in an infused quality, which adorned the soul, made it acceptable to God, and exempted the body from mortality. That Original Sin consists in the deprivation of this Original Righteous- ness. That in Baptism the soul is restored to purity, and the state of primeval innocence, though the punishments incurred by sin are not removed, That the regenerating grace of baptism is accompanied by justifying grace, which worketh in some greater effects than original righteousness, though not on the body, to the removal of natural defects and mortality. And that the decree concerning the trans- mission of sin by generation, from Adam to his posterity, ‘did not mean to comprehend the Blessed Virgin.” 182 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 3. Analysis and Working of the Article. The construction is elaborate, careful, and for all necessary purposes, exhaustive. The Article might easily be recast so as to compress its substance, but it would be difficult to reduce its wording into a smaller compass, and bring out at the same time all its valuable points. (1.) Original Sin is defined (a) negatively —‘ standeth not in the following of Adam, in ¢mitatione Adami (in the imitation of Adam), as the Pelagians do vainly talk ;” (0) positively as to its nature and extent—“ it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, vitium et depravatio naturcee cujuslibet hominis (the fault and depravity of every member of the human family), that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam.” (2.) The measure or degree of this fault and corruption of nature— “whereby man is very far gone, guam longissime distet (most far gone) from original righteousness, and is of his own nature, sua natura (radically and inborn), inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.” (3.) In deserving in itself of the wrath of God—“ and therefore in every person born into this world, 7m wnoquoque nascentium (at birth, not natorum, or after birth), it deserveth God’s wrath and damna- tion.” (4.) Remains in the regenerate—‘‘and this infection of nature, hee nature depravatio (this depravity of nature), doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated, renatis ; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek φρόνημα σαρκὸς [St. Paul’s expression, Rom. viii. 7, for the enmity of the natural man against God, the unrestrained out- come of which he describes in Gal. v. t9-21], which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God.” (5.) Nevertheless there is no condemnation for the true believer— “there is no condemnation for.them that believe and are baptized, renatis et credentibus.” Here we have renatis again, before translated regenerated, now baptized, but qualified by the word believe—a plain proof that the Reformers did not look upon adult baptism at least, per se, as equivalent to full spiritual birth. (6.) Coneupiscence has the nature of sin—‘coneupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature, vateonem (the fixed relation and reckon- ing), of sin.” The reader who has followed us in this Article, will therefore, we think, clearly see not only the Scriptural positions assumed by our Reformers, but also the calm, yet firm and uncompromising stand made by these noble men against error—whether Pelagian, Scholastic, Anabaptist, or Romish. And it is just this twofold element— Scriptural truth and faithful protest against error, which chiefly and so highly enhances the value of the Thirty-nine Articles. Quaint EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 183 occasionally they may be in style, and not unfrequently and almost necessarily tinged with scholastic phraseology, yet nevertheless they are one of the very profoundest contributions to sound theology ever given, in a doctrinal formulary, to the world. Only a very few additional words are required in conclusion. Our Article is a positive protest against the Pelagian doctrine of imitation. It is a negative protest against Rome’s scholastic figment as to that in which original righteousness consisted. It isa positive protest against the scholastic privatio, or mere lack of superadded righteousness, also endorsed by the Council of Trent. It is a positive protest against Rome’s dogma of sinless concupiscence. It is a constructive protest against Rome’s ex opere operato efficacy of Baptism, as well as against her feeble (Tridentine) dogma of an immaculate Virgin. And lastly it is a negative protest against the very debatable doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s guilt, herein agreeing with the great Germanic Confession, as well as with the Helvetic, Saxon, and Belgic Con- fessions—a doctrine, however, plainly asserted by the Westminster Assembly of Divines. ( 184 ) ARTICLE X. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of Free Will.—The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. De Libero Arbitrio.—Ka est hominis post lapsum Adz conditio, ut sese naturalibus suis viribus, et bonis operibus, ad fidem et invoca- tionem Dei convertere ac preparare non possit. Quare absque gratia Dei (que per Christum est), nos preveniente, ut velimus, et cooper- ante, dum volumus, ad pietatis opera facienda, que Deo grata sunt et accepta, nihil valemus. ᾿ The title and the text of the Article introduce two Subjects :—1. The Scientific View. 2. The Scriptural View. 1. The Scientific View. (1.) Demonstrative science, metaphysical science, and religious science, if indeed we may give them the same surname, have little affinity or sisterhood. The notation of the first is human, yet abso- lutely fixed and certain, of constant value, and may be expressed in any medium; the notation of the second is vague and variable as language itself, and its assumed truths may well be rejected as sophisms or subtleties, if they must be confined to a given enunciation; the notation of the third is Divine, and hinges zm tofo on one grand axiom, namely, that Gop is Love—or, if you choose to express it in another formula, God, and not Man, is the Saviour. The first and the second, therefore, are at antipodes ; as well as the second and the third. If there is any affinity among them all, it is between the first and the third—between demonstrative, and religious, science. They have the same fixity of notation ; only that the prin- cipia of the one are miraculously revealed and documentary, the prin- cipia of the other are to be discovered. Again, the study of all physical science, or the laws of nature, is eminently if not chiefly conducive to our temporal well-being ; meta- physical science, or the study of the laws of mind, is perhaps at EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 185 most a profitable pastime ; but the faithful study of the laws of God, “‘codliness, is profitable’ unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” Moreover, it has to be affirmed, that religious science differs from all human science, in this respect—which must ever exist as an im- passable gulf between them—that the former is designedly as well as necessarily fragmentary, segments of several circles or systems, now human, now angelic, now Divine, not one of which is or indeed could be completely described to our finite minds; whereas the latter is occupied with one system only, and left naturally to the feebleness and imperfections of its own calculus. If then the mental phenomena, and even those with which we are more immediately conversant, remain in and of themselves a mystery, in their very nature unfathomable, unstable, illusory, far above the mere world of external nature, and must needs so remain, the difficulty of the problem is only infinitely increased when, on the Bible plat- form, the human mind is brought into contact with other worlds of spirits, holy and unholy, Divine and Satanic. (2.) It is difficult, and so difficult that for all practical purposes it may be assumed to be impossible, for man to think in any other groove than that to which he has been accustomed. ‘True, some men of patient and exalted genius are at home in humble phrase and illus- tration, as well as in the higher walks of abstract reasoning ; but the duplex attainment is rare, rarer than we may at first imagine, and after all just resolves itself back into custom and training, When Plato and the schools sent their students into the temple of Christianity, these naturally brought with them their philosophic modes of thought, and unhappily not a little of their philosophy also. In other words, Satan used “the wisdom of the wise” to mar and counteract much of the simplicity of the Gospel. And this blinding or emasculating process has been kept up and prevailed till almost our own day. Change the phraseology, and you have till within a very late period, the alien spirit of so-called philosophic thought and metaphysical exposition which set in against the genius of the New Way in the second century. (3-) A brief review of men and dates may be useful landmarks for the student, here and in following Articles. Tue Apostoitic FATHERS. In the golden age of Christianity, if anywhere, we should expect to find the doctrines of grace taught by Christ and His Apostles, faith- fully reflected. Whatever may have been the errors which were creeping into the Church, or whatever human weaknesses may have been displayed by the Apostolic Fathers, theirs par excellence is the age to which above all that follow we are justified in looking for the strong vitality of the life of the Christian Faith. Let us therefore hear St. Clement of Rome, the first Bishop of that See, whom St. Paul mentions as one of his “ fellow-labourers, whose names are in the Book of Life” (Phil. iv. 3):— 16 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. “God glorified his saints of old, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness that they themselves wrought, but through his will. And we also being called by the same will in Jesus Christ, are not justified by ourselves, neither by our own wisdom, or knowledge, or piety, or the works which we have done in holiness of heart; but by that faith by which God Almighty has justified all men from the beginning. To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. What shall we do, therefore, brethren? shall we be slothful in well-doing, and lay aside our love? May God keep us, that such things be not wrought in us! But rather let us give all diligence, that with earnestness and readiness of mind we may perfect every good work. . . . How excellent, beloved, are the gifts of God. Life in immortality! glory in righteousness! truth in confidence! faith in full assurance! continence in holiness! All these are com- prehensible to us. But what shall those things be which he hath prepared for them that wait for him? The Creator, the Everlasting Father, the All-Holy ; he only knows their greatness and their beauty. Let us then agonise that we may be found among the number of those that abide in him, that we may be made partakers of the free gifts he hath promised. But how shall this be, beloved? If, having our minds confirmed in faith towards God, we seek those things which are pleasing and acceptable unto him; fulfilling that which is agree- able to his holy will; and following the way of truth, we cast off from us all unrighteousness and iniquity. This is the way, beloved, wherein we find our salvation, even Jesus Christ, the High Priest of all our offerings, the support and help of our infirmities. By (faith in) him we gaze upon his pure and most exalted countenance, and behold therein, as in a glass, the heights of the heavenly felicities. By him are the eyes of our hearts opened ; by him our foolish and darkened understandings rejoice to behold his marvellous light” (1 ad Cor. 32, 33). ‘ St. Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul (Acts), is frequently quoted by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, which with other evidence tends to establish the authority of his Epistle. He unhappily retains many of the blemishes of Jewish writing, but the following passage, though perhaps inferior to Clement in diction, yet is equally satis- factory :— “Before that we believed in God, the habitation of our heart was frail and corruptible, even as a temple merely built with hands. For it was a house full of idolatry, a house of demons ; inasmuch as there was done in it whatsoever was contrary unto God. By what means shall a house like this be gloriously rebuilt in the name of the Lord? I will tell you. Having received remission of our sins through faith in the name of the Lord, we are made anew, being created as it were Srom the beginning. Then God truly dwells in our house, that is, in us. But how does he dwell in us? By the word of his faith, by the calling of his promise, by the wisdom of his righteous judgments, by the commands of his doctrine: he himself speaks within us, he him- self dwelleth in us, and openeth to us, who were in bondage of death, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 187 the gate of our temple, that is the mouth of wisdom, having given repentance unto us. By this means he hath made us an indestructible temple. He then that desireth to be saved must not look for help to man, but to him that dwelleth in his servants, and speaketh by them. This is the spiritual temple that is built unto the Lord” (Epis. 16). St. Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, by whom probably he was appointed to the See of Antioch, thus writes :— “Nothing shall be hidden from you if ye have perfect faith and love to Jesus Christ, which is the beginning and the end of life. For the beginning is faith, and the end is love, and these two joined together are of God; and all other things that concern a holy life are the effects of these. No man professing a true faith sinneth ; neither does he who hath love hate any. The tree is made manifest by its fruit : so they who profess themselves Christians are to be judged by what they do. For Christianity is not the work of an outward pro- fession; but the power of faith enduring unto the end” (Ad Eph. 14). Se Polycarp, also the disciple of St. John, and by him appointed to the See of Smyrna, has the following meek and lovely passages :— “Brethren, watch unto prayer, and strengthen yourselves therein with fasting: with supplication beseeching the all-seeing God not to lead us into temptation ; for the Lord himself hath said, ‘The Spirit is willing but the Flesh is weak!’ Let us, therefore, without ceasing, hold unto him who is our hope and the pledge of our righteousness, even Jesus Christ: ‘who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree:’ ‘who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth :’ but suffered all for us that we might live through him. Let us, therefore, imitate his patience: and if we suffer for his name, let us glorify him; for this example he himself hath set before us, that believing in him we micht follow it. Wherefore, I exhort all of you, that obeying the word of his righteousness, ye exercise yourselves unto all the patience which ye yourselves have beheld, not only in the blessed Ignatius, and Zozimus, and Rufus, but in Paul also, and the rest of the Apostles; being confident of this, that all these have not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness; and are gone to the place which was prepared for them of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. For they loved not this present world ; but him who died and was raised again by God for us” (ad Philip. 8, 9) And again: “ Polycarp and the presbyters that are with him in the church of God, which is at Philippi: mercy unto you, and peace from God Almighty, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour, be multiplied. I rejoiced greatly with you in the Lord Jesus Christ, that the root of the faith which was preached from the beginning remains firm in you, and brings forth-fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered himself to be brought even to the death for our sins. ‘Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death. ‘Whom having not seen ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory,’ into which ye earnestly 188 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. desire to enter; knowing that by grace ye are saved; not by works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ” (Supra, 1). Here then is the unsophisticated Christianity of the New Testament as taught by the companions of the inspired Apostles—no metaphysics, but the whole ethics of the question of the Freedom of the Will—the whole ethics of Salvation drawn out, so to stimulate and win to the activities of Faith working by Love, as if the whole work of salvation depended upon man himself. In THE SEcoND AND THIRD CENTURIES. The discussion upon the Freedom of the Will had now long been as hotly debated by the Platonists and Stoics outside the pale of Christianity, as it was in the Church between Calvinists and Arminians at the Synod of Dort. Whatever softening of the picture may be drawn from individual texts, such as Seneca’s, “1116 ipse omnium conditor et rector, scripsit quidem fata, sed sequitur. Semper paret semel jussit” (De Providentia, 5), or whether we contend that the Stoical Fate was a physical or a moral necessity, as it touches the Supreme Being, yet it is abundantly clear that the philosophers of the Porch held the doctrine of an irrevocable fate, an inevitable necessity or destiny invincibly controlling the volitions of the human mind. On the other hand, whether we read Plato as ascribing to God neither omnipotence, nor omnipresence, nor omniscience (Schlegel), or as acknowledging [inferentially and obscurely ?] all the divine perfections (Maclaine), yet it is also abundantly evident that the philosophers of the Grove held the entire and perfect free agency not only of the Creator but of man. Fer Stoicism and Platonism, read Calvinism and Arminianism, and you have mutatis mutandis, and these of no appreciable moment in the argument, the battle of the 17th century fought and fiercely, in the early period before us, at the schools of Athens—only with this difference of result, that Platonism triumphed, whereas between Calvinism and Arminianism the laurels were divided: Calvinism prevailing in Holland and other like Pro- testant countries, but ultimately in England, under Charles 1. and the Laudites, Arminianism was honoured with royal and prelatic favours. And thus Philosophy, with its chilling influence, steps, in the second century, upon the platform of Christianity. Justin Martyr became a convert to the Christian faith, but clung tenaciously to his philosopher’s cloak. A rigid Platonist, of high repute in the schools, he brought with him the whole of his Platonism into the school of Christ; and so unhappily infected the divinity of the second century with his passion-theme—the τὸ αὐτεξύοσιον, or absolute freedom of the will of angels and men. Here the enemy made a fatal breach in our walls, soon came in like a flood, and for seventeen long centuries, now with the Platonic element, and anon with the Stoic, has been trying to stifle the living and pure word of God, by engaging the human understanding in a sphere utterly EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 189 beyond its present ken and cognizance—man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty. Would to God that Christendom universally—in her halls of theology and seats of learning, as well as in her pulpits and her press—could be induced to return, with heart and soul, to the simple ethics of the Apostles and their immediate successors—‘ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Here we cannot do better than quote Mr. Osburn, in his Doctrinal Errors of the Fathers (Lond. 1835)—a work that well deserves to be revised and reprinted, and which should be in the hands of every intelligent Churchman at the present day. We have examined the references in the original; duly weighed the charges, and endorse them :— “The circumstance that of all others most powerfully contributed to the establishment of the Platonic theory regarding the Freedom of the Will, in the Christianity of the second century, was the con- version of Justin the philosopher. This event probably took place at a period, when not many of the same standing and pretensions in literature had embraced the tenets of the then despised and persecuted sect of the Christians; and it is pretty certain, that Justin was the first of the rank of a philosopher who set the seal of martyrdom to the sincerity of his profession. These incidents conferred upon his writings an astonishing degree of authority and influence with his contemporaries and successors, for which we should scarcely find anything to account, in the intrinsic merits of those of them that remain... . “The Freedom of the Will was a subject in which Justin’s feelings were already warmly interested, when he embraced Christianity ; and upon which he was most probably fully committed in the schools. It is on this account that he never once quotes scripture authority for the doctrine, nor does he even cite that or anything else in proof of it, but he invariably assumes it as an axiom antecedent to all proof. “Thus the example and authority of Justin, combined with other circumstances to identify this tenet of Platonism with Christianity, in the divinity of the second century. : “Trenzeus dogmatises upon the entire freedom of the will in the same style as his predecessor: and also endeavours to establish it from Scripture. His mode of proof is sufficiently comprehensive: every hortative passage in the Sacred Volume which addresses man as a rational and accountable being, he conceives to be unanswerable demonstration of his unlimited free agency. Nor does he at all seruple to carry the doctrine out to all the consequences of which it is capable. Man is the author of his own faith; he accomplishes at the first his own election, and he achieves at the last his own salvation ! “ Tertullian did not allow his own antipathy to philosophy to pre- vent him, either embracing the doctrine of Plato, or availing himself of the argument by which that philosopher supported it. He con- tends at great length for the freedom of the human will, on the ground 100 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. that without it there can be no human responsibility: which is the Platonic argument. “ Clement of Alexandria enforces the freedom of the will to the full extent in which it was maintained by the Platonists, and fre- quently upholds his opinion, by the express sanction and authority of passages from the works of Plato. . . ‘* What would be the fate, with these writers, of the portion of the Christian scheme which depends upon the solution of this question, and which, since the Reformation, has been comprehended under the technical expression: doctrines of Grace, it is not very difficult to divine. The large and liberal canon of scripturai interpretation then in use, or, in a case of emergency, the timely aid of the ἀμφιβολία (equivocation, or double meaning), could scarcely fail to remove all impediments from this quarter, to a system of divinity in entire har- mony with the Platonic principle. And such is certainly the fact of the case. Upon these points, the Bible is only quoted to be disre- garded, or explained away where it seems to oppose the doctrine to be proved ; it is perfectly powerless against this their prepossession. If we are saved by faith alone, faith is merely that assent of the understanding, which, by the express doctrine of both the Stoics and Platonists, is in our own power. If the grace of God be needed at all, beyond the ordinary grace of baptism, it is only for those whose ambition, and whose nerve, have prompted and enabled them to climb to perilous elevations on the giddy eminences of gnosticism and mar- tyrdom. If there be anything like depravity in human nature, it is that which it is entirely within the power of the will to rectify; nor does it, in any one of the fathers of the second century, overstep the dimensions which the academic philosophy has assigned to it—namely, that man has a pure soul dwelling in an impure body. We may, indeed, in our anxiety to apologise for the early representatives of the visible church, cite passages from the works of Justin, which apparently give some degree of countenance to these doctrines ; but though I readily acknowledge that more of this phraseology will be found there than in the writings of his successors, yet I cannot help fearing that they will not admit of an orthodox interpretation, without doing consider- able violence to the entire scope of the author’s meaning. And I feel compelled to state, unhesitatingly, that upon this part of the great question between God and man, which constitutes religion, the fathers of the second century were the disciples, not of Christ, but of Plato: —nor are the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel to be found in their works, and for this most obvious reason, because they did not main- tain them. “We have no difficulty in accounting for this circumstance. Their mode of interpretation has already shown us that they regarded the Bible in the light of a mythology, revealing certain truths regarding the divine nature and worship, but concealing, under the semblance of moral maxims, twisted together in amphibologies, or enshrined in allegorical histories, the elemental germs of an ethical system, which it was the province of philosophy to develop. And to what philosophy EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. ΙΟΙ could they so naturally apply for this assistance, as to that from whence the proto-martyr of this phase of Christianity had stepped into the new religion ; which had already been applied as the solvent of the Mosaic dispensation by the Hellenising Jews ; and the intel- lectual beauties of which project the shadow of an apology for those who have denominated its founder, the divine Plato? ... “Tt was inevitable to such a scheme, that a large measure of value and efficiency should be ascribed to good works. We have already laid before the reader their opinions of the power and prevalence with God of fasting, and the other ceremonies of religion; and that they would assign the same value to the fulfilment of the moral law of the New Testament, is a corollary too self-evident to require that we should work it out. “ This was the doctrinal religion of the fathers of the second cen- tury. If the tradition, either of the Apostles, or the Apostolical Fathers, is to be received, it was not Christianity. If the works of Plato, and their own constant admissions are to be regarded it was Platonism” (ch. xv.). Origen works out, as might be expected, the problem of the Free- dom of the Human Will, more elaborately and systematically than his preceptor, Clement of Alexandria; discussing the doctrine of grace and free-will as a sort of binomial equation, with, perhaps, even- tually a preponderance in favour of the former :— “‘ He builds the house, whosoever progresses, and he keeps the city, whosoever is perfect ; but vain is the labour of the builder, and vain the watching of the watchman, except the Lord build, and the Lord keep. The power of the Lord which assists in the building of him that buildeth, and which helps him to build who is not able of him- self to complete the building, is a good beyond our own free choice: and the same must be thought about the city that is kept. And as if I should that the good in agriculture, which causes the fruit to grow, is mixed of that freedom of choice which is in the art of the farmer, and of that which is not in his free choice but from Provi- dence, that is to say, the temperature of the atmosphere, and the supply of sufficient rain; so the good of the reasonable creature is mixed, of his own free will, and the Divine power assisting with him that chooses the things that are most honest. Therefore, in order to be honest and good, there is not only need of our own free choice, and the Divine assistance, which as far as we are concerned is not in our.own choice; but this is also necessary, that he who has become honest and good, should persevere in virtue. Since he that has been made perfect, will fall again, if he is over-elated with his honesty, and claims the merit to himself, and does not pay the honour that is due to Him who has contributed much more to the acquirement and sup- port of his virtue. . . . Perhaps the holy Apostle, seeing that our free will contributed much less than the power of God to the attainment of good things, said that the end is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who has mercy. Not as if God had pity on those who did not will or who did not run, but as if the willing and 192 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. the running were nothing in comparison of the mercy of God, and therefore that it was fitting the good should be ascribed rather to the mercy of God, than to human willing or running” (Select. in Psalm). In tHE FourtH anp FirrH CENTURIES. It would be difficult to find in so few words a more complete summary of the prevalent teaching on the point before us than what Hilary gives us about the middle of the 4th century :— ‘Human weakness is incompetent to obtain anything of itself ; and this only is the duty of its nature, that it should be willing to begin to form itself into the family of God. It belongs to the mercy of God to assist those who are willing, to confirm those who begin, to receive those who come. But the beginning is from ourselves, that he may perfect it” (Tr. in Ps. exvii. lib. xvi. το). In the beginning of the 5th century, as we have seen, Pelagius brought out into boldest relief the question of the Freedom of the Will, distinctly maintaining, “That man may be without sin, and keep the commandments of God, if he will;” and that, ‘Our victory proceeds not from the help of God, but from the freedom of the will.” The Semi-Pelagians also afterwards taught, that while the grace of God is necessary to our perseverance in good works, yet it is not necessary as a prevenient power to produce the beginnings of true repentance, every individual possessing the natural strength to turn himself unto God. Augustine began life a Manichean ; and then, when on the verge of absolute scepticism, threw himself into the arms of Neo-Platonism, ravished with its illusory charms. But its ideals ever eluded his passionate grasp; and though his intellect was dazzled, his soul was at unrest and unsatisfied. He had the shell of Christianity without the kernel. Nor was it until he had passed over to the simple gospel of God—from the ideal, to the real, Christ—from the philosophy of the world, to the philosophy of faith rooted and grounded in humility and love, that he was able to throw off the shackles which bound him, and emerging from his Platonic intellectualism, spell out the innate beauty and dignity of Christianity to his own age, and to Luther and our Reformers—F wes PRACEDIT INTELLECTUM ! We do not endorse all that St. Augustine has written on the subject of Free Will, simply because we are not ready to endorse his contra- dictions. Nor could we expect such a spirit to be altogether free from the idols of its den—to show no trace whatever of the impure and traditional elements which floated around him. But while his contradictions just prove to us the main point for which we contend, namely, that the question of man’s Freedom and God’s Sovereignty is one altogether outside the sphere at least of our present understand- ings, yet it is refreshing to read the following selected from other like passages, inasmuch as it brings us back in a measure to the Divine realities of the Gospel :— ‘The will is then truly free, when it serves neither vice nor sin. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 193 Such was given by God ; and being lost by our own depravity, cannot be restored except by him who was able to give it. Accordingly Truth says, ‘If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.’ But that is the same as if he said, ‘If the Son shall save you, then you shall be saved indeed’” (De Civitate Dei, I. xiv. 11). Tue Mippie AGE. In the ninth century, through private animosity among the monks, a violent controversy arose on the kindred subjects of grace, predestina- tion, and free will, which divided the councils and writers of the day. Goteschalk, a monk of Orbais in France, was charged by his abbot and enemy, Rabanus Maurus, with “ affirming that the predestination of God related to evil as well as to good; and that there are some in the world who cannot reclaim themselves from their errors and sins, on account of the predestination of God ;” and with having ‘‘ seduced many who are negligent of their salvation, and who say, What will it profit to exert myself in the service of God?” He was defended by Ratramn, monk of Corby, Remigius, Bishop of Lyons, and many others. The second of the four articles agreed on in the Council of Chiersey, 853, which condemned him, runs thus :— “We lost freedom of will in the first man, which we recover by Christ our Lord ; and we have free will to good when prevented and aided by grace; and have free will to evil when forsaken of grace. That we have free will is because we are made free by grace and are healed of corruption by it.” The substance of one of the canons of the Council of Valence, 855, which defended him, is as follows :— “Tn regard to saving grace and ‘free will which was impaired by sin in the first man, but is recovered and made whole again by Jesus Christ in all believers in him;’ this council holds with various councils and pontiffs; and rejects the trash vended by various persons.” Whether Stoic or Platonist, Calvinist or Arminian, Goteschalk was brutally treated by his judge, the arrogant Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, who ordered him to be ‘‘ whipped with very severe stripes ” (durissimis verberibus) till he should throw the statement of his doctrine made at Mentz into the flames ; and committed him to prison in the monastery of Hautvilliers for life, where he lingered twenty years, firmly maintaining his opinions till the last. It may be judicious as a rule for the historian to smother his own feelings, and let the picture speak ; but here we cannot well help writing on the canvas—The Baptist of the Gospel of the Papacy. The cause of Goteschalk is espoused by the Benedictines, Augus- tinians, and Jansenists: the Jesuits say he was righteously con- demned. The Schoolmen of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ranged themselves into two hostile camps on the subject of Free Will—the N 194 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Dominicans, or Thomists under Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, symbolising with St. Augustine; and the Franciscans, or Scotists under Duus Scotus, the Subtle Doctor, approximating to Semi-Pelagianism. Now too was elaborated, in the course of discussion, the Scholastic Theology—a system of metaphysical and technical Divinity, originating with the Schoolmen of the eleventh century, and which gave us the names Predestination, Perseverance, Grace of Congruity (or fitness), Grace of Condignity (or desert), and the like ; or frequently occurring under some of the following articles: and all which have done incal- culable injury to the Church of God. We need not here further anticipate ourselves than to explain, that the Grace of Congruity is theologically opposed to the Grace of Condignity—the former mean- ing that it is fit and agreeable to the nature and goodness of God, though not obligatory on His justice, to bestow grace on the un- assisted efforts of man towards holiness ; the latter, that after grace is received, man arrives ata state of merit, in which he deserves and can claim at the hands of God as a right, not only further grace, but eternal happiness, Circuitous Pelagianism—man virtually working out and ensuring his own salvation. AT THE REFORMATION AND SINCE. The master-spinit of the Reformation, in his variations like Augustine on Free Will, is a further proof, if further proof is necessary, that the subject in its bearings is not to be grasped by our present understandings. The more thoughtful language, however, of both Luther and Melancthon, may be seen in the 18th and roth Articles of the Augsburg Confession, which in substance run :— “Men have some free will to live reputably, to choose among objects which their natural reason can comprehend ; but without the gracious aids of the Holy Spirit they cannot please God nor truly fear him, exercise faith, or overcome their sinful propensities. God is not the cause and author of sin; but the perverse wills of ungodly men and devils are the sole cause of it.” Calvin on the other hand, through his extremely logical mind, clearly overstepped the legitimate boundary of argument on this and allied subjects ; often unhappily couching his positions and conclu- sions in needlessly harsh and coarse phraseology :— “ We hold it therefore an indubitable truth, which can be shaken by no tricks, that the mind of man is so wholly alienated from the justice of God, that it can conceive, desire, effect nothing but what is impious, perverted, foul, impure, flagitious. The heart is so com- pletely besmeared with the venom of sin, that it can breathe forth nothing but fetid corruption ” (Institut. I. 11. 19). In the Council of Trent, we have the proverbial cunning and duplicity of Rome. She could not afford to dispense with the popular and powerful Dominicans, who were the enemies of grace de congruo, nor with the not less influential and courtly Franciscans, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 195 who were its friends. And therefore the Tridentine decree on Free Will, like others of the infallible council, is a sort of flexible jumble —a mass without joints or nerves, with a bend perhaps in favour of the Franciscans :— “Whosoever shall say that the free will of man, moved and excited by God, does not at all co-operate with God when exciting and calling, that thus he may dispose and prepare himself for obtaining the grace of justification, and that he cannot dissent though he wills it, but, like something inanimate, does nothing at all, and holds himself merely passive, let him be Anathema” (Sess. 6, Can. 4). * Whosoever shall say that the free will of man was lost and extinguished after Adam’s sin, or that it is a thing of name merely, or a name without a thing, in short, a figment introduced into the Church by Satan, let him be Anathema” (Can. 5). And yet those also were anathematised who said, that “a man could be justified without grace ;” or that “grace is given to live well with greater facility, and to merit eternal life, as if free will could do it though with more difficulty ;” or that “a man may believe, love, hope, or repent, without the prevention or assistance of the Holy Spirit.” Turning to our own Church, during the establishment of the Refor- mation, it is instructive to notice how she treats the question of Free Will. Thus in 1543, when the Church was retrograde, Gardiner being in the ascendant, Henry VIII. set forth the Necessary Doctrine, which declares that ‘‘man has free will now after the fall of Adam ;” defining it to be “a power of reason and will, by which good is chosen by the assistance of grace, or evil is chosen without the assistance of the same;” and concluding: “ All men be also to be monished, and chiefly preachers, that in this high matter, they, looking on both sides, so attemper and moderate themselves, that neither they so preach the grace of God, that they take away thereby free will, nor, on the other side, so extol free will that injury be done to the grace of God.” And in keeping with this trembling of the balance, we have Gardiner’s own words in his Declaration (Against George Joye) :— ** All such texts of Scripture as seem to attribute to man power and faculty of himself to do good, how plainly soever they be, I may gather no sense or understanding of them, but such as may agree with those texts of Scripture that show how man of himself cannot do any good thing, not so much as think a good thought, but it be by the special gift and grace of God. And how plain soever some of the texts of Scripture seem, so to consider man as to resemble him to an earthpot at the pleasure of the potter, and only to do as he is ordained to do by God, yet must we forbear to make any other sense, than such as may agree with other texts of Scripture, that declare man’s free choice to receive grace when it is offered him, or to refuse it and continue in sin,” Under Edward, in 1552, the ninth of the forty-two Articles was worded thus :— “Of Free Will.— We haue no power to dooe good woorkes pleasaunte, τοῦ EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and acceptable to God, with out the Grace of God by Christ, preuent- ing us that wee maie haue a good wille, and working in us, when we haue that wille.” But this was followed by a Prrclementary Article, the tenth, which ran :— * Of Grace.—The Grace of Christ, or the holie Ghost by him geuen, dothe take awaie the stonie harte, and geueth an harte of fleshe. And although, those that haue no will to good thinges, he maketh them to wil, and those that would euil thinges, he maketh them not to wille the same: Yet neuerthelesse he enforceth not the wil. And therfore no man when he sinneth can excuse himself, as not worthie to be blamed or condemned, by alleging that he sinned unwillinglie, or by compulsion.” If we now turn to our present Article, we shall then see the admir- able wisdom of its compilation. Free will is neither defined nor asserted ; and the supplementary tenth of 1552, about ‘making men will, yet nevertheless enforcing not the will,” is altogether omitted. Indeed were it not for the title, and the consequent implied limita- tion of its subject, we might treat it altogether as an Article on the Necessity of Grace. Since the Reformation, we have had— In THE Protestant CHURCH, At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Calvinistic camp divided into two sections Sublapsarians (sub lapswm—* after the Fall”), who besides their distinguishing opinion, that the decrees of God respecting the human family were subsequent to the fall of Adam, or contemplated that apostasy as past, held that man fell of his own will, and not in consequence of the divine preordination, And Supralapsarians (supra lapsum—“ above or before the Fall”), who maintained that God from all eternity had decreed the trans- gression of Adam, which was therefore an involuntary act of dis- obedience, and proving that man did not profess free will even in his state of innocence. About this time also arose the Arminian schism, which, based on the position of the free agency of each individual of the human race, maintained that redemption is offered indifferently to all, and that the Divine decrees were framed contingently, in accordance with the use which Adam and his posterity might make of their free will. A solecism in language, as well as in thought; for, in the quaint but well-put words of Tillotson: “It would puzzle the greatest philoso- pher that ever was, to give any tolerable account, how any knowledge whatsoever, can certainly and infallibly foresee an event through uncertain and contingent causes.” The pitched battle between the followers of Arminius and those of Calvin, at the Synod of Dort, will come more properly before us under the seventeenth Article. a —— a ᾿Ξ ΦΙΛΩΝ τ sal at i EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 197 In tHE Roman CatHouic CHuRcH. Lewis Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, professor in the Portuguese univer- sity of Ebora, at the end of the sixteenth century promulgated doc- trines substantially the same as those advocated by the Semi-Pelagians, and by the Remonstrants at Dort—that the Divine decrees as to the human race are founded on God’s scientia media, or knowledge of man’s use of his free will—the future contingencies and voluntary actions of His creatures. A contention that gave mortal offence to the Dominicans, as implicit followers of Thomas Aquinas. A little further on, after the death of the author, was published the Augustinus—a work from the pen of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres in the Netherlands, which professes to set forth and explain the opinions of St. Augustine on the state and powers of human nature, before and after the Fall. And thus again were the flames of con- troversy kindled, the Jansenists being violently opposed by the Jesuits and Franciscans. Finaily, in more modern times, and consequently lifted out of the strict sphere of ecclesiastical and denominational strife—for the tactics of the Arch-enemy would seem to be no longer so much to localise the tares of a vain philosophy, as to sow them broadcast over the churches —we have had the metaphysico-Scriptural disquisition of Jonathan Edwards on Lreedom of Will—a work which, so far as the arena of public disputation is concerned, has hitherto silenced Arminianism, and Crowned Calvinism. But how much better is the Church of the living God ? Of a truth, looking back along the whole line of battle from the days of Justin Martyr in the second century, who at least, with Pelagius in the fifth, provoked the strife, we cannot but sigh and deeply for the cause of Christ—of true and vital Christianity How sadly has the divine wisdom of the Galilean peasants, and the heavenly gnosis of St. Paul—<“ Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified ”—been obscured by the philosophy of Satan and of man! How admirable are the closing sentences of Isaac Taylor, in his Introductory Essay on Edwards’s Treatise on the Will :— “The Arminian divine, inwardly persuaded, he knows not on what ground, that human nature contains ὦ something more than the passivity of brute matter, or of animal life, has recourse to the figment of Contingent Volition ; and then, to give his unintelligible notion an appearance of consistency, has been led to the enormous error of deny- ing the Divine fore-knowledge. Thus, in his zeal to defend one attribute of Deity, he has demolished another. Why will he not be content with the simple principles of human nature, as known to all men, and as recognised in the transactions of every day, and with the plain evidence of the Bible, which always takes up and supposes the existence of those principles? “His opponent, the Calvinist, spurning the absurdities of Arminian metaphysics, believes that, when he has scattered these sophisms, he has on, | 198 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. exhausted the subject of human agency, and may triumphantly return from the vanquished field to his own theological position ; nor deems it necessary once to lay aside his high lenses, or to look abroad upon human nature as it shows itself to the naked eye of common sense. Then he goes to his Bible, cased in metaphysical certainties, and proceeds, with- out scruple or compunction, to apply the crushing engine of dogmatical exposition to all passages that do not naturally fall in with the abstractions which he has framed to himself. Meanwhile, men of sense are disgusted, and sceptics glory. How shall these evils be remedied ?—how, unless by the prevalence of a better—a genuime system of interpretation ? “But even without this better exposition, a great and important reform would spontaneously follow from a more vivid persuasion of the reality of the great facts affirmed in the Scriptures. Let but the quickening affirmations of the inspired writers be allowed to take effect on the ground of the ordinary motives of human life ; let it but be believed that the Son of God has come to inform men (his fellows, by an ineffable condescension) of a future danger to which all are liable ; and to impart to them freely a benefit they could never have obtained by their own efforts ; and then it will no more seem pertinent or necessary to adjust the terms of this message of mercy to meta- physical subtilties, than it does to do the like when a friend snatches a friend from ruin, or when a father bears his children in his arms from a scene of perils) How much mischief has arisen from the supposition that a mystery belongs to the matter of salvation, which waits to be cleared up by philosophy ! ** Philosophy, it is to be hoped, will at length work its way through its own difficulties. But the result to Christianity of so happy a success, would simply be, to set in a stronger light the enormous folly of obstructing the course of a momentous practical affair by the impertinences of learned disputation.” 2. The Scriptural View. (1.) The Theology of Texts is at once delusive, and our only guide. Delusive, if isolated, or twisted to suit preconceived and denomina- tional theory. Our only guide, if contextual, or if read in a true and obvious exegesis, and in keeping with the tenor of Holy Writ. Spurning any such wise and safe precautions—the natural dictates of common sense—the pronounced Arminian and the pronounced Cal- vinist, have waged, and may wage, perpetual and unprofitable warfare, to the utter and really consequent and inevitable neglect of the chief lessons of the Bible. (2.) Take, on the one hand, the phrase Human Depravity, and on the other hand, the phrase God’s Salvation, and see how texts, types, and figures cluster around them. They are the two threads—the warp and the woof of Holy Scripture. Man the bond-slave, and God- Man the Redeemer. Nor is there a Daysman of human merit or power between them. Sin and Grace are the factors of the Bible and our Being. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 199 It was not therefore but with deep insight into the Sacred Volume, and of the mind of the Spirit, that our Reformers penned as a supple- ment to the ninth our present Article. In the former, we have the statement that “man is very far gone from original righteousness ;” in this, we have the ‘‘longissime” drawn out to utter helplessness. Utter helplessness to do works pleasing and acceptable to God without preventing grace. Utter helplessness, even when we have a regenerated will, to do good without the co-operating grace of the Holy Ghost. Here is the voice neither of Calvin, nor of Arminins, nor of the Schoolmen—of Platonism nor Stoicism : nothing but man’s impotency, and God’s omnipotent mercy. (3.) To quote texts is to go over much the same ground as that opened up under the ninth Article. It may, however, be useful, as tending still further to establish and illustrate the positions there maintained, briefly to notice the statements before us. The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God] (a.) Because the understanding is corrupted. ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. ii. 14). (0.) Because the whole mind and conscience is defiled. ‘The carnal mind (gg6vjua—thoughts, affections, aims) is enmity against God : for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. viii. 7). ‘‘ Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure: but even their mind (ὁ vois—their rational part) and conscience is defiled” (Titusi. 15). “And therefore, uncleanness tainting their rational acts and their reflective self-recognitions, nothing can be pure to them: every occasion becomes to them an occasion of sin, every creature of God an instrument of sin; as Mack well observes, ‘ the relation, in which the sinful subject stands to the objects of its possession, or of its inclination, is a sinful one’” (Alford in loco). (c.) Because the body is corrupted. “For when we were in the flesh, the motions (τὰ waéjuara—the passions) of sins did work (2imgyeiro—middle, energised) in our members to bring forth fruit unto death” (Rom. vii. 5). “The body of the sins of the flesh” (‘‘ the domination of the flesh is a Body of Sin”) (Col. ii. 11). “‘ Neither yield ye your members as instruments (67Aa—weapons: each indivi- dual member being a different arm of lust) of unrighteousness” (Rom. vi. 13). (d.) And this entire corruption of the whole man, and of man universally—this death in trespasses and sins, proceeds originally from the Fall. “In Adam all die” (1 Cor. xv. 22). (e.) Hence, throughout the Bible, we are explicitly taught, that man cannot turn himself, of his own strength, unto God. “A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isa. xliv. 20). “Ὁ Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself; ΠΥ i ὦ —————————E———————_ = — +: ae o- , 7 200 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. x. 23). “The preparations (or, disposings) of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord” (Prov. xvi. 1). ‘Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh” (Jer. xxxi. 18, 19). “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven” (John iii. 27). “1 drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love ; and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them” (Hosea xi. 4). ‘Noman can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me... . It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the Flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John vi. 44, 45, 63). To the plain and obvious argument of some of these and like passages, it is objected, that they refer to the external and outward means of grace, and that our Free Will is exercised and manifested in accepting or rejecting the calls and drawings of God. But it is sufficient to answer, (1.) that if, as we have abundantly proved, man is the bondslave of sin, there is of necessity a bondage of the will— a helplessness of his elective component faculty to choose the good and refuse the evil; and (2.) the words of our Lord are express, “‘ Without me ye can do nothing” (John xy. 5). Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and accept- able to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will] (1.) The necessity of Preventing Grace: grace going before, antici- pating, and pre-engaging us. This doctrine follows as a natural consequence of the position that man of himself cannot turn unto God, or rather is a fuller restatement of it. Round it cluster all such passages as speak of the New Birth, the New Man, the New Creation, our being God’s Workmanship, our being Called and Turned of God, and of the Glorious Liberty into which we are brought by the Son. Take the following: “We are his workmanship (70/y4«—handiwork), created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Eph. ii. ro). ‘*The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. iv. 24). “1 am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name” (Isa. lxv. 1). “It is God which worketh ~ in you both to will and to do (ὁ ἐνεργῶν τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ evepyciv—the Energiser of the will and the work) of his good pleasure ” (Phil. 11. 13). ‘*The glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. viii. 21). “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy” (Rom. ix. 16). (2.) The necessity of Co-operating Grace. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 201 (a.) In the Parker English MS. of 1571, “ Working with us,” as more closely following the Latin (co-operante), was substituted for “Working zm us.” And we think it was well so. Great and good men have objected to the doctrine of Co-operation, but as it would seem to us, upon insufficient grounds. The true idea of Co-operation neither sullies the robe of Christ’s righteousness, nor exalts our filthy rags. But it does exalt, as well as incite men, to be “‘ workers together with God.” And this we take it is the great aim and ennobling honour of Christianity—the true essence of the liberty of the children of God. While our conversion is of God, and all our guidance and strength of God also, yet God does not call us to slothfulness, either in the business of practical life or salvation. Saved drones, if the idea is conceivable, or the expression allowable, could only be unhappy in heaven, (ὁ.) Among the vast number of passages which teach the necessity of continual assistant, or co-operating Grace, are the following :— “ Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us” (Isa. xxvi. 12). “ Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1. 6). “T can do all things in (ἐν) Christ who strengtheneth me” (Phil. iv. 13). Oh, what a rapturous thought! what humble faith ! what triumphant, universal power ! ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. xv. 10). “ For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you” (Matt. x. 20). The preponderating grace and power of God in Christ by the Holy Ghost, and the subordinate co-agency of man. “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God” (2 Cor. 111. 5). “1 am the Vine, ye are the Branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John xv. 5). “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. xi. 36). The Origin, Sub- sistence and Disposal, and Perfect End of all creation, are to be ascribed to the Three-One God. (c.) Among the multitude of passages which call upon us to press forward as rational and responsible agents, are the following :— “Run, that ye may obtain” (1 Cor. ix. 24. See the whole context, vers. 24-27). “1 press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. iii. 14). “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. v. 1). ‘‘Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee” (2 Tim. i. 6). “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. v. 19). ‘“ Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the 202 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Leader (ἀρχηγὸν) and Perfecter (τελειωτὴν) of our faith ; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Throne of God” (Heb. xii. 1, 2). “ We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain . .. but in all things approving ourselves . . . by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteous- ness on the right hand and on the left” (2 Cor. vi. 1, 4, 7. See the entire chapter.) And as embracing the whole subject of God’s Sovereignty and man’s Responsibility, we can only repeat :—‘ Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. ii. 12, 13). “ Christian! seek yet not repose,” Hear thy guardian angel say ; Thou art in the midst of foes ; ‘Watch and Pray.” Principalities and powers, Mustering their unseen array, Wait for thy unguarded hours ; “Watch and Pray.” Gird thy heavenly armour on, Wear it ever night and day ; Ambushed lies the Evil One ; “Watch and Pray.” Hear the victors who o’ercame : Still they mark each warrior’s way ; All with one sweet voice exclaim “Watch and Pray !” Hear, above all, hear thy Lord, Him thou lovest to obey ; Hide within thy heart His word, “Watch and Pray.” Watch, as if on that alone Hung the issue of the day ; Pray, that help may be sent down ; “ Watch and Pray.’ Amen, Such is something of an outline of man’s reasonings and God’s teachings upon this most momentous question. We feel we cannot more appropriately close our remarks, than in the following weighty and pregnant words, to hand as we write, of a dear friend, elsewhere quoted, to whom we owe the patient criticism, and indeed the exist- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 203 ence, of these volumes—one to whom God hath bountifully vouch- safed “a right judgment in all things ἢ :— “No doubt the question of the Freedom of the Human Will is one capable of being very profoundly argued on metaphysical grounds, but since I looked into phrenology, now some half century ago, I have felt the utmost contempt for every other method of dealing with the science of mind. If we are to accept the descriptions of man’s nature given to us in the Word of God, we are bound to believe that it is utterly corrupt, every thought and imagination of his heart being only evil continually. The natural man 18 enmity against God. And to this agree such terms as ‘regeneration,’ ‘new birth,’ &., with re- ference to man as converted to God. A being who had any good in him’ would hardly need to be born again. The better qualities could be taken hold of and strengthened and the bad ones subdued, but this is not the idea which the language brings before us. It is that of something which, being inherently and irremediably wrong, has to be set aside, and a new thing produced. The natural man has a con- science, which up to a certain point enables him to distinguish between right and wrong, and from certain motives he may sometimes prefer the former to the latter ; but these motives centre in self, and there- fore do not deserve a place among the virtues. “When we find such a writer as John Milton floundering when he begins to talk of ‘Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,’ we may well deem that the part of wisdom is to leave such discussions alone. The question has two sides. Holy Scripture puts them before us with equal plainness—God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Responsibility —how they are to be reconciled we are not told and must be content not to know.” ( 204 ) ARTICLE XI. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of the Justification of Man.—We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we ave justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification. De Hominis Justificatione.—Tantum propter meritum Domini ac Servatoris nostri Jesu Christi, per fidem, non propter opera, et merita nostra, justi coram Deo reputamur. Quare sola fide nos justificari doctrina est saluberrima, ac consolationis plenissima, ut in Homilia de Justificatione Hominis fusius explicatur. History. How shall man be just before God ? is the most momentous question of our common humanity—one which has engrossed the minds of all peoples—Patriarchs, Jews, Gentiles, Christians. And it may be well at the outset briefly to examine where each has erred. Arriving perhaps by different lines of thought and experience, the three friends of the great tribal chief of the land of Uz could only come to the same conclusion, which may be best expressed in the words of Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘God shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands.” Forgetting or despising the deep spiritual significance of sacrifice, the Jew, throughout his history, despite the evangelism of the pro- phet, and then the plain logic of St. Paul, ever and anon, up to the present hour, holds out in his hand the merit of his ceremonial obedience, as a price to satisfy God. The refined Gentiles—heathen Greek and Roman—blackened the heavens with the smoke of their hecatombs, and reared their votive temples of fabulous gold, to propitiate their deities. And the un- tutored heathen still delivers his soul by bowing down to wood and stone. Even professing Christians of our day are “working with the strength of their arms ”—mind being little of a factor—to fashion a huge idol of esthetics ; or “‘ making religion consist of little else than a self-denying course of the practice of virtue and obedience, a kind of EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 205 house-of-correction work ;” or gauging the mercy of our Heavenly Father by their feelings and frames. Verily, notwithstanding all God’s appliances, “half the world is Macedon.” Man cannot and will not see the weakness and vileness of the work of his own hands. And not a few of the members even of the once Protestant Churches of Christendom less or more deliberately ignore that Articulus Stantis aut Cadentis Ecclesie—Justification is by Faith only. How sad to find Bishop Forbes of Brechin write: ‘‘ Christ merited that the Sacra- ments should have a power of justifying, and that the good works which are necessary to the justification of adults should be sufficient for the purpose ;” and in the very face of our Article, unblushingly declare, “neither is there mention of the renouncing of our own merits as the formal cause of our justification!” (Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles, vol. 1. p. 176, and Epistle Dedicatory to Dr. Pusey, p. 10.) What a dangerous doctrine, that Christ died not as the Holy Ghost teacheth, that we might be “justified by his Blood,” but, as Dr. Forbes teaches, that He might provide for and implant in sinners a new sentiment or element on the ground and plea of which, conjoined with grace—unholy admixture—they become just before God! In other words, that justification is internal as well as exter- nal: the latter the work of God; the former founded upon man’s inherent though inwrought righteousness—strange Romish slaughter of the Queen’s English—and which indeed, as alleged, “is the genuine theological sense of the word ‘justification.’” And so, that “it would not be safe to say that the righteousness of Christ is the formal cause of our justification !”1 Alas! why all this cautious trimming ? —why (if we must use a common and incisive phrase) this super- abounding “sugar-coating”? If justification, in all its former cause and reality, is not of the righteousness of Christ alone, why desecrate that righteousness by introducing and “conjoining” it at all? Pela- gianism is bad, but Romanism, as it patches the spotless robe of Christ’s righteousness with our filthy rags—and that too in a Protes- tant Church, and by one of its dignitaries—is worse. We may be censured for this plain speaking. It is painful to us, as it should be to the school of our author. But there are desperate diseases which demand desperate remedies. And Popery, however dexterously syllabised, in our Reformed Church, is one of them. And this brings at once before us the two great opposing elements all along of Divine truth and human error in the History of the subject of our Article—God’s good pleasure, and man’s self-exaltation ignoring, less or more, the work of God. St. James wrote his Epistle probably about thirty years after the laying of the foundation-stone of the Christian Church; and the broad cast of his letter is against the Judaising of Christianity—the transposal of faith from its living place in the Christian system, to that which dead ceremonial observance occupied in the Jewish. 1 See pp. 174-184 of the Explanation. | | | 206 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. So early in Christianity, as in creation itself, was the seed of the serpent “ bruising the heel of the woman.” Nor was the work of Satan long in bringing forth its fruit. The Apostolical Fathers, as might be expected, escaped the pollution ; but the testimony of many succeeding Fathers is doubtful. Thus, thank God, in addition to the passages of the Apostolic Fathers, quoted under the preceding Article, attributing all salvation to justification by faith, or the apprehended merits of Christ— Clement could write: ‘‘Let us look stedfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious is his Blood with God; which being shed for our salvation, has obtained the grace of repentance for the whole world” (Ep. τὰ ad Corinth. 5. 7). And Barnabas could write: “For this cause the Lord endured to give his body unto death, that we might be sanctified by the remis- sion of sins, that is, by the sprinkling of his blood. For it is written concerning him partly to the people of the Jews, partly to us. But thus he speaks, ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: with his stripes we are healed. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth’” (Ep. Cathol. s. 4). And Ignatius could write: ‘By the fruits of which sufferings we are, even by his blessed passion; that he might set up a token for all ages, through his resurrection, unto his holy saints and faithful ser- vants, whether amongst the Jews, or amongst the Gentiles, in one body of his Church. For all these things he suffered for our sakes, that we might be saved” (Ad Smyrn. s. 1, 2). But alas the testimony of too many of those who succeeded the Apostolic Fathers—the stumbling-block of free will having been introduced by Justin—is discordant and self-contradictory ; so much so that Romanists and Protestants may extract, and have abundantly extracted, passages from the patristic writings in favour respectively of their mutually antagonistic creeds. 3 Even Augustine could not determine on the words of St. Paul, “The doers of the law shall be justified” (Rom. 11. 13), whether justification means making, or esteeming, just. It is true the days here of great controversy and sharp technical debate had not yet come; and this is put forward with some plausi- bility to cover the want of firm footing in the patristic testimony. Still we cannot but conclude that there was a far deeper lesion of truth, when we find such a practical and ethical divine as Chrysostom write on Rom. iv. 7 (‘‘ Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven ἢ): “He seems to be bringing a testimony beside his purpose. For it does not say, Blessed are they whose faith is reckoned for righteous- ness. But he does so purposely, not inadvertently, to show the greater excellence. For if he be blessed that by grace received forgiveness, much more he that is made just and that manifests faith ;” and again on Rom. v. 16 (“The free gift is of many offences unto justification ”): “It was not only, that sins were done away, but that righteousness was given. So deeply indeed had the Justinian EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 207 taint infected even this truly pious and noble man, that his favourite maxim was, If we but wit, nothing can harm us. ‘God comes not with his gifts before our will: but if we only begin, if we only will, he gives us many means of salvation” (Hom. 18 Joh.), But yet on the other hand, whenever or wherever the virus of philosophy was inert, the testimony of the Fathers is explicit and unwavering. Treneeus: “ For the Faith, which is towards the Most High God, justifieth man” (Adv. Heres. iv. 5). “For the just shall live by faith.’ Now this doctrine ‘that the just shall live by faith,’ was fore- told by the Prophets” (Adv. Heres. iv. 34). Clement of Alexandria: ‘Abraham was justified, not by works, but by faith” (Strom. i. 7). Origen: “I can scarcely persuade myself that there can be any work that can demand a recompense from God as a debt, seeing that our power to do, or think, or speak anything, proceeds from his free gift and bounty ” (Ep. ad Rom. iv. 1). Cyprian: “It is faith alone which profits us” (Test. ad Quirin. lil. 43). Basil: ‘“ This is the perfect and only glorying in God, when one is not lighted up with his own righteousness, but acknowledgeth that he wanteth the true righteousness, and that it is by faith only in Christ that he can be justified ” (De Hum. s. 3). Ambrose: ‘A sinner is justified before God by faith only” (Ep. ad Rom.). Chrysostom: “ What did Abraham lose by not being under the law? Nothing; for faith alone was sufficient for his justification” (Ep, ad Gal. iii. 6). Jerome: “ Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness ; and so will faith alone suffice you also for righteous- ness. . . . But because none is justified by the law, seeing no one keeps it, it is therefore said, that believers are to be justified by faith only ” (in Gal. iii.). Augustine: ‘‘ When therefore the Apostle says ‘that a man is justified through faith without the works of the law; this is not his object, that, after the delivery and profession of faith, works of right- eousness can be despised, but that each man may know that he can be justified through faith, although the works of the law have not gone before. For they follow after one who is justified, not go before one who shall be justified” (De Fide et Operibus, xiv. 21). And again: “Forasmuch as in the old Law sacrifices for sins were called ‘sins ;’ which He truly was made, whereof they were shadows. Hence the Apostle, after he had said, ‘We beseech you for Christ to be reconciled to God ;’ straightway adds and says, ‘ Him who knew no sin, he made sin for us, that we may be the righteousness of God in Him.’ He says not, as in certain faulty copies is read, ‘He who knew- no sin, for us wrought sin ;’ as if Christ Himself had sinned for us: but he says, ‘Him who had not known sin,’ that is, Christ, ‘God, to whom we are to be reconciled, made sin for us,’ that is, a Sacrifice for 208 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. sins, through Which we might be able to be reconciled. He therefore sin, as we righteousness ; nor that of our own, but of God; nor in us, but in Him: as He sin, not His own, but ours; which that it had not place in Him, but in us, He showed by the likeness of the flesh of sin, in which He was crucified ” (De Fide, Spe. et Caritate xli. 13). Now all this, with innumerable other passages from the Fathers on either side—a deep substratum of Scriptural truth, marred and over- laid with man’s unsanctified reasoning—enables us to arrive, as by a process of actual demonstration, at the clear and positive conclusion, that the Romish doctrine of implanted inherent righteousness, or of ex opere operato Sacramental grace, as the ground of our justification, is traceable, really and substantially, to the introduction on the one hand of the Platonic philosophy with its earthly accretions into the Church, and on the other hand, to the carnal Judaic principle of the virtue in themselves of sacrificial rites and ceremonial observances, Platonism enabled Clement of Alexandria to give faith new epithets calling it Ἑκούσιος πίσπις, free-will faith, and τέχνη φυσικὴ, a natural art ! And Judaism, as we have observed, translated faith into legal merit or barren orthodoxy. Fruitful soils for the Church of Rome, the Council of Trent, and our Tractarian Apostasy. The Schoolmen, as indeed was only natural—the evangel of the Bible being long lost to the world—cast into their crucible of dialectic argument and subtle distinctions the old but still floating elements of philosophic Christianity ; not to purge them of their dross, but to fuse and pour them out into new Aristotelian, the now more fashionable moulds. It was a reunion, to some extent, of the Porch and the Grove; and a phenomenal reaction the while, of the West and its hard Latinity upon the East and Origen. Bcethias, a Roman, and probably a heathen, statesman under the Gothic kings, published with other like manifold treatises his Consolation of Philosophy, which was translated by Alfred the Great into Anglo-Saxon (and afterwards into English by Chaucer and by Queen Elizabeth). Without violently impugning the Platonic philosophy, he, like most of the younger Platonists, also approved the precepts of Aristotle, and thus formed a sort of dualistic basis, though with a less or more decided Aristotelian strain, for the so-called scholastic theology of the Middle Ages. Hence that crop of dull and profitless, or pernicious, verbal erystallisations, which cost the Church untold wealth of time, and lost vast opportuni- ties for good. We may be told, and we have been told, that out of the chaos came order and light. Itmay beso. God often turns pessimism into optimism. But we think, that evil is scarcely to be desiderated by us mortals, that good may come. At all events, is the good in this instance worth the cost? Humbling ideas we certainly have suggested by the jargon and lifeless theology of the Schools; and though a more accurate and perhaps truer nomenclature and philosophy followed, yet is salvation made easier, or more widely circulated and extended? We trow not. Meritum de congruo and meritum de condigno (merit, as we have seen, respectively before and after grace is obtained) ; attrition and EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 209 contrition (compunction for sin, also respectively before and after grace) ; penance added to attrition, and works of satisfaction, with ghostly absolution, enjoined and enacted by the power of the keys to still the conscience, carry the sinner mayhap to contrition, and avert the temporal punishment due to his sins; ex opere operato (the saving grace of the Sacraments per se) ; fides informis and fides formata (merely speculative faith, and faith which is perfected by good works as the official ground or instrument of salvation) ; and lastly justifica- tion, though defined to be the remission of sins, yet manifestly under- stood as the consequent of grace infused: are some of the products of the scholastic doctors, which bear upon the history of the subject of our Article; logical and unedifying or baneful subtleties applied to theological discussions, by which they amused or bewildered their own minds, and glamoured or disgusted the people. A mash of sterile philosophy, heathenism, and the husks of Christianity ; to the destruction, we may fear, of many souls. Now let us enter with Luther upon this scene, and we shall not be surprised, taking into account his idiosynerasy and lion-heart, at the home-thrusts which he dealt at “the divinity of the kingdom of Antichrist ;” nor, taking into account the impetuosity of his foes and the distractions of the deepened combat, shall we wonder if the all but single-handed champion of the Reformation was drawn into occasional vehement, or perhaps inaccurate, utterances. The godless and blasphemous Nomos of pre-Reformation times was enough to betray even the mildest and most cautious Evangelical into seeming Antimonial abandon. Just as in the present day, when men find themselves surrounded by the meshes of Ritualistic bondage, they * are likely at times to fall into language which a century hence may be translated by a shallow critic into virulent or direct opposition to all ritual and ecclesiastical order. The standpoint of all true, honest criticism and history is, the circumstance of the case and the time. We might not dwell long on Luther's views of Justification, inas- much as his well-known formula, Justification is by Faith Only, so fully expresses them. But still, as it is a duty, no less than a pleasure, to “walk about Zion, and go round about her, telling the towers thereof,” we would cordially invite the reader to accompany us in the following lengthy but most valuable extracts from Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, which show how he “set his heart to the bulwarks” of the Reformation ; and by the lever of the all-important doctrine of our Article, shook the Popedom, and un- slaved the world, For the student who may desire to prove a faithful watchman on the walls of the dear old once Protestant Church of England, it seems to us to be absolutely necessary that he should carefully trace these and other lines of our great Reformers, Rugged he may occasionally find them, but nevertheless they have the clear ring of loyalty to God and His blessed Word. Rough as may be at times the casing of the weapon, it is yet a trusty blade, “If,” said Luther, “I have exceeded the bounds of moderation, the monstrous turpitude of the ο 210 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. times has transported me.” Nor indeed can we otherwise well account for the feebleness of protest on the part of too many of the rising generation of ministers, than that among the text-books of our Theological Colleges, a place is seldom if ever found for the works of these wonderful and heroic past leaders of the Faith and of Pro- testantism. And it is in some measure to supply that deficiency, that we are tempted to enlarge this Article somewhat beyond our usual space ; sincerely hoping at the same time, that some one may be prompted to furnish a compendium of the works of the early re- formers, and others who have more closely followed in their footsteps, as a convenient text-book for students in divinity. LUTHER ON JUSTIFICATION, “Know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we, I say, have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law. Because by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified.” —Gal. ii. 16. Know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ—‘ This word [the work of the law] reacheth far, and comprehendeth much. We take the work of the law there- fore generally for that which is contrary to grace. Whatsoever is not grace, is the law, whether it be judicial, ceremonial, or the ten com- mandments. Wherefore, if thou couldst do the works of the law _ according to this commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,’ &c. (which no man yet ever did or could do), yet thou shouldst not be justified before God: for a man is not justified by the works of the law. But hereof we will speak more largely hereafter. “The work of the law, then, according to Paul, signifieth the work of the whole law, whether it be judicial, ceremonial, or moral. Now, if the work of the moral law do not justify, much less doth circum- cision justify, which is a work of the ceremonial law. Wherefore, when Paul saith (as he oftentimes doth) ‘that a man is not justified by the law, or by the works of the law’ (which are both one), he speaketh generally of the whole law, setting the righteousness of faith against the righteousness of the whole law. ‘For by the right- eousness of the law,’ saith he, ‘a man is not pronounced righteous before God: but the righteousness of faith God imputeth freely through grace, for Christ’s sake.’ The law, no doubt, is holy, righteous, and good, and consequently the works of the law are holy, righteous, and good: yet notwithstanding a man is not justified thereby before God. “ Now, the works of the law may be done either before justifica- tion or after. There were many good men even amongst the Pagans, as Xenophon, Aristides, Fabius, Cicero, Pomponius, Atticus, and 1 We follow Middleton’s excellent Translation. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 200 others, which before justification performed the deeds of the law, and did notable works. Cicero suffered death valiantly im a good and just cause. Pomponius was a constant man, and loved truth, for he never made a lie himself, nor could suffer the same in any other. Now, constancy and truth are noble virtues and excellent works of the law, and yet were they not justified thereby. After justification, Peter, Paul, and all other Christians have done and do the works of the law, yet are they not justified thereby. ‘I know not myself guilty in anything (saith Paul), and yet am I not thereby justified’ (1 Cor. iv. 4). We see then that he speaketh not of any part of the law, but of the whole law, and all the works thereof. “Tae Divinity oF THE PorisH SOPHISTERS, COMMONLY CALLED THE SCHOOLMEN. «‘ Wherefore, the wicked and pernicious opinion of the Papists is utterly to be condemned, which attributes the merit of grace and remission of sins to the work wrought. For they say, that a good work before grace, is able to obtain grace of congruence (which they call meritum de congruo), because it is meet that God should reward such a work. But when grace is obtained, the work following deserveth everlasting life of due debt and worthiness, which they call meritum de condigno. As for example: if a man being in deadly sin, without grace, do a good work of his own good natural inclination : that is, if he say or hear a mass, or give alms and such like, this man of congruence deserveth grace. When he hath thus obtained grace, he doth now a work which of worthiness deserveth everlasting life. For the first, God is no debtor: but because he is just and good, it behoveth him to approve such a good work, though it be done in deadly sin, and to give grace for such a service. But when grace is obtained, God is become a debtor, and is constrained of right and duty to give eternal life. For now it is not only a work of free will, done according to the substance, but also done in grace, which maketh a man acceptable unto God, that is to say, in charity. “This is the divinity of the Antichristian kingdom; which here I recite, to the end that the disputation of Paul may be the better understood (for two contrary things being set together, may be the better known): and moreover, that all men may see how far from the truth these blind guides and leaders of the blind have wandered, and how by this wicked and blasphemous doctrine they have not only darkened the gospel, but have taken it clean away, and buried Christ utterly. For if I, being in deadly sin, can do any little work which is not only acceptable in God’s sight of itself, and according to the sub- stance, but also is able to deserve grace of congruence, and when I have received grace, 1 may do works according to grace, that is to say, according to charity, and get of right and duty eternal life; what need have I now of the grace of God, forgiveness of sins, of the pro- mise, and of the death and victory of Christ? Christ is now to me unprofitable, and his benefit of none effect: for I have free will and 212 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. power to do good works, whereby I deserve grace of congruence, and afterwards by the worthiness of my work, eternal life. *“Such monstrous and horrible blasphemies should have been set forth to the Turks and Jews, and not to the Church of Christ. And hereby it plainly appeareth, that the Pope, with his bishops, doctors, priests, and all his religious rabble, had no knowledge or regard of holy matters, and that they were not careful for the health of the silly and miserable scattered flock. For if they had seen, but as it were through a cloud, what Paul calleth sin, and what he calleth grace, they would never have compelled the people to believe such abominations and execrable lies. By deadly sin they understocd only the external work committed against the law, as murder, theft, and such like. They could not see, that ignorance, hatred, and contempt of God in the heart, ingratitude, murmuring against God, and resist- ing the will of God, are also deadly sins, and that the flesh cannot think, speak, or do anything, but that which is devilish and alto- gether against God. If they had seen these mischiefs fast rooted in the nature of man, they would never have devised such impudent and execrable dreams touching the desert of congruence and worthi- MESS: τ ἐς “Wherefore, saith Paul, we utterly deny the merit of congruence and worthiness, and affirm, that these speculations are nothing else but mere deceits of Satan, which were never done in deed, nor notified by any examples. For God never gave to any man grace and ever- lasting life for the merit of congruence or worthiness. These disputa- tions therefore of the schoolmen, are nothing else but vain toys and dreams of idle brains, to no other end and purpose but to draw men from the true worship of God. And hereupon is the whole papacy grounded. For there is no religious person, but he hath this imagina- tion : I am able by the observation of my holy order to deserve grace of congruence, and by the work, which I do after that I have received this grace, I am able to heap up such a treasure of merit, as shall not only be sufficient for me to obtain eternal life, but also to give or sell unto others. Thus have all the religious orders taught, and thus have they lived. And to defend this horrible blasphemy against Christ, the Papists do at this day attempt against us what they can. And there is not one of them all, but the more holy hypocrite and merit- monger he is, the more cruel and deadly enemy he is to the Gospel of Christ. “THe Tru—E Way To CHRISTIANITY. “‘ Now, the true way to Christianity is this, that a man do first acknowledge himself by the law, to be a sinner, and that it is impos- sible for him to do any good work. For the law saith, ‘Thou art an evil tree, and therefore all that thou thinkest, speakest, or dost, is against God’ (Matt. vil. 17). Thou canst not therefore deserve grace by thy works: which if thou go about to do, thou doublest thy offence: for since thou art an evil tree, thou canst not but bring forth evil fruits, that is to'say, sins. ‘For whatsoever is not of faith, is EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 213 sin’ (Rom, xiv. 23). Wherefore he that would deserve grace by works going before faith, goeth about to please God with sins, which is nothing else but to heap sin upon sin, to mock God, and to provoke his wrath. When a man is thus taught and instructed by the law, then is he terrified and humbled, then he seeth indeed the greatness of his sin, and cannot find in himself one spark of the love of God; therefore he justifieth God in his word, and confesseth that he is euilty of death and eternal damnation. The first part then of Chris- tianity is the preaching of repentance, and the knowledge of ourselves. “The second part is: if thou wilt be saved, thou mayest not seek salvation by works: ‘ For God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. He was crucified and died for thee, and offered up thy sins in his own body.’ Here is no congruence or work done before grace, but wrath, sin, terror and death. Wherefore the law doth nothing else but utter sin, terrify and humble, and by this means prepareth us to justification, and driveth us to Christ. For God hath revealed unto us by his word, that he will be unto us a merciful Father, and without our deserts (seeing we can deserve nothing) will freely give unto us remission of sins, righteousness, and life everlasting tor Christ his Son’s sake. For God giveth his gifts freely unto all men, and that is the praise and glory of his divinity. But the justiciaries and merit-mongers will not receive grace and everlasting life of him freely, but will deserve the same by their own works. For this cause they would utterly take from him the glory of his divinity. To the end therefore that he may maintain and defend the same, he is constrained to send his law before, which, as a lightning and thundering from heaven, may bruise and break those hard rocks, “This briefly is our doctrine as touching Christian righteousness, contrary to the abominations and blasphemies of the Papists, concern- ing the merit of congruence and worthiness, or works before grace and after grace... . For Paul here plainly affirmeth, ‘that no man is justified by the works of the law either going before grace (whereof he speaketh in this place) or coming after grace. You see then that Christian righteousness is not such an essential quality engrafted in the nature of man, as the schoolmen do imagine, when they say : “(Tae Divinity oF THE ScHOOLMEN :) “When a man doth any good work, Ged accepteth it, and for this good work he poureth into him charity, which they call charity in- fused.—This charity, say they, is a quality remaining in the heart, and this they call formal righteousness (which manner of speaking it is expedient for you to know), and they can abide nothing less than to hear that this quality, forming and adorning the soul, as whiteness doth the wall, should not be counted righteousness. They can climb no higher than to this cogitation of man’s reason, that man is righteous by his own formal righteousness, which is grace making him accept- able unto God, that is to say charity. So to this quality cleaving 214 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. unto the soul, that is to wit, charity (which is a work after the law, for the law saith, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,’ &c.), they attribute formal righteousness, that is to say, true Christian righteous- ness, and they say that this righteousness is worthy of everlasting life, and he that hath it is formally righteous: and moreover he is effectually or actually righteous, because he now doth good works, whereunto everlasting life is due.—This is the opinion of the Popish schoolmen, yea, even of the best of them all. “Some others there be which are not so good, as Scotus and Occam, which said, ‘that for the obtaining of the grace of God, this charity infused or given of God, is not necessary: but that a man ever by his own natural strength may procure this charity above all things.’ For so reasonable Scotus: if a man may love a creature, a young man a maiden, a covetous man money, which are the less good, he may also love God, which is the greater good. If he have a love of the creature through his natural strength, much more hath he a love of the Creator. With this argument were all the sophisters convicted, and none of them all was able to refute it. Notwithstanding thus they reply : “The scripture compelleth us to confess, say they, that God, besides that natural love and charity which is engrafted in us (wherewith alone he is not contented) requireth also charity, which he himself giveth. And hereby they accuse God as a tyrant and a cruel exactor, who is not content that we keep and fulfil his law, but above the law (which we-ourselves are able to fulfil) requireth also, that we should accomplish it with other circumstance and furniture, as apparel to the same. Asif a mistress should not be contented that her cook had dressed her meat excellently well, but should chide her for that she did not prepare the same, being decked with precious apparel and adorned with a crown of gold. Now, what a mistress were this, who when her cook had done all that she was bound to do, and also exactly performed the same, would moreover require that she should wear such ornaments as she could not have? Even so, what a one should God be, if he should require his law to be fulfilled of us (which not- withstanding by our own natural strength we observe and fulfil) with such furniture as we cannot have ? “ But here, lest they should seem to avouch contrary things, they make a distinction, and say that the law is fulfilled two manner of ways: first, according to the substance of the deed, and secondly, according to the mind of the commander. According to the substance of the deed, say they, we may fulfil all things which the law com- mandeth, but not according to the mind of the commander, which is, that God is not contented that thou hast done all things which are commanded in the law [although he can require no more of thee], but he further requireth, that thou shouldst fulfil the law in charity : not that charity which thou hast by nature, but that which is above nature and heavenly, which he himself giveth. And what is this else but to make of God a tyrant and a tormentor, which requtireth that of us which we are notable to perform? And it is in a manner as much as EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 215 if they should say, that the fault is not in us if we be damned, but in God, which with this circumstance requireth his law to be accomplished of us, “These things I do the more diligently repeat, that you may see how far they have strayed from the true sense of the scripture, which have said that by our own natural strength we may love God above all things, or at least by the work wrought we may deserve grace and everlasting life. And because God is not content that we fulfil the law according to the substance of the deed, but will have us also to fulfil the same according to the mind of the commander: therefore the scripture further compelleth us to have a quality above nature poured into us from above, and that is charity, which they call formal righteousness, adorning and beautifying faith, being also the cause that faith justifieth us. So faith is the body, and the shell: charity the life, the kernel, the form and furniture. These are the monstrous dreams of the schoolmen. “But we, in the stead of this charity, do place faith, and we say, that faith apprehendeth Jesus Christ, who is the form which adorneth and furnisheth faith, as the colour adorneth and beautifieth the wall. Christian faith, therefore, is not an idle quality or empty husk in the heart, which may be in deadly sin until charity come and quicken it: but if it be true faith, is a sure trust and confidence in the heart, and a firm consent whereby Christ is apprehended: so that Christ is the object of faith, yea rather even in faith Christ himself is present. Faith therefore is a certain obscure knowledge, or rather darkness which seeth nothing ; and yet Christ, apprehended by faith, sitteth in this darkness: like as God in Sinai and in the Temple sat in the ‘midst of darkness,’ &c. (Exod. xix. 9; 1 Kings viii. 10). Wherefore our formal righteousness is not charity furnishing and beautifying faith, but it is faith itself, which is, as it were, a certain cloud in our hearts: that is to say, a stedfast trust and affiance in the thing which we see not, which is Christ: who although he be not seen at all, yet he is present. “Faith therefore justifieth, because it apprehendeth and _possesseth this treasure, even Christ present. But this presence cannot be com- prehended of us, because it is in darkness, as I have said. Where- fore, where assured trust and affiance of the heart is, there Christ is present, yea, even in the cloud of obscurity and faith. And this is the true formal righteousness, whereby a man is justified, and not by charity, as the Popish schoolmen do most wickedly affirm. “To conclude, like as the schoolmen say, that charity furnisheth and adorneth faith: so do we say, that it is Christ which furnisheth and adorneth faith, or rather, that he is the very form and perfection of faith. Wherefore Christ apprehended by faith, and dwelling in the heart, is the true Christian righteousness, for the which God counteth us righteous, and giveth us eternal life. Here is no work of the law, no charity, but a far other manner of righteousness, and a certain new world beyond and above the law. For Christ or faith is not the law, nor the work of the law. But concerning this 216 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. matter, which the schoolmen neither well understood nor taught, we intend to speak more largely hereafter. Now it shall be enough that we have shewed, that Paul speaketh not here of the ceremonial law only, but of the whole law. “Tae True Rute or CHRISTIANITY. “Contrary to these vain trifles and doting dreams (as we have also noted before) we teach faith, and give a true rule of Christianity in this sort: first, that a man must be taught by the law to know him- self, that so he may learn to say with the prophet: ‘ All have sinned, and have need of the glory of God.’ Also, ‘There is not one righteous, no not one: not one that understandeth, not one that seeketh after God: all have gone astray.’ Also, ‘Against thee only have I sinned’ (Rom. i. 23; Ps. xiv: 33 Ps. lim 3; Ps. li. 4). Thus we, by “ameon: trary way, do drive men from the merit of congruence and worthiness, Now, when a man is humbled by the law, and brought to the know- ledge of himself, then followeth true repentance (for true repentance beginneth at the fear and judgment of God), and he seeth himself to be so great a sinner, that he can find no means how he may be delivered from his sins by his own strength, works or merits. Then he perceiveth well what Paul meaneth when he saith, ‘that man is the servant and bond-slave of sin.’ Also, ‘that God hath shut up all under sin’ (Rom. vil. 14; Rom. xi. 32; Rom. ili. 10), and that the whole world is guilty before God, &c.; then he seeth that all the divinity of the schoolmen, touching the merit of congruence and worthiness, is nothing else but mere foolishness, and that by this means the whole Papacy falleth. “‘ Here now he beginneth to sigh, and saith in this wise: Who then can give succour? For he being thus terrified with the law, utterly despaireth of his own strength: he looketh about, and sigheth for the help of a mediator and saviour. Here then cometh in good time the healthful word of the gospel, and saith, ‘Son, thy sins are forgiven thee’ (Matt. ix. 2). Believe in Christ Jesus crucified for thy sins. If thou feel thy sins and the burden thereof, look not upon them in thyself, but remember that they are translated and laid upon Christ, whose stripes have made thee whole (Isa. liii. 5). “This is the beginning of health and salvation. By this means we are delivered from sin, justified and made inheritors of everlasting life ; not for our own works and deserts, but for our faith, whereby we lay hold upon Christ. Wherefore we also do acknowledge a quality and a formal righteousness of the heart: not charity (as the sophisters do) but faith, and yet so notwithstanding, that the heart must behold and apprehend nothing but Christ the Saviour. And here it is necessary that you know the true definition of Christ. The schoolmen being utterly ignorant hereof, have made Christ a judge and a tormentor, devising this fond fancy concerning the merit of congruence and worthiness. “‘ But Christ, according to his true definition, is no lawgiver, but a EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 217 forgiver of sins, and a saviour. This doth faith apprehend, and undoubtedly believe, that he hath wrought works and merits of con- gruence and worthiness before and after grace abundantly. For he might have satisfied for all the sins of the world by one only drop of his blood ; but now he hath shed it plentifully, and hath satisfied abundantly (Heb. ix.), ‘By his own blood hath he entered into the holy place once for all, and obtained eternal redemption.’ Also Rom. iii. and iv. ‘And we are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a reconciliation unto us, through faith in his blood.’ Wherefore it is a great matter to lay hold upon Christ, by faith, bearing the sins of the world. And this faith alone is counted for righteousness. “ Here is to be noted, that these three things, faith, Christ, accep- tation or imputation, must be joined together. Faith taketh hold of Christ, and hath him present, and holdeth him inclosed, as the ring doth the precious stone. And whosoever shall be found having this confidence in Christ apprehended in the heart, him will God account for righteous. This is the mean, and this is the merit whereby we attain the remission of sins and righteousness. ‘ Because thou be- lievest in me, saith the Lord, and thy faith layeth hold upon Christ, whom I have freely given unto thee, that he might be thy mediator and high priest, therefore be thou justified and righteous.’ Wherefore God doth accept or account us as righteous, only for our faith in Christ. “And this acceptation, or imputation, is very necessary: first, because we are not yet perfectly righteous, ‘but while we remain in this life, sin dwelleth still in our flesh τ᾿ and this remnant of sin God purgeth in us. Moreover we are sometimes left of the Holy Ghost, and fall into sins, as did Peter, David, and other holy men. Not- withstanding we have always recourse to this article: ‘That our sins are covered, and that God will not lay them to our charge’ (Ps. xxxii. and Rom. iv.). Not that sin is not in us (as the Papists have taught, saying, that we must be always working well until we feel that there is no guilt of sin remaining in us); yea, sin is indeed always in us, and the godly do feel it, but it is covered, and is not imputed unto us of God, for Christ’s sake: whom because we do apprehend by faith, all our sins are now no sins. But where Christ and faith be not, there is no remission or covering of sins, but mere imputation of sins and condemnation. Thus will God glorify his Son, and will be glorified himself in us through him. ““When we have thus taught faith in Christ, then do we teach also good works. Because thou hast laid hold upon Christ by faith, through whom thou art made righteousness, begin now to work well. Love God and thy neighbour, call upon God, give thanks unto him, praise him, confess him. These are good works indeed, which flow out of this faith, and this cheerfulness conceived in the heart, for that we have remission of sins freely by Christ. “ΝΟΥ͂ what cross or affliction soever does afterwards ensue, is easily borne, and cheerfully suffered. . . . “We therefore do make this definition of a Christian: that a 218 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Christian is not he which hath no sin, but he to whom God imputeth not his sin, through faith in Christ. This doctrine bringeth great consolation to poor afflicted consciences in serious and inward terrors... . ‘‘ Wherefore this doctrine of the schoolmen, with their ceremonies, masses, and infinite foundation of the papistical kingdom, are most abominable blasphemies against God, sacrileges and plain denials of Christ, as Peter hath foretold in these words: ‘There shall be,’ ὅσ. (2 Pet. ii. 1). As though he would say: the Lord hath redeemed and bought us with his blood, that he might justify and save us; this is the way of righteousness and salvation. But there shall come false teachers, which denying the Lord, shall blaspheme the way of truth, of righteousness, and salvation ; they shall find out new ways of false- hood and destruction, and many shall follow their damnable ways. Peter, throughout this whole chapter, most lively painteth out the Papacy, which, neglecting and despising the gospel of faith in Christ, hath taught the works and traditions of men; as the merit of con- gruence and worthiness, the difference of days, meats, vows, invoca- tion of saints, pilgrimages, purgatory, and such like. In these fan- tastical opinions the Papists are so misled, that it is impossible for them to understand one syllable of the gospel, of faith, or of Christ. “ And this the thing itself doth well declare. For they take that privilege unto themselves which belongeth unto Christ alone. He only forgiveth sins, he only giveth righteousness and everlasting life. And they most impudently and wickedly do vaunt that they are able to obtain these things by their own merits and worthiness before and after grace. This, saith Peter and the other apostles, is to bring in damnable heresies and sects of perdition. For by these means they deny Christ, tread His blood under their feet, blaspheme the Holy Ghost, and despise the grace of God. Wherefore no man can suffi- ciently conceive how horrible the idolatry of the Papists is. As in- estimable as the gift is which is offered unto us by Christ, even so and no less abominable are these profanations of the Papists. _Where- fore they ought not to be lightly esteemed or forgotten, but diligently weighed and considered. And this maketh very much also for the amplifying of the grace of God, and benefit of Christ, as by the con- trary. For the more we know the profanation of the papistical mass, so much the more we abhor and detest the same, and embrace the true use of the holy communion, which the Pope hath taken away, and hath made merchandise thereof, that being bought for money, it might profit others. For he saith, that the massing priest, an apostate, denying Christ and blaspheming the Holy Ghost, standing at the altar, doth a good work, not only for himself, but also for others, both quick and dead, and for the whole Church, and that only by the work wrought, and by no other means. ‘‘Wherefore even by this we may plainly see the inestimable patience of God, in that he hath not long ago destroyed the whole Papacy, and consumed it with fire and brimstone, as he did Sodom and Gomorrah. But now these jolly fellows go about, not only to EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 219 cover, but highly to advance their impiety and filthiness. This we may in no case dissemble. We must therefore with all diligence set forth the article of Justification, that, as a most clear sin, it may bring to light the darkness of their hypocrisy, and discover their filthiness and shame. For this cause we do so often repeat, and so earnestly set forth the righteousness of faith, that the adversaries may be con- founded, and this article established and confirmed in our hearts. And this is a most necessary thing ; for if we once lose this sun, we fall again into our former darkness. And most horrible it is, that the Pope should ever be able to bring this to pass in the church, that Christ should be denied, trodden under foot, spit upon, blasphemed, yea, and that even by the gospel and sacraments ; which he hath so darkened, and turned into such horrible abuse, that he hath made them to serve him against Christ, for the establishing and confirming of his detestable abominations. O deep darkness! O horrible wrath of God! Even we, I say, have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified.—‘ This is the true mean of becoming a Christian, even to be justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and not by the works of the law. Here we must stand, not upon the wicked gloss of the schoolmen, which say, that faith then justifieth, when charity and good works are joined withal. With this pestilent gloss the sophisters have darkened and corrupted this, and other like sentences in Paul, wherein he manifestly attributeth justification to faith only in Christ. But when aman heareth that he ought to believe in Christ, and yet notwith- standing faith justifieth not except it be formed and furnished with charity, by and by he falleth from faith, and thus he thinketh: If faith without charity justifieth not, then is faith in vain and unprofit- able, and charity alone justifieth ; for except faith be formed with charity, it is nothing. “* And to confirm this pernicious and pestilent gloss, the adversaries do allege this place (1 Cor. xiii. 1): ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, I have no love, Iam nothing.’ And this place is their brazen wall. But they are men without understanding, and therefore they can see or understand nothing in Paul: and by this false interpretation, they have not only perverted the words of Paul, but have also denied Christ, and buried all his benefits. Wherefore we must avoid this gloss as a most deadly and devilish poison, and conclude with Paul, ‘that we are justified, not by faith furnished with charity, but by faith only, and alone.’ “We grant that we must teach also good works and charity, but it must be done in time and place, that is to say, when the question is concerning works, and toucheth not this article of justification. But here the question is, By what means we are justified, and attain eternal life? To this we answer, with Paul, ‘that by faith only in Christ we are pronounced righteous, and not by the works of the law or charity :’ not because we reject good works, but for that we will not suffer ourselves to be removed from this anchor-hold of our salva 220 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. tion, which Satan most desireth. Wherefore, since we are now in the matter of justification, we reject and condemn all good works; for this place will admit no disputation of good works. In this matter therefore we do generally cut off all laws, and all the works of the law. “ But the law is good, just, and holy. True, it is. But when we are in the matter of justification, there is no time or place to speak of the law: but the question is, what Christ is, and what benefit He hath brought unto us? Christ is not the law; he is not my work, or the work of the law; he is not my charity, my obedience, my poverty ; but he is the Lord of life and death, a mediator, a saviour, a redeemer of those that are under the law and sin. In him we are by faith, and he in us. The bridegroom must be alone with the bride in his secret chamber, all the servants and family being put apart. But afterwards, when the door is open, and he cometh forth, then let the servants and handmaidens return, to minister unto them : then let charity do her office, and let good works be done. “We must learn therefore to discern all laws, yea, even the law of God, and all works, from the promise of the gospel, and from faith, that we may define Christ rightly. For Christ is no law, and there- fore he is no exacter of the law and works, ‘ but he is the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world’ (John i. 29). This doth faith alone lay hold of, and not charity, which notwithstanding, as a certain thankfulness, must follow faith. Wherefore victory over sin and death, salvation and everlasting life, came not by the law, nor by the works of the law, nor yet by the power of free-will, but by the Lord Jesus Christ only and alone. That we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law.—‘ Paul speaketh not here of the ceremonial law only, as before we have said, but of the whole law ; for the ceremonial law was as well the law of God, as the moral law. As for example, cireum- cision, the institution of the priesthood, the service and ceremonies of the Temple, were as well commanded of God, as the ten command- ments. Moreover, when Abraham was commanded to offer up his son Isaac in sacrifice, it was a law. This work of Abraham pleased God no less than other works of the ceremonial law did, and yet was he not justified by this work, but by faith; for the scripture saith: ‘ Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness’ (Gen. xv. 6; Rom. iv. 3). “But since the revealing of Christ, say they, the ceremonial law killeth and bringeth to death. Yea, so doth the law of the ten com- mandments also, without faith in Christ. Moreover, there may no law be suffered to reign in the conscience, but only the law of the spirit and life, whereby we are made free in Christ from the law of the letter and of death, from the works thereof, and from all sins: not because the law is evil, but for that it is not able to justify us: for it hath a plain contrary effect and working. Itis a high and an excellent matter to be at peace with God, and therefore, in this case, EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 221 we have need of a far other mediator than Moses or the law. Here we must be nothing at all, but only receive the treasure, which is Christ, and apprehend him in our hearts by faith, although we feel ourselves to be never so full of sin. These words therefore of the Apostle: ‘That we might be justified by faith, and not by the works of the law,’ are very effectual, and not in vain or unprofitable, as the schoolmen think, and therefore they pass them over so lightly, ** Hitherto ye have heard the words of Paul which he spake unto Peter ; wherein he hath briefly comprised the principal article of all Christian doctrine, which maketh true Christians indeed. Now he turneth to the Galatians, to whom he writeth, and thus he concludeth : Since it is so, that we are justified by faith in Christ, then by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. Because by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified.— Flesh, in Paul, doth not signify (as the schoolmen dream) manifest and gross sins, for those he useth to call by their proper names, as adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and such like: but by flesh, Paul meaneth here, as Christ doth in the third chapter of John, ‘That which is born of the flesh,’ saith he, ‘is flesh’ (John 111. 6). Flesh therefore signifieth the whole nature of man, with reason and all other powers whatsoever do belongto man. This flesh, saith he, is not justified by works, no, not of the law. Flesh therefore, according to Paul, signi- fieth all the righteousness, wisdom, devotion, religion, understanding and will, that is possible to be in a natural man; so that if a man be never so righteous, according to reason and the law of God, yet with all this righteousness, works, merits, devotion, and religion, he is not justified. “This the Papists do not believe, but being blind and obstinate, they defend their abominations against their own conscience, and con- tinue still in this their blasphemy, having in their mouths these execrable words: He that doth this good work, or that, deserveth for- giveness of his sins: whosoever entereth into this or that holy order, and keepeth his rule, to him we assuredly promise everlasting life. It cannot be uttered what a horrible blasphemy it is to attribute that to the doctrine of devils, to the decrees and ordinances of men, to the wicked traditions of the Pope, to the hypocritical works and merits of monks and friars, which Paul the apostle of Christ taketh from the law of God. For if no flesh be justified by the works of the law, much less shall it be justified by the rules of Benedict, Francis, or Augustine, in which there is not one jot of true faith in Christ ; but this only they teach, that whosoever keepeth these things hath life everlasting. ... ** Horrible and unspeakable is the wrath of God, in that he hath so long time punished the contempt of the gospel and Christ in the Papists, and also their ingratitude, in giving them over into a repro- bate sense, insomuch that they blaspheming and denying Christ alto- gether as touching his office, instead of the gospel received the execrable rules, ordinances and traditions of men, which they devoutly adored 222 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and honoured, yea, and preferred the same far above the word of God, until at length they were forbidden to marry, and were bound to that incestuous single life; wherein they were outwardly polluted and defiled with all kinds of horrible wickedness, as adultery, whoredom, uncleanness, * * * and such other abominations. This was the fruit of that filthy single life. **So God punishing sin with sin, inwardly gave them over into a reprobate mind, and outwardly suffered them to fall into such horrible abominations, and that justly, because they blasphemed the only Son of God, in whom the Father would be glorified, and whom he delivered to death, that all which believe in him, might be saved by him, and not by their own execrable rules and orders. ‘Him that honoureth me,’ saith he, ‘I will honour’ (1 Sam. ii. 30). Now, God is honoured in his Son. Whoso then believeth that the Son is our mediator and saviour, he honoureth the Father, and him again doth God honour; that is to say, adorneth him with his gifts, forgiveness of sins, righteousness, the Holy Ghost, and everlasting life. Contrariwise, ‘They that despise me,’ saith he, ‘shall be despised.’ “This is then a general conclusion: by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified.’ The law of God is greater than the whole world, for it comprehendeth all men, and the works of the law do far excel even the most glorious will-workers of all the merit-mongers ; and yet Paul saith ‘that neither the law, nor the works of the law, do justify.’ Therefore we conclude with Paul—‘ That Faith Only Justifieth.’” The foregoing will suffice as the main outline of Luther’s great argument on Justification; which the student would do well still further to pursue. Here we cannot but add that, when we take into account the age in which Luther wrote, and his early training in the nurseries of Romish error and sin, we must thankfully mark the good hand of God upon him and upon Christendom, in shedding so abundantly into his heart and mind the grace and enlightenment of the Holy Ghost. Since the days of the Apostle Paul, history records no such example of miraculous, important, and in all respects truly wonderful conversion. “ Thy single words were piercing thunderbolts ”— which first made righteous havoc of the see of Antichrist. And yet, such is the direful spread of nineteenth-century Popery, even within the pale of the Church of England, that we want, alas, another Luther to marshal the saints of the Most High God—“ the knees which have not bowed unto Baal”—and fight over again the Battle of the Reformation. And in exact accordance with the above opinions on justification is the Augsburg Confession, which, however, being a public and ecclesi- astical standard of belief, necessarily avoids any tendency to strong language. Thus it asserts justification to be, solely, on the ground of EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 223 Christ’s righteousness imputed to the believer, and not on the ground of any personal righteousness of his own, agreeably to Rom., chap. 11]. 4; that the phrase, ‘‘ We are justified by Faith,” is a Pauline figure, by which is meant, not that Faith of itself is the meritorious cause of salvation, but that we thus obtain remission of sins and the imputation of righteousness by grace on account of the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; that true faith always produces good works, which every man is bound to perform, yet must not rely upon them for salvation; and that useless works, as the rosary, worshipping saints, pilgrimages, monastic vows, stated fasts, &c., are to be dis- couraged, as tending to obscure the doctrine of justification by faith alone. (See also p. 210.) And so Melancthon: ‘‘ When it is said, we are justified by Faith, it is not otherwise asserted, than that we receive remission of sins and are esteemed just on account of the Son of God.” And adds, that the proposition is a correlative term for justification and acceptance, through grace, on account of the Son. THE Councit OF TRENT ON JUSTIFICATION. We now come, in the exact order of discussion, to the Council of Trent, in its sixth Session. Here one of the main objects was to crush the rising Reformation by a grand attack upon Luther’s doctrine of justification. The animating principle of the Canonists being, as the historian of the Council tells us: “‘ He who would establish the body of Catholic doctrine (such as indulgences, penance, purgatory, and the sacrifice of the mass), must overthrow the heresy of Justification by Faith alone.” (1.) Trent’s Definition of the Term.— Justification is not the mere forgiveness of sins, but also Sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man, by the voluntary reception of grace and gifts; whence the man from unrighteous becomes righteous, from an enemy becomes a friend, so as to be heir according to the hope of eternal life.” (2.) Causes and Mode.— The causes of Justification are these :— The Final Cause is the glory of God and of Christ, and life eternal. The Efficient Cause is the merciful God, who freely washes and sanctifies, sealing and anointing with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance. The Meritorious Cause is his well-beloved and only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who, when we were enemies, because of the great love wherewith he loved us, by his own most holy Passion on the Wood of the Cross, merited justification, and gave satisfaction to the Father for us. The Instrumental Cause is the Sacrament of Baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which justification is never obtained. Lastly, the sole Formal Cause is the righteousness of God, not that by which he himself is righteous, but that by which he makes us righteous, z.¢., by which he presents us with it, we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, righteous, each one of us receiv- ing his righteousness in ourselves according to the measure which the 224 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Holy Spirit imparts to each as he pleases, and according to the proper disposition and co-operation of each. For although no man can be righteous unless the merits of Christ’s Passion are communicated to him, that takes place in this Justification of the ungodly, when, by the merit of the same holy Passion, the love of God is diffused by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who are justified, and inheres in them. Hence, in Justification itself, along with the remission of sins, man receives, through Jesus Christ in whom he is ingrafted, all these things infused at the same time, viz., Faith, Hope, and Charity... . This faith, before the sacrament of baptism, catechumens, in accordance with the tradition of the Apostles, seek from the Church when they seek faith producing eternal life.” (3.) Justification Complete.—‘‘ It must be believed that the justi- fied are in no respect deficient, but that they may be considered as fully satisfying the divine law (as far as is compatible with our present condition) by their works, which are wrought in God, and as really deserving eternal life, to be bestowed in due times if they die in a state of grace.” . (4.) Yet Progressive |—“ By the observance of the commands of God and the Church, faith co-operating with good works, the justified gain an increase of that righteousness which was received by the grace of Christ, and are the more justified.” (5.) And may actually be Repeated |—“ Those who by sin have fallen from the grace of justification received may be justified again when, moved by divine influence, they succeed in recovering their lost grace by the sacrament of penance, through the merits of Christ. For this method of justification is that recovery of the lapsed which the holy fathers have fitly called the second plank after shipwreck of lost grace !!” (6.) Anathemas.—No. 1: “That a man can be justified by his works, which are done either by the powers of human nature on the teaching of the law without divine grace through Christ.” No. 2: “That Divine grace by Jesus Christ is given for this purpose only, that men may be able to live righteously and merit eternal life, as if he could do both by free-will without grace, though scarcely and with difficulty.” No. 3: ‘ That without the preventing inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his assistance, man can believe, hope, love, or repent, so that the grace of justification behoves to be conferred upon him.” No. 4: That the free-will of man, moved and excited by God, does not at all co-operate with God when exciting and calling, that thus he may dispose and prepare himself for obtaining the grace of justifica- tion.” No. 5: ‘‘ That the free-will of man was lost and extinguished after Adam’s sin.” No. 7: “That works done before justification are truly sins.” No. g: “That the wicked is justified by faith alone, in such a sense that nothing else is required in the way of co- operation to obtain the grace of justification.” No. 10: “ That men are justified without the righteousness of Christ, by which He merited for us, or that by that righteousness they are formally righteous.” No. 11: “That men are justified by the mere imputation of Christ’s EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 225 righteousness, or by the mere remission of sins, exclusive of grace and charity which is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and is inherent in them, or that the grace by which we are justified is only the favour of God.” No. 12: ‘‘ That justifying faith is nothing else than trust in the Divine mercy forgiving sins by Christ.” No. 18: “That the commandments of God are impossible of observance even to a justified man.” No. 20: “That a man is justified without the condition of observing the commandments.” No. 24: “That received righteousness is not preserved and even is not increased in the view of God by good works ; that works themselves are only the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of increasing it.” No. 30: “That after the grace of justification has been received, the guilt or liability to eternal punishment is so remitted to every peni- tent. sinner, that no liability to temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in the next in Purgatory, before he can obtain access to the kingdom of heaven.” No. 32: ‘ That the good works of a justified man are in such a sense the gifts of God, that they are not good merits of the justified man himself, or that a justi- fied man by good works which are done by him through the grace of God and the merits of Jesus Christ, of which he is a living member, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the actual attainment of eternal life if he die in grace, together with increase of glory.” No. 33: “That this Catholic doctrine of justification ex- pressed by the Holy Council in this present decree, derogates in any respect from the glory of God or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ (!) and does not rather illustrate the truth of our faith, in short, the glory of God and of Jesus Christ (!) ” We shall not waste the time of the reader in animadverting on all the contradictions and muddle of thought and language, in this fair specimen of Tridentine theology, which we certainly cannot excuse on the part of an Infallible Council, whose decrees were “given out as the responses of the Holy Ghost!” but which indeed we can only expect at the hands of men of whom the honest Calvin writes :— (CHARACTER OF THE TRIDENTINE COUNCIL :) “Moreover, if hitherto there was any doubt how great the differ- ence is between a Council and the tribunal of the Holy Spirit, from which there is no appeal, a striking illustration has been given us in the Council of Trent. They contend that a Council cannot err, because it represents the Church. What if the latter position be denied to be true? But in order to determine the point we must, I presume, see who the men are that compose it. Perhaps forty Bishops or so are present. I do not keep to a number, nor much care about it, as it is of little consequence. Let the advocates of Councils answer me in good faith. Were any one to review them all in order, how many of them would he not contemn? Nay, when the venerable Fathers look in each other’s faces, it must be impossible for them not to feel ashamed ; for they know themselves, and are not Ῥ 226 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. ignorant of the opinion which they have of each other. Hence, if you take away the name of Council, the whole Papacy will confess that all the Bishops who attended were nothing but dregs. Iam willing, however, to let other nations keep their ornaments un- touched. I will only ask my French countrymen what price they set on the portion which they contributed? They doubtless hold the kingdom of France to be one of the leading branches of the Church. Why, then, it sent but two bishops. one from Nantes, and another from Clermont, both equally dull and unlearned. The latter was not long ago deemed as ridiculous as a buffoon, and so libidinous that he was wont to track out dens of infamy with the scent of a pointer, till he placed himself under the discipline of a notorious Parisian, Sosia. After this he became suddenly wise, if men can so easily be made wise by a lady of the school of Francis Picart. It is clear that the master is completely devoid of brains, belongs to the class of fanatics, and is little better than a madman. The Archbishop of Aix I scarcely count a Frenchman. He of Asti, however, as is usual with curious men, was present as an idle spectator. I ask you, my countrymen, who among you can persuade himself that anything which even a eountless multitude of such men could have vented, proceeded from the Holy Spirit? The two of whom I speak never had a taste of even the first rudiments of theology. How miserable, then, will the condition of the Christian Church be, if everything which pleased them, and a few no better than they, is to be held oracular! And yet very many are so thoughtless, that when they hear of the publication of the decrees of the Holy Council, they reflect not that the authors of them are persons to whom they would not give the least credit in the paltriest question. Did this occur to them they would instantly reject with indignation and trample under foot what they now inconsiderately kiss. Why? Is there anything which their judgment approves? Not at all. But reverence for the Council blinds them. What folly, when you know the ass to tremble at his lion’s skin! But here it may be objected by the opposite party, that the decision did not rest with the bishops alone. I am aware. And this I particularly wished to observe. For there are certain garrulous and audacious monks, some of whom hunt after mitres, and others after cardinals’ hats, while all of them sell their prattle to the Roman Pontiff. . . . For nothing is deter- mined at the Council save at the nod of the Roman Pontiff. In future, then, let them have done with their bombast, that he who rejects the decrees of the Council fights not with men, but with God —that they are nothing but instruments, while he is the President who guides their minds and tongues by his Spirit. Were it so, I hold that they themselves insult the Holy Spirit by reprimanding him through their Pope, to whose decision and censure everything is subjected. I speak of what is perfectly notorious. As soon as any decree is framed, couriers flee off to Rome, and beg pardon and peace at the feet of their idol. The holy father hands over what the couriers have brought to his private advisers for examination. They EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 227 curtail, add, and change as they please. The couriers return, and a sederunt is appointed. The notary reads over what no one dares to disapprove, and the asses shake their ears in assent. Behold the oracle which imposes religious obligations on the whole world! Why do they not openly confess the thing as it is—that ten or twenty monks, whose labours they have hired, concoct the decrees—that the Pope puts his censorial pen through whatever does not please him, and approves of the rest—that nothing is left to the Council but the burden of publishing? In ancient times, after the Roman Senate had deliberated, the plebeians examined; but the Pope, by no means contented with examining, arrogates right, moreover, to correct any- thing that does not please him in the deliberation of the Council. Presumptuously does he so act, if he thinks that the Holy Spirit is presiding there. We, however, I presume, may with impunity despise it, because we are aware of its being composed by such doctors, and corrected by such an Aristarchus. The proclamation of the Council is entitled to no more weight than the cry of an auctioneer” (Preface to Antidote to the Council of Trent: Calv. Trans. Soc.). Now after all this, and all the absurdities, plain self-evident contra- dictions, and evasions of the Tridentine theology, we cannot but ask, How is it that Popery does or can infatuate any rational mind? Is it not that darkness hates the light? that ignorance to fools is bliss? In the pregnant words of the great Genevan Reformer: “ The mask which the Roman Pontiff has placed on the eyes of men is one by which no seeing man can be deceived,” It remains to note— THE CHARACTERISTICS OF RomISH JUSTIFICATION. (1.) Not blindly, but for a most daring and impious purpose, Rome blends together and confounds Justification and Sanctification, which the Bible, the Economy of Redemption, and the Glory of God keep distinct. (2.) By the heterodoxy of an “infused and inherent” righteous- ness, with its feigned consequent meritorious value, as a co-operating factor with the grace of God in Justification, Rome strips Christ of His Crown; and divides the glory of God and of Christ between the Saviour and the sinner. (3.) By putting forth Baptism as the instrument of Justification, Rome makes Salvation dependent on a ministerial ordinance ; vastly increases the enslaving power of her priests; and flatly contradicts the Holy Spirit, who declares by the mouth of St. Paul, ‘That a man is justified by Faith, without (%g/s—apart from, or exclusive of) ordinances, or the deeds of the law.” (4.) In a word, Rome preaches, teaches, and practises ‘another Gospel, which is not another;” for there is in reality no other than that which the Apostles and Prophets of God do preach, namely— “The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all "........... 228 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and upon all them that believe: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through Faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of sod: to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness ; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of Faith. Therefore we conclude, that a man is justi- fied by Faith without the deeds of the law.” ‘‘ For in the Gospel of Christ is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as the Prophets of old testified and wrote, The just shall live by Faith.” And, therefore, we conclude, that if the Church is, according to the Word of God, “ built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Corner Stone,” the apostate Confederacy of Rome has no claim whatever to be recog- nised even as a branch of the Church Catholic. CALVIN ON JUSTIFICATION. The student will now perhaps be somewhat better prepared more fully to grasp and appreciate the logical details of the second great chief of the Reformation on the subject before us. We regret, how- ever, that the compass of this work will not permit us to enter upon these so largely as we could wish. But we shall endeavour to present such a summary as may suffice for most ordinary purposes, with the earnest hope that, in this case, as well as in that of Luther, we may be successful in stimulating still more to the study of the originals. No theological library is complete without Martin Luther and John Calvin. And it would be hard for Popery to exist, in colleges or households, where the works of these two God-sent and God-honoured champions of Liberty and the Gospel were read. And especially should we like to see Calvin’s Antidote to the Council of Trent issued separately and widely circulated at the present day, as a Complete Protestant Manual and Antidote to Puseyism; or what might be better still, a small fund created for the cheaper issue of Vol. III. of Calvin’s Tracts, as it contains not only the ‘‘ Antidote,” but other most valuable papers. ANALYSIS. Connection between Justification and Sanctification.—“ Christ given to us by the kindness of God is apprehended and possessed by faith, by means of which we obtain in particular a twofold benefit: first, being reconciled by the righteousness of Christ, God becomes, instead of a judge, an indulgent Father; and, secondly, being sanctified by his Spirit, we aspire to integrity, and purity of life.” Importance of the Doctrine of Justification.“ It is the principal ground on which religion must be supported. For unless you under- stand first of all what your position is before God, and what the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 229 judgment which he passes upon you, you have no foundation on which your salvation can be laid, or on which piety towards God can be reared.” Definition.—-“* A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not asa sinner, but as righteous. Thus we simply interpret Justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as if we were righteous ; and we say that this justification consists in the for- giveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.” Conjirmation from Scripture.—** Thus it is said in Paul’s discourse, in the Acts, ‘Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses’ (Acts xiii. 38, 39). You see that after the remission of sins justification is set down by way of explanation ; you see plainly that it is used for acquittal ; you see how it cannot be obtained by the works of the law; you see that it is entirely through the interposition of Christ ; you see that it is obtained by faith; you see, in fine, that satisfaction imtervenes, since it is said that we are justified from our sins by Christ.” Read also Gal. 111. 8; Rom. 111. 26, το. Equivalents.—Acceptance (Eph. i. 5, 6). Imputation of righteous- ness—Remission of sins—Blessedness (Rom. iv. 6-8). Reconciliation with God (2 Cor. vy. 18-21). Righteousness by the obedience of Christ (Rom. v. 19). Not Essential Righteousness.—As Osiander dreams, “ that Christ is our righteousness, because he is the eternal God, the fountain of righteousness, the very righteousness of God”—‘“ that we are sub- stantially righteous in God by an infused essence as well as quality ”— that “to be justified is not only to be reconciled to God by a free pardon, but also to be made just; and righteousness is not a free imputation, but the holiness and integrity which the divine essence dwelling in us inspires.” After many arguments to disprove these and other like false positions of Osiander’s, Calvin well sums up: ‘Every one who, by the entanglement of a twofold righteousness, prevents miserable souls from resting entirely on the mere mercy of God, mocks Christ by putting on him a crown of plaited thorns.” Heresies and Evasions of Papists and Schoolmen.—That justifying “vighteousness is compounded by faith and works.” But “there is so wide a difference between justification by faith and by works, that the establishment of the one necessarily overthrows the other” (Phil. ii. 8, 9); Rom. x. 3; Rom. iii, 27; Rom. iv. 2). That“‘man is justified by faith as well as by works, provided these are not his own works, but gifts of Christ and fruits of regeneration.” ‘‘ But they observe not that in the antithesis between Legal and Gospel righteousness, all kinds of works, with whatever name adorned, are excluded” (Gal. 111. 11, 12; Rom. x. 5-9). That ‘faith is assurance of conscience while waiting to receive from God the reward of merits, and divine grace means not the imputation of gratuitous righteousness, Sh --τὖὰ 230 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. but the assistance of the Spirit in the study of holiness.” But “Scripture, when it treats of justification by faith, leads us in a very different direction. Turning away our view from our own works, it bids us look only to the mercy of God and the perfection of Christ.” Scripture order of Justification.— First God of his mere gratuitous goodness is pleased to embrace the sinner, in whom he sees nothing that can move him to mercy but wretchedness, because he sees him altogether naked and destitute of good works. He, therefore, seeks the cause of kindness in himself, that thus he may affect the sinner by a sense of his goodness, and induce him, in distrust of his own works, to cast himself entirely upon his mercy for salvation. This is the meaning of faith by which the sinner comes into the possession of salvation, when, according to the doctrine of the Gospel, he perceives that he is reconciled by God ; when, by the intercession of Christ, he obtains the pardon of his sins, and is justified ; and, though renewed by the Spirit of God, considers that, instead of leaning on his own works, he must look solely to the righteousness which is treasured up for him in Christ.” The relation between Faith and the Gospel._—‘ Faith is said to justify because it receives and embraces the righteousness offered in the Gospel. By the very fact of its being said to be offered by the Gospel, all consideration of works is excluded. This Paul repeatedly declares, and in two passages, in particular, most clearly demonstrates” (Rom. x. 5; ὁ; Ὁ; Gal. amy 11, 12): Papistical objection to the doctrine of Justification by Faith ALonE.— “They dare not deny that a man is justified by faith, seeing Scripture so often declares it ; but as the word alone is nowhere expressly used, they will not tolerate its being added. [French. Mais pource que ce mot Seule, n’y est point exprimé, ils nous reprochent qu'il est adjousté du notre ;—but because this word Alone is not expressed, they upbraid us with having it added of our own accord.] Is it so? What answer, then, will they give to the words of Paul, when he contends that righteousness is not of faith unless it be gratuitous? ... By what cavils, moreover, will they evade his declaration, that in the Gospel the righteousness of God is manifested? (Rom. i. 17). If righteous- ness is manifested in the Gospel, it is certainly not a partial or muti- lated, but a full and perfect righteousness. The Law, therefore, has no part in it, and their objection to the exclusive word alone is not only unfounded, but is obviously absurd. . . . What, I would ask, is meant by the expressions, ‘ The righteousness of God without the law is manifest ;’ ‘ Being justified truly by his grace ;’ ‘Justified by faith without the deeds of the law?’ (Rom. 111. 21, 24, 28). Here... they pretend that the works excluded are ceremonial, not moral works . . . Do they think the Apostle was raving when he produced, in proof of his doctrine, these passages ?”—Gal. ili. 12; Gal. iil. το. “Unless they are themselves raving, they will not say that life was promised to the observers of ceremonies, and the curse denounced only against the transgressors of them. If these passages are to be under- stood of the Moral Law, there cannot be a doubt that moral works EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 231 also are excluded from the power of justifying. To the same effect are the arguments which he employs”—Rom. iii. 20; Rom. iv. 15; Gal. 111. 21, 22. ‘Let them maintain, if they dare, that these things apply to ceremonies, and not to morals, and the very children will laugh at their effrontery. The true conclusion therefore is, that the whole Law is spoken of when the power of justifying is denied to it.” Nature and value of Good Works.—“ However highly works may be estimated, they have their whole value more from the approbation of God than from their own dignity. . . . It is owing entirely to the goodness of God that works are deemed worthy of the honour and reward of righteousness ; and, therefore, their whole value consists in this, that by means of them we endeavour to manifest obedience to God. . . . In vain do the Papists lay hold of the frivolous subtilty, that the faith alone, by which we are justified, ‘ worketh by love,’ and that love, therefore, is the foundation of justification. We, indeed, acknowledge with Paul, that the only faith which justifieth is that which works by love (Gal. v. 6); but love does not give it its justify- ing power. Nay, its only means of justifying consists in its bringing us into communication with the righteousness of Christ. Otherwise the whole argument, on which the Apostle insists with so much earnestness, would fall. ‘To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.’ Could he express more clearly than in this way, that there is justification in faith only where there are no works to which reward is due, and that faith is imputed for righteousness only when righteousness is conferred freely without merit?” Definition Confirmed.—‘‘ Namely, that justification by faith is reconciliation with God, and that this consists solely in the remission of sins. We must always return to the action, that the wrath of God lies upon all men so long as they continue sinners. This is elegantly expressed by Isaiah ”—Isa. lix. 1, 2. ‘We are here told that sin is a separation between God and man; that His countenance 15, turned away from the sinner; and that it cannot be otherwise, since to have any intercourse with sin is repugnant to his righteousness. Hence the Apostle shows that man is at enmity with God until he is restored to favour by Christ (Rom. v. 8-10). When the Lord, there- fore, admits him to union, he is said to justify him, because he can neither receive him into favour, nor unite him to himself, without changing his condition from that of a sinner into that of a righteous man. We add, that this is done by remission of sins. For if those whom the Lord hath reconciled to himself are estimated by works, they will still prove to be in reality sinners, while they ought to be pure and free from sin. It is evident, therefore, that the only way in which those whom God embraces are made righteous, is by having their pollutions wiped away by the remission of sins, so that this justification may be termed in one word the remission of sins. (a.) By express passages of Scripture.—2 Cor. v. 19-21 ; Rom. iv. 6; Ps. xxxii. 1, 2; Luke i. 77; Acts xii. 38, 39. 232 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. (b.) By the writings of the ancient Fathers.— Thus Augustine says : ‘The righteousness of the saints in this world consists more in the forgiveness of sins than the perfection of virtue’ (August. de Civitate Dei, lib. xix. cap. 27). To this corresponds the well-known senti- ment of Bernard: ‘ Not to sin is the righteousness of God, but the righteousness of man is the indulgence of God’ (Bernard, Serm. XXII., XXIII., in Cant.) He previously asserts that Christ is our righteousness in absolution, and, therefore, that those only are just who have obtained pardon through mercy.” Conclusion: man 18. justified by faith, not because he is made righteous, but because by faith he lays hold of the righteousness of Christ.—*‘‘ Hence also it is proved, that it is entirely by the interven- tion of Christ’s righteousness that we obtain justification before God. This is equivalent to saying that man is not just in himself, but that the righteousness of Christ is communicated to him by imputation, while he is strictly deserving of punishment. Thus vanishes the absurd dogma, that man is justified by faith, inasmuch as it brings him under the influence of the Spirit of God by whom he is rendered righteous. This is so repugnant to the doctrine above laid down, that it never can be reconciled with it. For there can be no doubt, that he who is taught to seek righteousness out of himself does not pre- viously possess it in himself. This is most clearly declared by the Apostle, when he says, that he who knew no sin was made an expia- tory victim for sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. vy. 21). You see that our righteousness is not in our- selves, but in Christ ; that the only way in which we become possessed of it is by being made partakers with Christ, since with him we possess all riches. There is nothing repugnant to this in what he elsewhere says: ‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us’ (Rom. viii. 3, 4). Here the only fulfilment to which he refers is that which we obtain by imputation. Our Lord Jesus Christ communicated his righteousness to us, and so by some wondrous way, in so far as pertains to the justice of God, transfuses its power into us. That this was the Apostle’s view is abundantly clear from another sentiment which he has expressed a little before: ‘As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous’ (Rom. v. 19). To declare that we are deemed righteous, solely because the obedience of Christ is imputed to us as if it were our own, is just to place our righteousness in the obedience of Christ.” The above epitome of the eleventh chapter of the third book of the Institutes (Beveridge’s Translation), will afford a fair outline of Calvin’s masterly and Scriptural treatment of the doctrine of Justifi- cation by Faith; but it will be well, as we intimated at the outset, for the earnest student who has time and opportunity, to work out the details, not only in the Institutes, but in the Antidote to the Council of Trent (vol. iii. of Calvin’s Tracts), In the latter he will find a most able refutation of the Tridentine doctrine, that Justifica- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 233 tion consists not merely in forgiveness of sins, but includes renova- tion and sanctification ; and convincing arguments in favour of the following positions:—That Justification cannot be obtained by the works of the Law; that though it is inseparable from, yet it is not to be confounded with, Sanctification, but simply denotes our gracious acceptance by God; that Baptism is not the instrumental cause thereof; that the Righteousness of Christ is the sole ground of it ; that Faith is the instrument; that no human merit precedes or follows; and that it is the fruit alone of God’s rich, free, and sove- reign Grace. Tue Enciish REFORMATION. (1.) The Ten Articles of 1536.—Considering that these Articles were the result of a compromise, we can only rejoice to find the Reforming party coming off so victoriously ; although the “Item” certainly vacillates :— “ Fifthly, As touching the order and cause of our justification, we will that all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people committed by us to their spiritual charge, that this word Justification signifieth remission of our sins, and our acceptation or reconciliation into the grace and favour of God, that is to say, our perfect renovation in Christ. “‘ Item, That sinners attain this justification by contrition and faith joined with charity, after such sort and manner as we before men- tioned and declared; not as though our contrition, or faith, or any works proceeding thereof, can worthily merit or deserve to attain the said justification ; for the only mercy and grace of the Father, pro- mised freely unto us for His Son’s sake Jesu Christ, and the merits of His blood and passion, be the only sufficient and worthy causes thereof: and yet that notwithstanding, to the attaining of the same justification, God requireth to be in us not only inward contrition, perfect faith, and charity, certain hope and confidence, with all other spiritual graces and motions, which, as we said before, must necessarily concur in remission of our sins, that is to say, our justification.” (2.) The Homily of the Salvation of Mankind.—Analysis :— General Proposition.— Because all men be sinners and offenders against God, and breakers of his law and commandments, therefore can no man by his own acts, works, and deeds (seem they never so good) be justified, and made righteous before God: but every man of necessity is constrained to seek for another righteousness or justifica- tion, to be received at God’s own hands, that is to say, the forgiveness of his sins and trespasses, in such things as he hath offended. And this justification or righteousness, which we so receive of God’s mercy and Christ’s merits, embraced by faith, is taken, accepted, and allowed of God, for our perfect and full justification.” Objection. “Τῇ a ransom be paid for our redemption, then it is not given us freely.” Answer. ‘‘God provided a ransom for us, that was, the most precious body and blood of His own most dear and best beloved Son 234 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. Jesus Christ, who, besides this ransom, fulfilled the law for us per- fectly. And so the justice of God and his mercy did embrace to- gether, and fulfilled the mystery of our redemption [Ps. lxxxv. 10].” Three elements in Justification‘ Upon God’s part, his great mercy and grace: upon Christ’s part, justice, that is, the satisfaction of God’s justice, or the price of our redemption, by the offering of his body, and shedding of his blood, with fulfilling of the law perfectly and thoroughly: and upon our part, true and lively faith in the merits of Jesus Christ, which yet is not ours, but by God’s working in us. .. . And so the grace of God doth not shut out the justice of God in our justification, but only shutteth dut the justice of man, that is to say, the justice of our works, as to be merits of deserving our justification.” How Works are Excluded.—* And yet that faith doth not shut out repentance, hope, love, dread, and the fear of God, to be joined with faith in every man that is justified ; but it shutteth them out from the office of justifying. So that although they be all present together in him that is justified, yet they justify not altogether.” Proof from Holy Scripture (of the aforesaid positions), Gal. iii. 21; Gal. ii. 21; Gal. v. 4; Ephes. ii. 8,9; Rom. xi. 6; Acts x. 43. Proof from old Fathers. ‘“ And after this wise, to be justified only by this true and lively faith in Christ, speak all the old and ancient authors, both Greeks and Latins. Of whom I will specially rehearse three, Hilary, Basil, and Ambrose. St. Hilary saith these words plainly in the ninth canon upon Matthew, ‘Faith only justifieth.” And St. Basil, a Greek author, writeth thus, ‘This is a perfect and whole rejoicing in God, when a man advanceth not him- self for his own righteousness, but acknowledgeth himself to lack true justice and righteousness, and to be justified by the only faith in Christ. And Paul (saith he) doth glory in the contempt of his own righteousness, and that he looketh for the righteousness of God by faith’ (Phil. iil. 8, 9). These be the very words of St. Basil. And St. Ambrose, a Latin author, saith these words, ‘ This is the ordinance of God, that they which believe in Christ, should be saved without works, by faith only, freely receiving remission of their sins,’ Con- sider diligently these words, ‘without works, by faith only, freely’ we receive remission of our sins. What can be spoken more plainly, | than to say, that freely, without works, by faith only, we obtain remission of our sins? These and other like sentences, that we be justified by faith only, freely, and without works, we do read ofttimes in the best and ancient writers.” How they understood “ Faith Alone.”—‘“ When they say, that we be justified freely, they mean not that we should or might afterward be idle, and that nothing should be required on our parts afterward : neither mean they that we are so to be justified without"good works, that we should do no good works at all, like as shall be more ex- pressed at large hereafter. But this saying, that we be justified by faith only, freely and without works, is spoken for to take away clearly all merit of our works, as being unable to deserve our justifica- tion at God’s hands, and thereby most plainly to express the weak- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 235 ness of man, and the goodness of God ; the great infirmity of ourselves, and the might and power of God; the imperfectness of our own works, and the most abundant grace of our Saviour Christ ; and therefore wholly to ascribe the merit and deserving of our justification unto Christ only, and his most precious blood-shedding.” Value of the doctrine and character of its impugners.—‘‘ This is the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion. . . . This doctrine advanceth and setteth forth the true glory of Christ, and beateth down the vain glory of man. This whosoever denieth, is not to be accounted for a Christian man, nor fora setter-forth of Christ’s glory ; but for an adversary to Christ and his gospel, and for a setter-forth of men’s vain-clory.” The right understanding of this doctrine, “ Faith without works justifieth.” —“ First, you shall understand, that in our justification by Christ, it is not all one thing, the office of God unto man, and the office of man unto God. Justification is not the office of man, but of God; for man cannot make himself righteous by his own works, neither in part, nor in the whole ; for that were the greatest arrogancy and presumption of man, that antichrist could set up against God, to affirm that a man might by his own works take away and purge his own sins, and so justify himself. But justification is the office of God only, and is not a thing which we render unto him, but which we receive of him; not which we give to him, but which we take of him, by his free mercy, and by the only merits of his most dearly beloved Son, our only Redeemer, Saviour, and Justifier, Jesus Christ. So that the true understanding of this doctrine, ‘We be justified freely by faith without works,’ or that ‘we be justified. by faith in Christ only,’ is not, that this our own act to believe in Christ, or this our faith in Christ, which is within us, doth justify us, and deserve our justification unto us (for that were to count ourselves to be justified by some act or virtue that is within ourselves), but the true under- standing and meaning thereof is, that although we hear God’s word, and believe it; although we have faith, hope, charity, repentance, dread, and fear of God within us, and do never so many works there- unto; yet we must renounce the merit of all our said virtues... which we either have done, shall do, or can do, as things that be far too weak and insufficient and imperfect to deserve remission of our sins and our justification ; and therefore we must trust only in God’s mercy, and that sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour Christ Jesus, the Son of God, once offered for us upon the cross, to obtain thereby God’s grace and remission. . . . So that our faith in Christ (as it were) saith unto us thus, It is not I that take away your sins, but it is Christ only ; and to him only I send you for that purpose, forsaking therein all your good virtues, words, thoughts, and works, and only putting your trust in Christ.” Conclusion: the true and justifying faith, and its fruits— The right and true Christian faith is, not only to believe that Holy Serip- ture, and all the foresaid articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence in God’s merciful promises, to be saved 236 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. from everlasting damnation by Christ: whereof doth follow a loving heart to obey his commandments. And this true Christian faith neither any devil hath, nor yet any man, which in the outward profes- sion of his mouth, and in his outward receiving of the sacraments, in coming to the Church, and in all other outward appearances, seemeth to be a Christian man, and yet in his living and deeds showeth the contrary. . . . These be the fruits of true faith ; to do good as much as lieth in us to every man, and above all things, and in all things, to advance the glory of God, of whom only we have our sanctification, justification, salvation, and redemption. To whom be all glory, praise, and honour, world without end. Amen.” ? (3.) Parallel Passages from other semi-authoritative or standard Contemporary Documents -— (a.) Reformatio Legum: ‘ Nor are they to be heard, whose impiety calls in question the salutary doctrine, founded also on Holy Scrip- ture, of our justification, with regard to which it is to be held, that the righteousness of men is not to be attributed to the power of works (operum momentes).” (6.) Edw. VI.’s Catechism : “ As oft as we used to say, that we are justified and saved by faith only, it is meant thereby that faith, or rather trust alone, doth lay hold upon, understand, and perceive our justification to be given us of God freely ; that is to say, by no merits of our own, but by the free grace of the Almighty Father.” (c.) Confessio Variata : ‘‘ When therefore we say, We are justified by Faith, we do not understand this, that we are justified on account of the dignity of that virtue ; but this is the meaning, that we obtain remission of sins and imputation of righteousness through mercy for Christ’s sake.” (d.) Jewell’s Apology : “ There is no mortal who can be justified in the sight of God by his own deserts; and therefore our only refuge and safety is in the mercy of our Father by Jesus Christ, and in the full assuring ourselves that he is the propitiation for our sins, by whose blood all our stains are washed out: that he has pacified all things by the blood of his Cross ; that he by that only sacritice, which he once offered on the Cross, hath perfected all things ; and, therefore, when he breathed out his soul, he said, ‘ It is finished,’ as if by these words he would signify, Now is the price paid for the sins of man- kind.”—-And Defence: “St. Paul saith, ‘ We are justified freely by his grace ; we judge that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law ; we know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ.’ It will be said that hitherto of sola Jides, that is of faith alone, we hear nothing. Notwithstanding, when St. Paul excludes all manner of works besides only faith, what else then leaves he but faith alone? Howbeit, if it be so horrible a heresy to say, we are justified before God by faith only, that is to say, only by the merits and cross of Christ, let us see what the holy learned 1 The reader cannot fail duly to estimate the importance of this Homily, when he remembers how closely it is identified with our Article. _ EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 237 Fathers of the Church, so many hundred years ago, have taught us thereof.” (6.) Nowell’s Catechism: “The profit we get of this faith is righteousness before God, by which we are made heirs of eternal life. Our own godliness toward God, and leading of our life honestly and holily among men, doth not justify us before God. Seeing we are all most far from perfection of life, and so oppressed with conscience of our sins, we must take another course, and find another way, how God may receive us into favour. We must flee to the mercy of God, by which he freely embraceth us with love and goodwill in Christ, without any merit in us, or respect of works, both forgiving us our sins and endowing us with the righteousness of Christ, through faith in him; so that, for this same righteousness of Christ, as if it were our own, we are accepted in him. On account of the Divine mercy through Christ, we ought to hold that we have received all our righteousness. And this we know to be true by the Gospel, which containeth the promises of God by Christ, to the which when we adjoin faith, we do, as it were, take state and possession of this justi- fication. But faith is not the principal cause of this justification, so as by the merit of faith we are counted righteous before God; for that were to set faith in the place of Christ. But the spring-head of this justification is the merey of God, which is conveyed to us through Christ, offered to us by the Gospel, and laid hold of us by faith, as if with a hand.” (4.) Consensus of the Articles :-— Seventh: “The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to man- kind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man.” Eleventh: ‘‘We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. " Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.” [Homily of the Salvation of Mankind ; analysed above. | Kighteenth . “They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he pro- fesseth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.” Thirty-jirst : “The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect Redemption, Propitiation, and Satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satis- faction for sin, but that Alone.” Post-REerormMation THErooecy. Here we must only mention and very rapidly dismiss a few of the leading writers. 238 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. (1.) The “judicious” Hooker may well be taken as the great exponent of the Reformation now settled. His Discourse on Justifica- tion is a strong protest against Rome’s heresy of justification by infu- sion of righteousness, as perverting the Gospel of the grace of God; an able defence of the doctrine of imputation ; and a clear exposition of the difference between the righteousness of justification as external to us, and the righteousness of sanctification as internal. “ When the Romanists are required to show what the Righteous- ness is whereby a Christian man is justified, they answer, that it is a divine spiritual quality. This grace they will have to be applied by infusion. The first receipt of grace in their divinity, is the first justification ; the increase thereof, the second justification. It is applied to infants through Baptism without either faith or works. It is applied to infidels and wicked men in the first justification, through Baptism, without works, yet not without faith. Unto such as have attained the first justification, that is to say, this first receipt of grace, it is applied further by good works to the increase of former grace, which is the second Justification.” But, Answer: “ Whether they speak of the first or second justification, they make it the essence of a divine quality inherent, they make it righteousness which is in us. Tf it be in us, then it is ours, so our souls are ours, though we have them from God and can hold them no longer than pleaseth Him. But the righteousness wherein we must be bound, if we will be justi- fied, isnot ourown. Therefore, we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. The Church of Rome, in teaching justification by inherent grace, doth pervert the truth of Christ; and, by the hands of the Apostles, we have received otherwise than she teacheth.” And be Sound in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the Law, but that which ἐξ through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which ts of God through faith (Phil. iii. 8, 9). God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. v. 21). ‘Such we are in the sight of God the Father as is the very Son of God Himself.” (2.) But half a century passed, during which there was a reaction from the principles of the Reformation, promoted chiefly by Laud and the Sacramental School, and which culminated in Bishop Bull’s Har- monia Apostolica, the ostensible object of which was to reconcile St. Paul’s Justification by Faith without Works, with St. James’s Justifi- cation by Works; but unhappily accommodating the former to the latter—and so stretching St. Paul’s ‘‘ Faith” to include St. James’s “ Works.” A jumble of theology ; whose loose and strange conces- sions, on the one hand, constructed an easy though clumsy bridge to Rome ; and whose injudicious harmonisings, on the other hand, ulti- mately precipitated “the condition of semi-Socinianism and apathy into which the Church of England lapsed under the first Georges.” Bull’s true Christian doctrine, and the foundation of his argu- ment is, that Justification before God is by Works and not by faith only. “Good works, piety, sanctity, and obedience, are the conditions EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 239 necessarily required that any one should be acceptable unto God to salvation, 1.6. be justified, for these are synonymous terms.” The Decalogue, as perfected by Christ, is the law by which Chris- tians will be judged. “The words of St. James (ii. 24) being express, clear, and evident, whatever obscurity there is must be attributed to the Epistles of St. Paul.” “St. Paul uses the words Faith and Works with a different mean- ing upon different occasions.” “Faith, to which justification is attributed by St. Paul, is not to be understood as one single virtue, but denotes the whole condition of the Gospel covenant ; that is, comprehends in one word all the works of Christian piety.” Well might the Bishop add: ‘ If we prove this point, we shall find less difficulty with the other passages of St. Paul!” ‘“‘ There is another difficulty in the word Works as used by St. Paul, and this is indeed the consequence of what we have already proved ; namely, that Faith in St. Paul’s Epistles means all the works of Christian piety. [‘ Proved’ and repeated, notwithstanding the asser- tion, as above, that St. Paul uses the word Faith ‘with a different meaning upon different occasions !”] This being allowed, it is certain that the works which St. Paul excludes from justification are not all kinds of works, but of a certain description only. Distinctly to explain of what kind these are is a matter of no little labour, and we have now arrived at the chief difficulty of our work.” [Although, as above, when the Bishop had proved St. Paul’s ‘ Faith to comprehend all the works of Christian piety,’ there was to be ‘less difficulty’ for the future!] But this “chief difficulty ” is easily solved, if we are to give ear to our author. St. Paul excludes from justification, in the case of the Jew, the works of the Mosaic law ; and in the case of the Gentile, works done by the light of nature. And all this, after put- ting forth the Decalogue, in the hands of Christ, as the fixed and positive law of our acquittal or condemnation! Here, verily, Bishop Bull does deserve to be credited with “no little labour.” The First and Second Justification of Rome: “It must be under- stood that only the internal works of faith, repentance, hope, charity, &c., are absolutely necessary to the first justification; but the other external works, which appear in outward actions, or in the exercise of the above-named virtues, are only the signs and fruits of internal piety, being subsequent to justification, and to be performed provided opportunity be given.”—Whatever does the Bishop mean? If any- thing at all, that his leading thesis of Justification by Works is a phantom ; that the sinner’s justification before God primarily depends upon “internal works,” whatever we are to understand by that phrase, whereas the justification of St. James, which he professes so literally to follow, rests upon “ external works” (James ii. 18) ; yea, moreover, the external works are in reality no factor with the Bishop after all, unless and “ provided opportunity be given” for their display! How lamentable to see a great mind, which could produce the Defensio Lidet Nicene, thus floundering. 240 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. But Bishop Bull’s comment on our present Article, is sufficient of itself to stamp the character of this painful ‘‘ Harmony,” jarring as it does not only with itself, but with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and the express teaching of Holy Scripture: “ Although other virtues are no less necessary to justification than faith, and faith in reality has no more effect in it than any other virtue ; but yet of all the virtues faith is that one by which we embrace the Gospel promise, by which promise we are justified: therefore by a convenient phrase (!!) our justification may be and is usually attri- buted to faith only.” And yet, thanks to the High as well as to the Latitudinarian churchmen of those and following days, Bull-csm triumphed—none coming to the breach thus made in the walls of Zion. So that, in the words of Dr. Boultbee, “‘ when the great Reformation doctrine of Justification by Faith was again preached by the forerunners of the Evangelical revival in the last century, it was received by the mass of the so-called orthodox divines, as though some new and strange heresy were promulgated.” (3.) Barrow. The Conditions of Justification are Baptism and Faith—faith being formata, or including its effects. (4.) Waterland. Baptism and Faith are the Instruments of Justi- fication ; its Conditions, Faith and Obedience. (5.) Alexander Knox, Newman (before his secession), and Bishop Forbes. The full Tridentine doctrine. (6.) Faber. Justification in its strictly forensic sense, and ascribed to Faith alone, is the doctrine of the Primitive Fathers, from Clement of Rome downwards. (7.) Bishop Browne. Unhappily vacillates. The Protestant doctrine; “* Hence, we conclude, that, in the lan- guage of St. Paul, ‘justification by faith,’ and ‘free salvation by erace’ are (as it has been seen, that Melancthon, the Confession of Augsburg, and our own Article and Homilies, teach) correlative or convertible expressions. The former means the latter.” Toned down: ‘‘Therefore, we may perhaps fairly conclude, that salvation is not of works, not merely not as the cause, but not even as the terms or conditions of our justification.” And shaded off towards Tridentineism: ‘But Scripture seems rather to represent justification, as a state of acceptance before God. . . . If therefore the premises are correct, we may define justification to be a state of pardon and acceptance in the presence of God, bestowed upon us freely for Christ’s sake, by the mercy of God, which is accepted by the faith, which rests only on the Saviour, which continues so long as the subject continues in a state of faith, which fails when he falls from the state of faith, and which is restored again, when by grace and repentance he is restored to a state of faith. So that we may say, whilst in a state of faith, so long in a state of justification: whilst a believer, so long a justified person.” Or as he puts it more briefly, after some references to Scripture : “From all which we can hardly fail to conclude, that justification EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 241 before God is a state [that is, rather than an act of God’s free grace], in which a person continues, so long as he continues united to Christ, abiding in Him, having Christ dwelling in his heart, being the sub- ject of His grace, and of the Sanctification of the Spirit.” Tue TractariaN Movement. The following extracts from the Rev. Archibald Boyd’s England, Rome, and Oxford, seem to us so masterly on this subject, and so well adapted as a winding up of the historical part of our Article, that we here gladly incorporate them. “With this (the Romish) system we compare the ideas of the Tractarian Divines. If there be little difficulty in arriving at the opinions of the Church of Rome on this question (Justification), there is exceeding difficulty in determining those of the Tractarians. Whether it be that the theologians of that school do not clearly apprehend their own ideas, or that they labour under some strange inability in defining them, or that, startled by finding themselves so near to a state of argument with the Tridentine Fathers, they feel it necessary to qualify and explain, and shade away the broad lines of definition, until their course is no longer clearly discernible, it is of course impossible to determine. But this must be admitted, that a student of those treatises which purport to convey the expression of their sentiments, feels himself somewhat perplexed, if not unequal, to affirm, what those sentiments really are. The definition of one page appears to be at variance with that of another. The opinion of one chapter seems to be so diluted by the qualifications of the subsequent, as oftentimes to make it doubtful whether the bold and open para- graph, or the cautious and hesitating one, is to be taken as best repre- senting the mind of the author. However, by the selection of a few quotations from the principal work of that school on the subject of Justification, we shall put ourselves in a position for deciding whether those Divines be justified in claiming the Church of England as sympathetic with their opinions. These quotations we shall arrange in reference to the same points which have been brought out by the citations given before from the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent :— “* Whereas Justification is the application of Christ’s merits to the individual, that application is the imparting of an inward gift—in other words, Justification is a real and actual communication to the soul of the atonement through the ministration of the Spirit... . Now, in truth, a privilege is most explicitly promised us in Scripture, which accurately answers to this description as being at once the special fruit of Christ’s sacrifice, and also an inward gift possessed and resid- ing within us; I mean the habitation in us of God the Father and the Word Incarnate through the Holy Ghost. If this be so, we have found what we sought. This is to be justified, to receive the Divine presence within us, and to be made a temple of the Holy Ghost. ‘Christ then is our Righteousness by dwelling in us by the Spirit ; He Q 242 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. justifies by entering into us, He continues to justify by remaining in us. ‘This is really and truly our justification : not faith, not holiness, not (much less) a mere imputation ; but, through God’s mercy, the very presence of Christ.’ + “Tt is clear, from these passages, that Tractarian Justification is not the simple imputation of the righteousness of another. It is, on the contrary, a righteousness communicated, and resident within ourselves. It is true that it excludes not Christ from the process of rendering the sinner righteous ; but the place and office which it assigns to Christ in this work, is (as will presently be shown) totally different from that attributed to Him by the Church of England. In a word, Tractarian Justification is not acquittal, or the accounting of a person spotless, because the virtue of the atonement has been applied to his condition ; but it is a certain moral and spiritual change effected by the indwell- ing of the Saviour. “ But, this is not all. If there be something in this view of Justi- fication to which we are unaccustomed, there is something equally strange in the method by which it is obtained. To illustrate this point, we shall cite but two passages :— “ἐς Faith secures to the soul continually those gifts;which Baptism primarily conveys. The Sacraments are the immediate ; Faith is the secondary, subordinate, or representative instrument of Justification : or, We may say, varying our mode of expression, that the Sacraments are its instrumental, and Faith its sustaining cause. Faith, then, being the appointed representative of Baptism, derives its authority and virtue from that which it represents. It is justifying, because of Baptism. . . . Justifying Faith does not precede Justification, but Justification precedes Faith, and makes it justifying. And here lie the cardinal mistakes of the views on this subject which are now in esteem. They make Faith the sole instrument, not after Baptism, but before ; whereas Baptism is the primary instrument, and creates Faith to be what it is, and otherwise is not, giving it power and rank, and, as it were, constituting it its own successor.’ Again :—‘If Justification is conveyed peculiarly through the Sacraments, as Holy Communion conveys a more awful presence of God than Holy Baptism, so must it be the instrument of a higher Justification. On the other hand, those who are declining in their obedience as they are quenching the light within them, so are they diminishing their Justification,’ 3 “The language of these passages is sufficiently explicit. It is im- possible to pause upon them without perceiving that the procuring cause of Justification is not an apprehending quality (itself the gift of God), but the administration of ordinances. Justification is ‘conveyed through the Sacraments ;’ Faith is but ‘the successor and representa- tive of Baptism.’ So that this benefit which we have been in the habit of considering an act of God in our favour, cancelling our iniquities and placing us in possession of forgiveness, is, according to 1 Newman’s ‘‘ Lectures on Justification,” pp. 160, 167. 2 Thid. pp. 169, 257. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 243 this school, a certain sustained religious condition. And so, indeed, it is formally stated to be. ‘The new birth is an act, an initiatory act ; forgiveness is an act, but justification is a state,! being in God’s favour is a state. It is nothing to the purpose then to show that Faith is connected in Scripture with Justification or with God’s favour. Is it connected with the new birth, with the washing away of sin?... I repeat, the act of Justification is expressly ascribed to Baptism as an immediate means. Is it anywhere ascribed to Faith?’ 2 “Upon a review, then, of these several quotations—the first class expressing the opinions of the Church of Rome [cited in a previous part of Mr. Boyd’s Lecture], the second those of the Tractarian Divines, it is surely neither unreasonable or unjust to conclude that there is no essential difference between them. They coincide in the view of the nature of Justification ; they attribute it to the same instrumental causes, and they harmonise in regarding it as a moral state instead of a gracious and simple act. These coincidences are so many and so important, as to justify us in considering the views of the two parties to be identical. * And now let us proceed to the examination of another point, the question whether these opinions can, by any possibility, be reconciled with those confessed by the Church of England. That the Church of Rome owns no correspondence between her own doctrine and that of our Articles, needs no demonstration; but that the Divines of Oxford should affirm that our formularies express their views, must create no slight surprise in those to whom these formularies are familiar. Let the following quotation speak for itself’”—Article XI. “This declaration stands in broad contrast with those which have been already placed before us. It affirms that the nature of Justification is acquittal from sin, rather than impartation of righteousness ; for it says not that we are made righteous, or that we are righteous by virtue of any inherent quality, but that we are ‘accounted’ or reckoned righteous. It says not that we are righteous because that works wrought in us by the Holy Spirit have a meritorious efficacy, and a power to keep us in a justified condition; but it does say, that the imputation of righteousness is on account of the merit—only on account of the merit—of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not our own works or deservings. It says not that our Justification flows from ‘Baptism as its primary instrument, or is conveyed through the Sacraments ;’ but it does say that we are ‘justified by Faith,’ and ‘only by Faith.’ It contains not one syllable sanctioning the idea that Justification is a state into which we are put by means of sacra- mental efficacy, and wherein we are continued by means of meritorious actions ; but it refers us for fuller explanation to another document, which contains this statement, ‘Christ is now the righteousness of all them that truly believe in Him: He for them paid their ransom by His death: He for them fulfilled the law in His life ; so that now, 1 Compare Browne, as above, &c, 2 Newman, pp. 271, 272. —_— a SS 244 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. in Him, and by Him, every true Christian man may be called a ful- filler of the law; forasmuch as that, which their infirmity lacked, Christ’s justice hath supplied.’ From a comparison, then, of these respective explanations, it seems clear, that on all essential points connected with the dogma under review, Rome and Tractarianism harmonise ; while upon the same points England dissents from both ; that Rome holds in inherent, England an extrinsic righteousness ; that Rome holds a righteousness imparted, England a righteousness imputed; that Rome denies Justification by Faith alone, while England affirms it; that Rome relies upon good works as an essential element of Justification, while England in her Articles declares that ‘ we are not righteous for our own works,’ and, in her Homily, ‘ shutteth them out from the office of justifying.’ It is impossible to conceive distinctions more palpable, differences more serious than these. And we know not whether most to be astonished at the mental dimness which can see no differences, or to be indignant at the uncandid ingenuity which struggles to make things identical that are plainly irreconcileable. Certain it is, that men, disinclined to tread in the doubtful and ill-defined middle way which the Tractarians have laid down for themselves, saw in these two schools of opinion broad and substantial discrepancies. The Divines of Trent, dealing with the views of Justification adopted in common by the Church of England and the Continental Reformers, fulminated their reiterated anathemas against all who dissented from their own definitions; and a sound and discriminating Prelate of our Church gives this as his conviction, ‘It is not the logic we strive for, it is not the grammar. It is the Divinity ; what that is whereby we stand acquitted before the Righteous Judge, whether an inherent justice or Christ’s imputed justice apprehended by Faith. The Divines of Trent are for the former ; all antiquity with us, for the latter. A just volume would scarce contain the pregnant testimonies of the Fathers to this pur- pose. Bellarmine himself grants them ours, and they are worth our entertaining.’ 2 “Having thus put ourselves in satisfactory possession of these several views, our next point must be to go into the reasons which compel us to reject the Justification recommended by the advocacy of the Tractarian theologians. The first ground of objection we shail rest upon is, the inadaptation of such a Justification to man’s spiritual condition. To estimate this we must look back to that period in the moral history of our race, when such a term as Justification could have had no place in man’s vocabulary, and such a process as the term implies could not have been applied to man’s condition. In the days of his original and maintained innocence, man needed not to be accounted ‘righteous,’ or to be ‘made righteous,’ because he was righteous. There was no necessity for esteeming or reckoning a being just, who was unfallen. It was change in man’s conduct, which created, as a necessary consequence, a change in man’s condition. 1 Homily of Salvation. 2 Hall’s Works, vol. ix. p. 322. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 245 The first transgression which defiled this world inflicted upon our race a double calamity: it destroyed the innocency of our state, and it Vitiated the purity of our nature. With the second of these results, we have at present no concern. That it is to be viewed rather as a disease of the moral constitution, than as a feature of man’s condition. But with the first, our argument has much concern, because it involves the very question at issue, how the guilty can appear guiltless before his Judge. The sinlessness which was the character of man’s state antecedent to the Fall was his natural, proper, inherent justice. It was part of man’s nature, of his habits, of his being, of himself. And the disobedience which changed all this, converted, as in a moment, the guiltless into the guilty, the loyal subject into the rebel, the con- fiding child into the conscience-stricken criminal. All this created the necessity for Justification ; for no alternative remained but the tremendous one of eternal alienation from God. Man’s destinies turned upon the adoption of one or other of these principles: ‘The soul that sinneth it shall die;’ ‘The just by Faith shall live.’ Now is it our point to inquire, whether any other measure, but that of an imputation of extrinsic merits, would have met this case of necessity. The remedy suggested by the mediciners of Rome and Oxford is sanctification ; the renovation of nature, not the alteration of condition. Let us test the suitability of this remedy by reference to the original necessity. It was open to God to give the corrupt transgressor a new nature ; to remove, as it were, medicinally, and by the infusion of alteratives, the virus of the disorder with which he had become fatally inoculated. What then should we have had? A return to man’s original state, a restoration of his lost condition? No; corrupt nature might have been repaired, but perpetrated sin, involving guilt and liability to punishment, still remained outstanding. By a process of renewal we might have obtained amendment, improvement, purity for the future ; but there is no power in all this to cancel the iniquity of the past. The product of the application of this remedy would have been a creature pure as to nature, but guilty as to condition. In other words, the infusion of holiness or intrinsic righteousness will not make the being who has committed sin righteous before God. For that a totally different process is required, the endowing of the guilty with a righteousness intrinsic, which being in itself meritorious, is therefore propitiatory, and the imputation whereof cancels all sin. We are not now arguing the question of the capacity of a sinner for the possession and enjoyment of eternal purity. That is a totally different considera- tion, and to be settled upon the ground of an implantation of that ‘holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.’ And for the necessity of that, in order to ultimate salvation, the advocates for Justification by Faith alone, will contend as strenuously as others. But looking at the single point before us—the means by which the sinner can stand acquitted before God—we maintain that man must be justified by Faith alone, because no other process revealed to us appears adequate to meet the necessity of the case. Any infused righteousness, any renewal of nature, any Justification which ‘consists 226 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. in God’s inward presence and which lives in obedience,’ falls short of the Justification we require, because it leaves the guilt of committed sin unremoved. The Tractarian remedy, thefore, for man’s state is objectionable, because it touches not the emergency, or meets the peculiar wants of man’s condition. “On a second ground, we object to the Tractarian and Romish view of Justification. As Churchmen, it ought to be to us a persuasive, if not a coercive argument against that view, that it is opposed to the decisions of our own Church. On this point some considerations have already been advanced, based upon the language of the eleventh Article, and to that expression of the Church’s opinion it is not neces- sary to revert. But it may be advisable to gather her mind from another document, next in authority to the Articles, especially as the Article has stamped upon it the value of its own express reference.” After quoting from the Homily of Salvation, Mr. Boyd proceeds: “This passage, one would think, is abundantly definite. It seems to meet the question in all the points whereon controversy is maintained. Its idea of Justification is comprehended in the declaration, ‘It is the forgiveness of sins and trespasses in such things as men hath offended.’ It knows of no addition to the imputation of the righteous- ness of Christ; that, ‘embraced by Faith, is taken, accepted, and allowed of God, for our perfect and full justification.’ It proclaims the instrument of Justification to be one, and but one; ‘true and lively’ faith in the merits of Jesus Christ—faith which proves its truth or genuineness by the fruits of ‘repentance, hope, love, dread and fear of God;’ but which fruits of that justifying instrument ‘it shutteth out from the office of justifying.’ How diametrically opposed is all this to the Tractarian theory :—‘ This (the indwelling of Christ) is really and truly our justification ; not faith, not holiness, not (much less) a mere imputation, but through God’s mercy, the very presence of Christ.’ ‘The Sacraments are the immediate, Faith the secondary instrument of Justification.’ ‘The act of justifying is expressly ascribed to Baptism as an immediate means. Is it anywhere ascribed to Faith ?’? “Tt is not uninstructive to observe, how passages, such as these, so clear, so dogmatic, so decisive, are met by the advocates of these opinions. Reduced to admit that the Articles do undoubtedly support the interpretation ordinarily put upon them, they are also reduced to the necessity of pleading that possibly that interpretation, though true, is not true to the exclusion of other interpretations, That is, they protect themselves against the decision of these authorities, on the ground that they assert one thing, and yet design to assert some other thing along with it. A quotation will best illustrate this system of exposition. ‘Certain it is, that our Eleventh Article puts forward the reputative idea. But is it, or is it not, subordinately to an understood moral justification which precedes in order of nature? I grant that the Article emphatically excludes all human merit ; that is, all efficiency 1 Newman’s “ Lectures on Justification,” pp. 147, 257, 272. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 247 or value of self-wrought performances; all merit, undoubtedly, is exclusively ascribed where it ought. But, is the reckoning, which God is there said to make of us, ¢rdependent of His own work in us ? Is it independent of any root of true righteousness, already planted in our hearts by the omnipotent grace of God? 1 mean—is it so in the view of the Article? for it is to that point that I confine myself. I conceive that the reckoning is not meant to be independent of a previously wrought root of righteousness ; because it is not merely said, ‘only for the merits of our Lord, and not for our own works and deservings are we accounted righteous before God,” but “by Faith” comes in as a qualification on our part, without which the merit of Christ will not avail for us.’?1_ Why what is all this, but the Tridentine doctrine again? Every consistent Romanist will admit that self-wrought performances are devoid of merit; but he will hold that, being the result of spiritual influences, they are so distinctly meritorious, as to be entitled to present grace and eternal blessedness. Had our Article regarded Faith as an inherent righteousness on account of which a man was justified then might these writers have claimed, with some appearance of reason, the Article as in their favour. But this is not the use that the Article makes of Faith. It does not regard it as the cause of Justification, but as the instrument of it. It says not that we are justified on account of faith, but that we are justified ‘by’ or by means of faith. And when this plain expression of the Church’s views goes on to enunciate that proposition negatively, as well as positively, when it says that ‘we are justified by faith only,’ and ‘not counted righteous for our own deservings,’ it seems difficult to comprehend how men, professing to be candid, can maintain that a different method and order of Justification may possibly be included, If there be clear meaning in plain words, these words would seem to affirm that our Church knows of one method of Justification, viz., by faith only, and is neither acquainted with, or will recognise, any other. “The same perverse ingenuity is applied to the other document to which we have appealed, the co-ordinate authority of the Homily. The language employed by it is so clear, and so thoroughly harmoni- ous with that in which the Article is couched, that we are reduced, despite of ourselves, to admire the steady courage which has adven- tured upon the desperate enterprise of explaining it away. ‘It may _ be said,’ observes the same writer, ‘that the Article refers to the Homily, and the Homily speaks apparently a different language. For it asserts, “that through faith, which justifieth, implies repentance, hope, love, dread, and the fear of God, to be joined with faith in every man that is justified; yet it shutteth them out from the office of justifying.” To this I answer, that neither there or elsewhere in the Homilies, is it the object to lay down theological definitions, but rather to furnish popular useful instruction. These words, therefore, cannot be intended to limit the reckoning made in the mind of God. For who hath known the mind of the Lord any further than He has 1 Newman’s “ Lectures on Justification,” pp. 147, 257, 272. 248 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. declared it to us; and where has He told us, that He does not value everything that is valuable in His creatures? Whatever strong expres- sions, of the humilating kind, occur in this Homily or in others, I hesitate not to say, must be thus understood ; inasmuch as no human work contends more strenuously for the essential morality of faith, or more uniformly represents it as the vitality of holiness.’! This is truly humiliating. In every sentence of this bad defence of a wrong cause, mis-statement or inaccuracy is obvious. It is not the fact that the Homilies were not intended to lay down theological definitions, The Preface to them, published in 1562, assigns this as among the reasons that induced their composition, ‘to avoid the manifold enor- mities, which heretofore by false doctrines have crept into the Church, to drive away erroneous and poisoned doctrines.’ It is not logical to argue from negatives ; to lay down the proposition that God values in his creatures everything that is valuable, then to assume that inherent righteousness is valuable, and then to conclude that it justifies before God. It is not candid to carry off the mind into the mistiness of a sophistical syllogism, and that apparently for the purpose of making it forget that the Homily has said—and that is the point to attend to— that ‘Christ is the righteousness of all them that believe in him,’ and ‘that faith shuts out repentance, hope, love, &c., from the office of Justifying.’ It is not just to conclude, that because a sermon or a homily contends ‘for the essential morality of faith,’ therefore it makes that morality the ground of Justification. Ifso, St. Paul has renounced the doctrine of Justification by faith alone, because he asserts its sanctifying power, and ‘establishes’ instead of detracts from the obligations of the Law.” Here is a splendid display of forcible and legitimate argument. How is it that Bishop Browne, who eulogises Mr. Knox as “a writer of great originality and piety,” has not come to the rescue of his friend, and taken up the gauntlet, thrown down since 1846 to Knox’s Remains and the Tractarian Movement ? Lengthened as are these extracts, we cannot but follow Mr. Boyd in the closing pages of his Lecture. After quoting Nowell, Jewell, and Hooker, he proceeds :— “To these testimonies, it is unnecessary to add. It were easy to fill pages with quotations from the writings of the sixteenth century, all combining to prove that these men to whom we owe the Reforma- tion, and the subsequent definition and support of our Church’s Creed, were of one mind on the character of that process by which a man is justified before God, and the means by which it is applied. All repudiate the Tridentine view, all maintain the popular interpretation put upon the Articles and the Homilies. Strange would it have been, if views so opposed to each other, as to become the subject of elabo- rate controversy and logical investigation, should be, if not absolutely identical, yet not irreconcilable with each other. Surely such men as Cranmer, Jewell, and Hooker did not spend their years and energies 1 Knox’s Remains, vol. i. p. 293. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 249 in contests about notions, in maintaining distinctions wherein were no differences, in proving that to be error, which after all was but- another aspect of truth, and in widening separations, which Christian charity might have softened down, or unprejudiced scholarships re- moved. Surely, when so many circumstances, political, social, and prudential, dictated the expediency (if only it could be done with regard to the right of truth), of effecting an accommodation on disput- able points, it was not likely to be left to the acuteness and learning of the nineteenth century to discover the grounds} of reconciliation. And if there were room to doubt,-that, in maintaining the view of Justification, which it has been the object of this Lecture to defend, we have mistaken the position adopted by our Church, we should find that last remnant of apprehension removed by the harmony existing on this point between her and those religious bodies on the Continent, which, contemporaneously with herself, dissented from the theology of Rome, as improved by the Creed of Trent. We admit that it by no means amounts to a proof, that the popular view of Justification is right, because espoused by the Confessions of the foreign Churches. But it is calculated to strengthen our convictions that we have not mis- taken the truth, that we find those communities—each one searching the Bible for itself, each one for itself dissecting the theology of Rome, and testing it by the decisions of Scripture, each one for itself investigating the evidence of antiquity, and tracing out for itself the commencement and progress of doctrinal corruptions—arriving at the same conclusion as ourselves; and in the exercise of their separate and independent judgment, protesting against the principle and adaptation of an inherent Justification. Thus, the Helvetic Confes- sion maintains—‘ Properly speaking, God alone justifies us, and only justifies us on account of Christ, not imputing to us our sins, but im- puting his righteousness to us. As we receive this Justification not through any works, but through faith in God’s mercy, and Christ ; so we teach and believe, with the Apostle, that man as a sinner is justified by faith alone in Christ, not by the Law or works.’ Thus, the Augsburg Confession of 1531‘ Men are freely justified on account of Christ, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favour, and their sins remitted on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God reckons for righteousness before Himself.’ And in that of 1540— ‘Although contrition or repentance be necessary: yet we must believe, that remission of sins is granted to us, and that from unjust we become just, that is, reconciled or accepted, and the sons of God, freely, on account of Christ, not on account of the worth of contrition or of other works preceding or consequential. . . . When we say that ‘we are justified by faith,’ we mean not this, that we are justi- fied on account of the worth of that virtue ; but this is our opinion, that we obtain remission of sins, and imputation of righteousness, by compassion on account of Christ. But this compassion cannot be received except by faith.’ Consonant with this is the Saxon Confes- sion—‘ From being unrighteous, that is, guilty and disobedient, and 20 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. without Christ, man becomes righteous, that is, absolved from guilt ‘on account of the Son of God, and his apprehension of Christ by faith, who is our Righteousness, because by His merit we have re- mission; and God imputes righteousness to us, and on account of Him, reckons us righteous. .. . Although contrition and many other virtues are kindled with faith, or together with this reliance ; yet those virtues are not the cause, or the merit, of the remission of sins, neither on account of them is the person acceptable ; but the person has remission and acceptance on account of the Mediator, who must be apprehended by faith.’ The same careful and clear definition of Justification, and of the channel by which it reaches us, dis- tinguishes the clauses of the Belgic Confession which bear upon that subject—‘ We are justified by faith alone. But, properly speaking, we by no means understand that Faith by itself, or from itself, justifies us. It is but a kind of instrument, by which we apprehend the righteousness of Christ; which faith embraces Christ with all His merits, and claims Him to itself as a proper effect, and seeks for nothing outside of Him. For it must be, that all things which are required to our salvation, are not in Christ, or else that they are so in Him, that he who possesses Christ by faith, has together (with Him) perfect salvation.’ “The harmony of all these confessions with the avowed opinion of the Church of England, is no less self-evident than satisfactory. Admitting, that all the religious communities of the sixteenth century, which threw off the creed and despotism of Rome, had intercourse and consultation with each other; yet there is, in points both doctrinal and ecclesiastical, that discrepancy between them, which proves that there was no slavish submission of one to another, no secret agreement to produce strict uniformity by the adoption of a common creed or code of discipline. Brotherly and Christian difference, doubtless, there was; but all this within the lines of manly independence. And it is this which makes their harmony on such a vital point as Justifi- cation so valuable and persuasive. For it must go far to convince us that that view, which such men as the compilers of these several con- fessions, after due deliberations, adopted, is that which represents the mind of God as unfolded in his volume of Inspiration. In maintain- ing, therefore, Justification to be an act of God towards us, not a quality conveyed into us; a privilege conferred, not a grace im- parted; that it flows not from Baptism or obedience, but from religious reliance on the merits of the Redeemer ; that Faith’s place in this process of salvation is that of an instrument, and not a meri- torious virtue—in maintaining all this, we hold that our Church discharges faithfully her proper office of being a protester against error, and a witness for the ‘faith once delivered to the Saints.’” Thus, then, Tractarian Justification is proved to be identical with the doctrine of Rome ; inadequate to the necessities of man’s spiritual conditions ; and diametrically opposed to our Article and the Homily, and the great luminaries of our own Church, as well as those eminent men who composed the Continental Confessions. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 251 One solemn question especially must suggest itself here to every honest mind—How can men who so unfaithfully hold such doctrine remain within the pale of the Church of England? How is it that conduct and principles which would be scouted on ’Change, branded in camp, and condemned by the first and most natural verdict of all common decency, probity and honour, are the rule of life of many Churchmen? Let us be honest Englishmen first, and avowed, not masked, Romanists after, if you please. ScrIPTURAL PROOF. The reader who has followed us in the foregoing part of this Article, will be at no loss for abundant Scriptures in proof of Justification by Faith Alone. Nevertheless, it may be of advantage to the student especially to have at hand a ready and explicit statement of the doc- trine as founded on God’s Word. With this view we cordially and confidently place in his hands the following very valuable compendium from the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism Explained, in keeping with the announcement in our Preface, and sufficiently sus- tained we hope throughout the Exposition, that our object is not so much to produce original matter, as to cull from every quarter within our reach, whatever may best tend to establish the Truth. Drawn up about the middle of the last century, the Assembly’s Catechism Explained is a complete Body of Divinity which has been seldom equalled, and never perhaps excelled. We dispense with the usual marks of quotation, and omit “ Q.” and ‘ A.,” for Question and Answer; but give the text verbatim throughout. The brackets [ ] enclose the words of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, as set forth at the outset. WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION ? Justification is an act of God’s free grace; wherein he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us, and received by faith alone. 1. From whence is the word [justification] borrowed % Being a law-word, it is borrowed from courts of justice among men, when a person arraigned is pronounced righteous, and, in court, openly absolved. 2. How doth it appear, that justification denotes an act of jurisdic- tion, and not an inward change upon the soul? From its being opposed to condemnation, which all own to consist, not in the infusing of wickedness into a person, but in passing sentence upon him, according to the demerit of his crime, Ps. cix. 7. 3. What is it then to justify a person ? It is not to make him righteous, but to declare him to be so, upon a law ground and trial of a judge, Is. xliii. 26. 4. Who is the author, or efficient cause, of our justification ? It is God himself; for, cf 2s God that justifieth, Rom. viii. 33. 252. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICEES. 5. Whether is it God essentially, or personally considered 1 God essentially considered, in the person of the Father, is the just7- Jier, in respect of judiciary power and authority, Rom. 111. 26: and our Lord Jesus Christ, in respect of the dispensation, or exercise of that power, Acts v. 31. 6. In what respect is the Spzrzt said to justify, 1 Cor. vi. 11? As the applier of the blood or righteousness of Christ, whereby we are justified, Titus iii. 5. 7. In what state is a sinner before justification ? In a state of sin and guilt, Rom. iii. 9, and consequently in a state of wrath and condemnation, Gal. 111. ro. 8. How can God justify the ungodly ? Every elect sinner, however ungodly in himself, yet, upon union with Christ, has communion with him in his righteousness, and on this account he is justified, Is. xlv. 25, In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified. 9. Why have elect sinners communion with Christ in his righteous- ness, upon their union with him ? Because their sins having been imputed unto him from eternity, he became legaliy one with them, transferring their debt on himself, and undertaking to pay the same, Is. 1111. 6; wherefore, upon union with him by faith, his perfect satisfaction is imputed to them, as if they had made it themselves, 2 Cor. v. 21. το. Why is justification called an [act]? Because, like the sentence of a judge it is completed at once, and not carried on gradually like a work of time, Deut. xxv. 1. 11. What is the moving cause of justification ; or, what kind of an act is it? It is [an act of God’s free grace}, Rom. iii. 24, Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 12. How can free grace be the moving cause of our justification, - when it is through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ ? Because the redemption that is in Christ, is the channel through which justifying grace runs freely unto us, Eph. 1. 7. 13. What are the constituent parts of justification 4 They are two ; that [wherein he pardoneth all our sins], Rom. vi. 7 ; and that, wherein he [accepteth us as righteous in his sight], Eph. i. 6. 14. What is the pardon of sin? It is God’s absolving the sinner from the condemnation of the law, on account of Christ’s satisfaction for sin, Rom. viii. 1. 3 15. Why is the pardon of sin set before the accepting us as righteous in the answer ? Because, till the sentence of the broken law be dissolved by pardon, it is impossible that our persons can be accepted or any blessing of the covenant conferred upon us, Heb. vill. 10-13; where, after a great many other promised blessings, it is added, ver. 12, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, &c. ; intimating that the pardon of sin led the way to other covenant blessings, 16. What is it 7m sim that pardon removes ἢ EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 253 The guilt of it, which is a person’s actual obligation, or lableness to eternal wrath, on account thereof, Eph. ii. 3. 17. Can the guilt of sin ever reewr upon a pardoned person ἢ No: the obligation to punishment, being once taken off, can never recur again; because there 18. no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, Rom, vill. 1. 18, Will after sinning revoke a former pardon ? No: after sinning may provoke the Lord to withdraw the sense of former pardon, but can never revoke the pardon itsel7; because the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, Rom. xi. 29. 19. What sins are pardoned in justification ? [All our sins| whatsoever, Ps. cil. 3, Who forgiveth atu thine iniquities. zo. How are sins past and present pardoned ? By a formal remission of them, Ps. xxxil. 5, Zhou forgavest the imquity of my sin. 21. How are sins to come pardoned ? By securing a not imputing of them, as to the guilt of eternal wrath, Rom. iv. 8, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. 22. If a not imputing of eternal wrath as to future sins be secured, why do the saints pray for the pardon of them when committed ? Because the guilt or liableness to fatherly anger, is contracted by the commission of them; and therefore they pray for the removal of that guilt, Ps. li. 12, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. 23. Is repentance a condition of pardon 1 No: because this would be to bring in works into the matter of our justification before God, quite contrary to scripture, which tells us, that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, Gal. 11. τό. 24. How do you prove, that repentance hath not the same dnterest with faith in our justification ἢ From this, that in scripture we are frequently said to be justified by faith, but never said to be justified by repentance. 25. Is it not affirmed in our Confession} that ‘‘ repentance” is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it ? The meaning is, that repentance is such an inseparable concomitant of pardon, that no pardoned person continues to be zmpenitent, 2 Sam. xii, τῷ; Matt. cxvi, 75. 26. If none can expect pardon, without expecting repentance along with it; will it not therefore follow, that repentance is a condition of pardon ? Not at all; for if repentance cannot so much as have the least instrumentality in pardon, it can never be the condition thereof, nor have the smallest casual influence thereupon.” 1 Westminster Confession of Faith. ? Ibid., chap. 15, sect. 3: “Repentance is not to be rested in, as any satis- faction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof.” 254 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 27. How doth it appear, that repentance hath not the least 7n- strumentality in pardon ? It appears evidently from this, that faith is the sole instrument of receiving Christ and his righteousness; without receiving of which there can be no pardon, John viii. 24, If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. 28. Doth God any more in justification, than freely to pardon all our sins ? Yes; he likewise [accepteth us as righteous in his sight], Eph. i. 6. 29. Why is the accepting us as righteous joined with pardon, in justification ? Because though among men a criminal may be pardoned, and neither declared righteous, nor received into favour: yet it is not so with God, for, whom he forgives, he both accounteth their persons righteous in his sight, and receives them into perpetual favour, Rom. v. 8-10. 30. How can a holy and righteous God, whose judgment ts according to truth, accept sinners as righteous without a perfect righteousness 4 He accepts them as righteous [only for the righteousness of Christ], which is perfect, and becomes truly theirs through faith, Jer. xxiil. On lisa. xyes 31. By what right doth the surety righteousness become thezrs ? 3y the right of a free gift received, and the right of communion with Christ. 32. How doth it become theirs by the right of a gift received ? In as much as Christ’s righteousness being made over in the gospel, as God’s gift to sinners, it is by faith actually claimed and received ; hence called the a1rt of righteousness, Rom. v. 17. 235. How doth Christ’s surety righteousness become theirs by right of communion with him ? In as much as sinners being waited to him by faith, have thereby communion, or a common interest with him in his righteousness, Phil. lil. 9. A When is it then, that, according to truth, God accepts us as righteous in his sight 7 When Christ’s surety righteousness is actually reckoned ours, and we made the righteousness of God IN HIM, 2 Cor. v. 21; upon this account precisely, and no other, are we accepted of God as righteous ; the righteousness of Gop being UPON all them that believe, Rom. 111. 22. 35. What is the matter of our justification, or that for which we are justified 1 The RicgutEousness of Christ only: hence is he called, The Lord our Righteousness, Jer. Xxiil. 6. 36. Wherein doth [the righteousness of Christ] consist ἢ In the holiness of his human nature, his righteous life, and satis- Factory death. 37. Can law or justice reach the person, who is under the covering of the surety righteousness ? By no means: for, who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 255 elect 2—It is Christ that died, yea, rather, is risen again, Rom. viii. 33, 34. 38. Is the righteousness of Christ meritorious for our justification 7 Yes: because of the infinite dignity of his person: for, though he took upon him the form of a servant, yet, being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, Phil. ii. 6, 7. 39. How is the righteousness of Christ commonly divided ? Into his active and passive obedience. 40. What is his active obedience ? The holiness of his nature and righteousness of his life, in full and perfect conformity to the whole law, without the least failure, either of parts or degrees of obedience, unto the end, Matt. v. 17, 18. 41. What is his passive obedience ? His satisfaction for sin, by enduring the infinite execution of the curse upon him in his death, Gal. 111. 13, to the full compensation of all the injuries done to the honour of an infinite God, by all the sins of an elect world, Eph. v. 2. 42. Why doth this satisfactory death get the name of obedience, Phil. 11. 8, as well as his righteous life ? Because his sufferings and death were entirely voluntary, and in most profound submission to the commandment, which he had received of his Father, John x. 18. 43. What is the formal cause of our justification, or that whereby Christ’s righteousness is made ours ? It is its being [¢mputed to us], Rom. iv. 6. 44. What is it to impute Christ’s righteousness unto us ? It is God’s accounting or reckoning it unto us, as if we had obeyed the law, and satisfied justice in our own persons, and dealing with us accordingly, Rom. viii. 4; 2 Cor. v. 21. 45. Upon what ground or foundation is Christ’s righteousness imputed to us ? Upon the ground of his representing us from eternity, and our union with him in time, Is. liii. 5. 46. What necessity is there for the ¢mputation of Christ’s passive obedience ἢ Because without the imputation thereof, we could have no legal security from eternal death, Rom. v. 9. 47. What necessity is there for the zmputation of Christ’s active obedience ? Because without the imputation thereof, we could have no Jeyal title to eternal life, Rom. vi. 23. ° 48. If Christ, as man, gave obedience to the law for himself, how can his active obedience be imputed to us ? Though the human nature abstractly considered, be a creature, yet, never subsisting by itself, but in the person of the Son of God, the acts of obedience performed therein, were never the acts of a mere man, but of him who is God-man, Mediator: and consequently acts of obedience, not for himself, but for us, Gal. iv. 4, 5. 49. If Christ’s active obedience be dmputed to us, are we not 256 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. loosed from any obligation to give obedience to the law in our own persons ? We are only loosed from an obligation to yield obedience to the law as a covenant of works, but not loosed from obedience thereunto as a rule of life, Gal. 11. 19. 50. Whether is the righteousness of Christ itself imputed to us, or only in its effects ? As the guilt itself of Adam’s first sin is imputed to all his posterity, whereby judgment comes upon all men to condemnation ; so, the righteousness of Christ itself is imputed to all his spiritual seed, whereby the free gift comes upon them all unto justification of life, Rom. v. 18. 51. What is the difference betwixt the imputation of our sins to Christ, and the imputation of his righteousness to us ἢ Our sins were imputed to Christ as our Surety, only for a time, that he might take them away; but his righteousness is imputed to us to abide with us for ever, hence called an everlasting righteousness, Dan. ix. 24. 52. Why are we said to be pardoned and accepted [only] for the righteousness of Christ ? Because a sinner can have no other plea before God, for pardon and acceptance, but Christ’s fulfilling all righteousness, as the only condi- tion of the covenant, Is. lxv. 24. 53- What is the instrumental cause of our justification ? It is twofold ; namely, external and internal. 54. What is the external instrumental cause ? The GospEL ; because therein is the righteousness of God revealed, and brought near to us as a free gift, Rom. i. 17, and v. 17, and x. 8. 55. What is the znternal instrumental cause of our justification 3 It is [Farru], Rom. x. το. 56. Why is faith the instrument of our justification ? To show that our justification is wholly of grace; it being the nature of faith to take the gift of righteousness freely, without money, and without price ; therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace, Rom. iv. 16. 57. What then is the instrumentality of faith in our justification ? It is no more than to be the hand that receives and applies the righteousness of Christ, whereby we are justified. "58. Is the grace of faith, or any act thereof, imputed to a sinner | for justification ἢ No: for to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness, Rom, iv. 5: Bc 59. What is the difference between saving faith, and justifying faith ? Saving faith! receives and rests upon Christ in all his offices, as of 1 Another term, evidently, for sanctifying faith according to Acts xv. 9— Purifying their hearts by faith. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 257 God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption ; but justifying faith receives and rests upon him, more particularly, in his priestly office, for pardon and acceptance, on account of his meritorious righteousness, Phil. ui. 9. And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. 60. Why is the righteousness of Christ said to be received by faith [alone]? That works may be wholly excluded from having any share in our justification, less or more, Rom. iii. 28. Therefore we conclude, that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law. 61. If good works have no influence upon our justification, of what use are they to the justified ? Though they cannot justify us before God, yet they are good “ evidences” of our justification, being “ the fruits of a true and lively faith, James u. 18 ;” they “adorn the profession of the gospel, Tit. ii. 11, 12; stop the mouths of adversaries, 1 Pet. 11. 15 ; and glorify God, John xv. 8.” 1 62. If faith’s receiving of Christ’s righteousness justify us, doth not faith justify as a work ? It is not properly the receiving, or any other act of faith, that justifies us, but the righteousness of Christ REcEIVED, Rom. iii. 22 ; even as it is not the hand that nourishes us, but the food which we take thereby. 63. If we are justified by faith alone, why is it said, James il. 24, That by works a man is justified, and not by faith only? This is to be understood of justifying, or evidencing the reality of our faith before men, and not of justifying our persons before God. 64. When. is it that God justifies the ungodly ? “Though from eternity God decreed to justify all the elect,” yet they are not “actually” justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, apply Christ “‘ and his righteousness ” unto them, Tit. iii. 5, 6, 7.? 65. How were believers, under the Old Testament, justified ? ‘Their justification was, in all respects, the same with the justifica- tion of believers, under the New Testament, Gal. iii. 9; Heb. xiii. 8. ” 3 66. What may we learn from this important doctrine of justifica- tion ? That all ground of pride and boasting is taken away from the creature, Rom. iii. 27: that faith itself, by laying hold upon the surety righteousness without us, is nothing else but a solemn declara- tion of our poverty and nakedness ; and that therefore it is our duty, to glory only in Christ Jesus, saying, Swrely—in the Lord have we righteousness and strength, 15. xlv. 24. 1 Confession, xvi. 2. 2 Thid., xi. 4. [3 Ἐρτδ:, ΣΙ ὅν ( 258 ) ARTICLES XII. AND XIII. ARTICLE ΧΙ]. Of Good Works.—Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit. De Bonis Operibus.—Bona opera, que sunt fructus fidei, et justi- ficatos sequuntur, quanquam peccata nostra expiare, et divini judicii severitatem ferre non possunt; Deo tamen grata sunt, et accepta in Christo, atque ex vera et viva fide necessario profluunt, ut plane ex illis, eque tides viva cognosci possit, atque arbor ex fructu judicari. ARTICLE XIII. Of Works before Justification.—Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of his Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School-authors say) de- serve grace of congruity ; yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin. De Operibus ante Justificationem.—Opera que finut ante gratiam Christi, et Spiritus ejus afflatum, cum ex fide Jesu Christi non pro- deant, mimime Deo grata sunt, neque gratiam (ut multi vocant) de congruo merentur. Immo cum non sunt facta ut Deus illa fieri voluit — et precepit, peccati rationem habere non dubitamus. History. ‘We shall, we think, better grasp the meaning of these Articles by taking them together; or at all events, by the condensation, we may minimise, so far as is expedient, the student’s labours. Nor indeed after the lengthened consideration of the last Article, and the intimate connection thereof, as well as of the two that precede it, with the present Articles, will it be necessary to extend our observations to any very great length. Curtailed and therefore diluted repetitions of history or doctrine prove, as a rule, insipid ; weaker their effect ; EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 259 and tend not unfrequently to abate the interest of the reader in the main and continuous thread of the performance. And a like disturb- ing feature, we grieve to say, mars to a certain extent some later expositions of the Articles. Where we should expect moderately full information, we often find only disjointed fragments, and are referred forward or backward with much of the same inconvenient result. We know that occasionally the Articles are considerably interlaced ; and on this account as on others they might perhaps not unprofitably be recast. Still, a little thoughtful arrangement would overcome all the difficulty ; and therefore, wherever we perceive com- bination to be possible or advisable, we shall have recourse to it. The Twelfth Article is an Elizabethan supplement to our Eleventh ; the Thirteenth may be fairly taken as the original supplement to the Edwardine Articles that preceded it, on man’s lost condition and salva- tion. The former is an argument for Good Works; the latter is a dividing line, marking out where and when Good Works do spring. While both are levelled against the Scholastic and Romish heresies of Congruity and Condignity, the Twelfth is also a protest against the Antinomian excesses of the sixteenth century. Our course therefore is pla. We need not repeat our comments on Pelagian, Scholastic, Tridentine, or Anabaptist exaltations of man to the annulling of the Gospel of God. It will be sufficient, and may be of service by the contrast, briefly to note the mind of some of God’s most honoured servants, and Christ’s allegiant Church, on the question of Good Works—their Value and Place. Mosheim has been censured for writing down Christianity, by dis- closing only the dissensions of the Christian Church; but just or otherwise as may be the charge, there is, we feel assured, a rich vein of gold—of consistent and consentient testimony to the truth—however mineralised and imbedded at times, awaiting the mattock of some future historian. CLEMENT OF Rome. “What, therefore, shall we do, brethren? Shall we be slothful in well-doing, and lay aside charity? God forbid that this should be done by us. Rather let us hasten with all earnestness and readiness of mind, to perfect every good work. For even the Creator himself, the Lord of all things, rejoices in his own works. By his Almighty power he established the heavens; and by his incomprehensible wis- dom he adorned them. He also divided the earth from the water, which encompassed it as a secure tower, upon the foundation of his own will. All the living creatures also that are upon it, by his ap- pointment, he commanded to exist. So, likewise, the sea, and all the creatures that are in the same, having first created them, he enclosed therein by his power. And above all, that which is most excellent, and greatest of all, Man, he formed with his holy and pure hands, the character of his own image. For thus he spake: ‘ Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness. So God created man, male and female created he them,’ And haying thus finished all these things +m. 260 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. he commended all that he had made, and blessed them, and said, ‘Increase and multiply.’ We see how all righteous men have been adorned with good works; wherefore even the Lord himself, having adorned himself with works, rejoiced. Having, therefore, this ex- ample, let us, without delay, fulfil his will: with all our strength, let us work the work of righteousness ” (Eph. 1* ad Corinth. s. 33). IGNATIUS. ‘ Perfect faith and charity, in Jesus Christ, are the beginning and the end of life. For the beginning is faith, the end charity; and these two joined in one, are of God ; and all other things which con- cern a holy life, are the outcome of these. No man in the profession of faith, sinneth ; nor in the possession of charity, hateth. ‘The tree is manifest by its fruit.’ So, they who profess themselves to be Chris- tians, will be seen by what they do. For it is not the work of an outward profession, but a life in the power of faith, if a man be found faithful unto the end” (Ep. ad Ephes. s. 14). “They who are carnal cannot do the things that are spiritual ; neither can they who are spiritual do the things that are carnal; nor can unbelief do the works of faith ” (ibid. ο. 8). PoOLyYcaRpP. “1 rejoiced greatly with you, in our Lord Jesus Christ, that the firm root of your faith, which was declared from ancient times, remaineth until now, and bringeth forth fruit in our Lord Jesus Christ ” (ad Philipp. s. 1). Justin Martyr. ‘** Whosoever are found not to live as Christ taught, let them know they are not Christians, though they profess with their tongue the doctrines of Christ. For he hath declared, that not they who only profess his religion, but they who do the works which he hath com- manded them, shall be saved” (Apol. 1* 8. 16). TREN US. “This faith, they that have believed without learning, as to our language they are barbarous, but as to their judgment, walk, and conversation, by reason of their faith, they are very wise, and please God, having their conversation in righteousness, chastity, and wisdom” - (adv. Haeres 1. iii. 4, 2). *‘ As the wild olive, if it be not grafted, continues useless to the owner, by reason of its wild quality, and as unfruitful wood is cut down, and cast into the fire ; so man, who receives not by faith the grafting of the Spirit, continues to be what he was before: and being flesh and blood, he cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (ibid. 1, v. zo; 2). EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 261 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. ‘Faith is the foundation of charity, bringing forth well-doing ” (Strom. 1, ii. c. 6). “When we hear it said, ‘Thy faith hath saved thee,’ we do not understand him to say, that they will be absolutely saved who believe in any way whatsoever, unless indeed the works also (of faith) follow” (ibid. 1, vi. c. 14). ORIGEN. “ And this faith, when it is justified, sticks in the ground of the soul, as a root that hath received the shower into it, that when it begins to be tilled by the law of God, the branches may rise from it that bear the fruit of good works. The root of righteousness, there- fore, doth not grow from works, but the fruit of works from the root of righteousness, to wit, that root of righteousness, whereby God accepts of righteousness, without works, viz., Faith” (in Ep. ad Rom. iis We G1) “¢T said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your 51η5. When did he say unto them, ‘Ye shall die in your sins,’ except when he said, ‘ Ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins’? (John viii. 21). And what is the cause that men die in their sins, except that they do not believe, that Jesus is the Christ? For he himself says, ‘If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.’ But if he that believeth not, that Jesus is the Christ, shall die in his own sins, it is plain that he who dieth not in his sins hath believed in Christ ; but he who dieth in his sins, although he says that he believeth in Christ, of a truth hath not believed in him. For if that may be called faith which is without works, such is a dead faith, as we read in the general Epistle of James” (Idem. Com. in Evang. Joan. tom. xix. 6). Cyrit oF JERUSALEM. “The worship of God consists of these two parts, pious doctrine and good works. Neither are doctrines without good works acceptable to God, nor does he accept works unless they be united with pious doctrines. For what advantage is there in rightly knowing the doctrines concerning God, if you be shamefully guilty of fornication 1 Again, what good is there in being properly chaste and impiously blasphemous? The knowledge of doctrines is therefore an acquisition of the greatest importance, and there is need of a sober and watchful mind, since many spoil others through philosophy and vain deceit” (Catech. 4). GREGORY NAZIANZEN. “As works are not accepted without faith, seeing many do what is right for the sake of glory, or from natural disposition, so faith without works is dead. And let no one deceive you by the vain 262 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. reasoning of those, who readily grant everything for the single purpose of adopting impious doctrines, and propose a trifling reward for a trifling thing. Show therefore faith by works, the produce of your soul (τῆς χώρας ὑμῶν τὸ youuov—the fertile land of your country), if we have not sown in vain” (Orat. 21). “Upon this foundation of doctrines, build good works, since faith without works is dead ; as are works without faith” (Idem, Orat. 41). CHRYSOSTOM. “ Knowest thou not, that they who are in their sins, although they live, are dead? But those who are in Tighteousness, although they die, yet do they live. Nor is this my saying, it is the declaration of Christ, who said to Martha, ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’ Is what I say then a fable? If thou art a Christian, believe in Christ: if thou believest in Christ, show me thy faith by thy works” (ad Pop. Antioch. Hom. 5). JEROME. “Let us pronounce our sentence against those that do not believe in Christ, and yet think themselves valiant, and wise, and temperate, and just, that they may know that there is none can live without Christ, apart from whom all virtue lies in vice” (in Gal. ο. “Tt is not sufficient to have the wall of faith, unless faith itself be confirmed by good works” (Idem, in Isa. ὁ. 26). AUGUSTINE. “Paul himself hath laid down, that not any faith whatsoever whereby God is believed in, but that whose works proceed of love, is saving, and truly according to the Gospel; ‘And faith,’ he says, ‘which worketh through love.’ Whence that faith which seems to some to be sufficient unto salvation, he so asserts to be of no avail, as that he says, ‘If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.’ But where faithful love worketh, there without doubt is a good life, for ‘love is the fulness of the law’” (de Fide et Operibus, xiv. 21). “For then is a work truly good, when the purpose of the doer is shot forth from love, and, as if returning to its own place, again rests in love” (Idem, Catech. Rudibus, xi. 16). * All the life of unbelievers is sin, and there is nothing good with- out the chiefest good: for where the knowledge of the eternal and unchangeable truth is wanting, there is but false virtue even in the best manners” (Idem, de Vera Innocent, c. 106). “The man is first to be changed, that his works may be changed, for if a man remain in that estate that he is evil, he cannot have good works” (Idem, de Verbis, Evang. Matt. Serm. 72). “But be it far from us-to think that true virtue should be in any EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 263 one unless he be a just man. And let it be as far from us to think that any one is truly just, unless he live by faith: ‘for the just shall live by faith.’ And who of those who would be accounted Christians, unless it be the Pelagians, and amongst them perhaps thyself, Julian, only, will say that any infidel is just, will say that a wicked man is just, will say that a man enslaved to the devil is just? Yea, though he were Fabricius, though he were Fabius, though he were Scipio, though he were Regubus, with whose names thou thinkest to terrify me, as if we were talking in the old Roman court” (Idem, contra Julian, Pelag. 1, iv. 6. 3). “There cannot be true virtuous Actions, where there is not true Religion.—For although the mind may seem to rule over the body, and reason over the passions, if the mind and reason itself does not serve God, as God himself hath commanded that he should be served, it by no means rightly rules over the body and the passions. For how can the mind be mistress over the body and the passions, if it be ignorant of the true God, and be not subdued to his obedience, but prostituted to the corruption of the most sinful demons? The virtues, therefore, which it seems to have of its own, whereby it rules over the body and the passions, so as to acquire or retain anything, if it does not refer them to God, are indeed themselves rather vices than virtues. For although some think that they are true and real virtues, when they are referred to themselves alone, and are not affected for any other account ; yet even then are they puffed up and proud; and therefore are not to be accounted virtues, but vices” (Idem, de Civitate Dei, 1, xix. ὁ. 25). LuTHER AND CALVIN. He who would fully comprehend the utter antagonism between the Romish and the Scriptural doctrine of Good Works, must make him- self familiar with these veteran guards of the Reformation. Here as before we cannot follow them in the details of their skilled strate- getics; but in selecting some portions of their argument, we may again assure the reader, it is only on such lines that the strongholds of Protestantism are by us to be retaken and maintained. And it is on this account especially, that we so earnestly commend the labours of the old masters, feeling sure that the field is safe in their hands. To know Rome, you must be converted at Rome—have stood face to face with the great apostasy, and seen its hideous features unveiled. And this, less or more literally, was the natural vantage-ground of the sixteenth and contextual centuries. Nor is it at all improbable in the present day, could we shift Dr. Pusey from Oxford to the full pene- tralia of the Papal court and city of the Tiber, that he might not come back, like Luther, shaken in his faith, and ultimately lay upon his “altars” of England an elaborate recantation of ‘The Tracts for the Times”—an apology for his so sadly errant and inconsistent career. 264 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. LurTHer. Sins are not taken away by Works.—‘ That he might deliver us from this present evil world,” Gal. i. 4. “ Here again you see that no man is able, by his own works or his own power, to put away sin, because this present world is evil, and (as St. John saith) ‘is set upon mischief.’ As many therefore as are in the world are the bondslaves of the devil, constrained to serve him, and do all things at his plea- sure. What availed it then, to set up so many orders of religion, for the abolishing of sin; to devise so many great and most painful works, as to wear shirts of hair, to beat the body with whips till the blood followed, to go on pilgrimage to St. James in harness, and such other like? Be it so that thou doest all these things, yet notwith- standing this is true, that thou art in this present evil world, and not in the kingdom of Christ. And if thou be not in the kingdom of Christ, it is certain that thou belongest to the kingdom of Satan, which is this evil world. Therefore all the gifts, either of the body or of the mind, which thou enjoyest, as wisdom, righteousness, holi- ness, eloquence, power, beauty, and riches, are but the slavish instru- ments of the devil, and with all these thou art compelled to serve him, and to advance his kingdom... . “By these words then, ‘That he might deliver us,’ &c., Paul showeth what is the argument of this Epistle; to wit, that we have need of grace and Christ, and that no other creature, neither man nor angel, can deliver man out of this present evil world... . That Christ hath put away sin, and hath delivered us from the tyranny and kingdom of the devil; that is to say, from this wicked world, which is an obedient servant, and a willing follower of the devil his God. . . . And the more wise, righteous, and holy that men are without Christ, so much the more hurt they do the gospel. So we also, that were religious men, were double wicked in the papacy, before God did lighten us with the knowledge of his gospel, and ye, notwithstanding under the colour of true piety and holiness. . . . “Therefore let us praise God the Father, and give him hearty thanks for this his unmeasurable mercy, that hath delivered us out of the kingdom of the devil (in the which we were holden captives) by his own Son, when it was impossible to be done by our own strength. And let us acknowledge, together with Paul, ‘that all our works and righteousness are but loss and dung.’ Also let us cast under our feet, and utterly abhor all the power of free-will, all pharisaical wisdom and righteousness, all religious orders, all masses, ceremonies, vows, fasting, and such like (Phil. iii. 8), as a most filthy defiled cloth (Isa. lxiv. 6), and as the most dangerous poison of the devil. Contrariwise, let us extol and magnify the glory of Christ, who hath delivered us by his death, not from this world only, but from this evil world. “ Paul then by this word, ev, showeth that the kingdom of the world, or the devil’s kingdom, is the kingdom of iniquity, ignorance, error, sin, death, blasphemy, desperation, and everlasting damnation. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 265 On the other side, the kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of equity, light, grace, remission of sins, peace, consolation, saving health, and everlasting life, into the which we are translated (Col. 1. 13) by our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, world without end. So be it.” The mingling of Faith with Works, a subversion of the Gospel_— * And intend to pervert the gospel of Christ,” Gal. i. 7. “ For either Christ must remain, and the law perish, or the law must remain, and Christ perish ; for Christ and the law can by no means agree and reign together in the conscience. Where the righteousness of the law ruleth, there cannot the righteousness of grace rule ; and again, where the righteousness of grace reigneth, there cannot the righteousness of the law reign; for one of them must needs give place unto the other. And if thou canst not believe that God will forgive thy sins for Christ’s sake, whom he sent into the world to be our High Priest ; how then, I pray thee, wilt thou believe that he will forgive the same for the works of the law, which thou couldst never perform ; or for thine own works, which (as thou must be constrained to confess) be such as it is impossible for them to countervail the judgment of God ? “Wherefore, the doctrine of grace can by no means stand with the doctrine of the law. ‘The one must simply be refused and abolished, and the other confirmed and established. For as Paul saith here, to mingle the one with the other, is to overthrow the gospel of Christ. . . . “It seemeth to be a light matter to mingle the law and the gospel, faith and works, together; but it doth more mischief than a man’s reason can conceive; for it doth not only blemish and darken the knowledge of grace, but also it taketh away Christ, with all his bene- fits, and it utterly overthroweth the gospel, as Paul saith in this place. The cause of this great evil is our flesh, which, being plunged in sins, seeth no way how to get out, but by works, and therefore it would live in the righteousness of the law, and rest in the trust and confi- dence of her own works. Wherefore, it is utterly ignorant of the doctrine of faith and grace, without the which, notwithstanding, it is impossible for the conscience to find rest and quietness.” St. Paul’s and Luther's “ Works done before the Grace of Christ and the Inspiration of His Spirit.” —“ But when it had pleased God (which had separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace) to reveal his Son in me,” Gal. i. 15, 16. ‘*‘ When it had pleased God,’ saith he. As if he would say: I have not deserved it, because I was zealous of the law of God without judgment; nay rather, this foolish and wicked zeal stirred me up, that, God so permitting, I fell headlong into more abominable and outrageous sins; I persecuted the church of God, I was an enemy to Christ, I blasphemed his gospel, and to conclude, I was the author of shedding much innocent blood. This was my desert. In the midst of this cruel rage, I was called to such inestimable grace. What! was it because of this outrageous cruelty? No, forsooth, But the abundant grace of God, who calleth, and showeth mercy to whom he will, pardoned and forgave me all those blasphemies: and for these my horrible sins, which then I thought to be perfect righteousness, and an acceptable service unto ) ! 266 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. God, he gave unto me his grace, the knowledge of his truth, and called me to be an apostle. “We also are come at this day, to the knowledge of grace by the self-same merits. I crucified Christ daily in my monkish life, and blasphemed God through my false faith, wherein I then continually lived. Outwardly I was not as other men, extortioners, unjust, whoremongers ; but I kept chastity, poverty, and obedience. More- over, I was free from the cares of this present life. I was only given to fasting, watching, praying, saying of masses, and such like. Not- withstanding, in the mean time, I fostered under this cloaked holiness, and trust in my own righteousness, continual mistrust, doubtfulness, fear, hatred, and blasphemy against God. And this my righteousness was nothing else but a filthy puddle, and the very kingdom of the devil. For Satan loveth such saints, and accounteth them for his dear darlings, who destroy their own bodies and souls, and deprive themselves of all the blessings of God’s gifts. In the mean time, not- withstanding wickedness, blindness, contempt of God, ignorance of the gospel, profanation of the sacraments, blaspheming and treading of Christ under foot, and the abuse of all the benefits and gifts of God, do reign in them at the fall. To conclude, such saints are the bond- slaves of Satan, and therefore are driven to speak, think, and do whatsoever he will, although outwardly they seem to excel all others in good works, in holiness and strictness of life. ‘‘Such we were under the Popedom: verily no less, if not more contumelious and blasphemous against Christ and his gospel, than Paul himself, and specially I: for I did so highly esteem the Pope’s authority, that to dissent from him, even in the least point, I thought it a sin worthy of everlasting death. And that wicked opinion caused me to think that John Huss was a cursed heretic ; yea, and I accounted it a heinous offence, but once to think of him; and I would myself, in defence of the Pope’s authority, have ministered fire and sword, for the burning and destroying of that heretic—[after repeated Bulls and Excommunications, seized by the Council of Constance, in violation of the safe-conduct given him by the Emperor, and burned alive on the sixth day of July, 1415]—and thought it a high service unto God so to do. Wherefore if you compare publicans and harlots with these holy hypocrites, they are not evil. For they, when they offend, have remorse of conscience, and do not justify their wicked doings; but these men are so far from acknowledging their abominations, idolatries, wicked will-worshippings and ceremonies, to be sins, that they affirm the same to be righteousness, and a most acceptable sacrifice unto God, yea, they adore them as matters of singular holiness, and through them, do promise salvation unto others, and also sell them for money, as things available to salvation. “This then is our goodly righteousness, this is our high merit, which bringeth unto us the knowledge of grace ; to wit, that we have so deadly and so devilishly persecuted, blasphemed, trodden under foot, and condemned God, Christ, the gospel, faith, the sacraments, all godly men, the true worship of God, and have taught and stablished EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 267 quite contrary things. And the more holy we were, the more were we blinded, and the more did we worship the devil. There was not one of us, but he was a blood-sucker, if not in deed, yet in heart.” True Faith, however, is not idle; and the Good Works which ‘‘do necessarily spring” from it, are inestimable.—“ Thus 1 live, yet not 1 now, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 11. 20). ‘‘ Faith therefore must be purely taught: namely, that thou art so entirely and nearly joined unto Christ, that he and thou art made as it were one person ; so that thou mayest boldly say, I am now one with Christ, that is to say, Christ’s righteousness, victory, and life are mine... . This faith therefore is not an idle quality, but the excellency thereof is such, that it utterly confoundeth these foolish dreams of the sophisters touching their formed faith and counterfeit charity, their merits, works, and worthiness. . . “ Hitherto we have declared this to be the first argument of Paul, that either Christ must needs be the minister of sin, or else the law doth not justify. When he had finished this argument, he set forth him- self for an example, saying, ‘that he was dead unto that old law by a certain new law.’ Now he answereth two objections which might have been made against him. His first answer is against the cavilla- tions of the proud, and the offence of the weak. For when remission of sins is freely preached, then do the malicious by and by slander this preaching, as Rom. iii. 8, ‘ Let us do evil that good may come thereof,’ For these fellows, as soon as they hear that we are not justified by the law, forthwith do maliciously conclude and say, why then let us reject the law. Again, if grace do there abound, say they, where sin doth abound, let us then abound in sin, that we may become righteous, and that grace may the more abound. These are the malicious and proud spirits which spitefully and wittingly slander the scriptures and sayings of the Holy Ghost, even as they slandered Paul whilst the apostles lived, to their own confusion and condemnation, as it is said, 2 Pet. iii. “‘ Moreover the weak, which are not malicious, are offended when they hear that the law and good works are not to be done as neces- sary to justification. These must be holpen, and must be instructed how good works do not justify ; how they ought to be done, how not to be done. These ought to be done, not as the cause, but as the fruits of righteousness ; and when we are made righteous, we ought to do them, but not contrariwise, to the end that when we are un- righteous, we may be made righteous. The tree maketh the apple, but not the apple the tree.” Again : “When we are out of the matter of justification, we cannot sufficiently praise and magnify those works which are commanded of God. For who can sufficiently commend and set forth the profit and fruit of only one work, which a Christian doth through faith and in faith? . . . But works done without faith, although they have never so goodly a show of holiness, are under the curse. Wherefore, so far off it is, that the doers thereof should deserve grace, righteousness, and eternal life, that rather they heap sin upon sin. After this 268 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. manner the Pope, that child of perdition, and all that follow him, do work. So work all merit-mongers and heretics which are fallen from the faith ” (see on Gal. iii. 22). CALVIN. Good Works proceed from Faith as their Root.—* Assuredly a bad tree can only produce bad fruit. But who will be so shameless as to deny that we are bad trees until we are ingrafted into Christ? There- fore, if any good fruit is praised in man, let the root of it be sought in faith, as Augustine admonishes (in Psalm xxxi. Serm. 1). There God so often declares that he regards not the outward appearance, but looketh on the heart. This is said expressly by Jeremiah (Jer. v.). But what can be the cleanness and sincerity of a heart which Peter tells us is purified only by faith? (Acts xv. 9). Admirably, therefore, does Augustine say to Boniface, ‘ Our religion distinguishes the just from the unjust, not by the law of works, but by the law of faith, without which the works which seem good turn to sin.’ He adds, ‘ Therefore unbelievers sin in whatever they do, because they do not refer their doings to a lawful end’ (Lit. ad Bonif. 3, ὁ. 5). He treats copiously of the same subject in his tract against Julian. Hence, also, in another place he describes theirs as a wandering course, inasmuch as the more active they are, the further they are carried from the goal, and the more therefore their condition becomes hopeless. At last he concludes, that ‘it is better to limp in the course than keep running out of it’ (Praef. in Psalm xxxi.), And what more would we have? Let them (the Fathers of Trent) anathe- matise the Apostle, who declares that without faith it is impossible to please God! (Heb. 11. 6). Let them anathematise Christ and Paul, who declare that all unbelievers are dead, and are raised from death by the gospel! (John v.; Eph. 11. 1)” (Antidote to the Canons of the Council of Trent ; Canon 7). Good Works necessary, and a Proof of Justification.—“ Nor, when we say that men are justified by the benefit of Christ, are we to be silent as to the grace of Regeneration ; nay, rather, we must take care not to separate what the Lord perpetually conjoins. What then? Let men be taught that it is impossible they can be regarded as righteous by the merit of Christ, without being renewed by his Spirit unto a holy life ; and that it is in vain for any in whom the Spirit of regeneration dwells, not to glory in the free adoption of God; in short, that God receives none into favour who are not also made truly righteous. But there is need of distinction, lest the one of the two gifts should derogate from the other. Let the children of God con- sider that Regeneration is necessary to them, but that, nevertheless, their full righteousness consists in Christ—let them understand that they have been ordained and created unto holiness of life and the study of good works, but that, nevertheless, they must recline on the merits of Christ with their whole soul—let them enjoy the righteous- ness of life which has been bestowed upon them, still, however, dis- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 269 trusting it so as not to bring before the tribunal of God any other trust than trust in the obedience of Christ. “In order that ambiguities may be removed, it is necessary that the Righteousness which we obtain by faith, and which is freely be- stowed upon us, should be placed in the highest rank, so that, as often as the conscience is brought before the tribunal of God, it alone may shine forth. In this way the righteousness of works, to whatever extent it may exist in us, being reduced to its own place, will never come, as it were, into conflict with the other; and certainly it is just that as righteousness of works depends on righteousness of faith, it should be made subordinate to it, so as to leave the latter in full possession of the salvation of man. There can be no doubt that Paul, when he treats of the Justification of man, confines himself to the one point—how man may ascertain that God is propitious to him ? Here he does not remind us of a quality infused into us; on the contrary, making no mention of works, he tell us that righteousness must be sought without us; otherwise that certainty of faith, which he everywhere so strongly urges, could never stand ; still less could there be ground for the contrast between the righteousness of faith and works which he draws in the tenth chapter to the Romans. “But we must obviate their cavil, when they bring forward James, and collect other passages in Scripture, where the term just7/y is taken differently, to establish what they call conewrrence. James does not mean that man acquires righteousness with God, even in the minutest degree, by the merit of works; he is only treating of the approval of righteousness (James ii. 21). And who denies that every man proves what he is by his actions? But to furnish men with credible evidence of your disposition is a very different thing from meriting salvation in the sight of God. Hence, not to be imposed upon by the different meanings of the word, we must always observe whether reference is made to God or to men. Moreover, we deny not that the righteous are called the children of God, in respect of holiness of life, as well as in respect of a pure conscience: but as no work, if weighed in the Divine balance, will be found otherwise than maimed, and even defiled by impurities, we conclude, that this name of righteousness, when given to works, is founded on free pardon. Believers, there- fore, are righteous by works, just because they are righteous without any merit of, or without any respect to works, seeing that the richt- eousness of works depends on the righteousness of faith” (The True Method of giving Peace to Christendom). Tue ΤΉΙΒΤΒΕΝ ARTICLES OF 1538: (Conferences with the Lutherans). “Good Works are necessary to salvation, not because they justify a wicked man, nor because they are a satisfaction for sins, or the cause of Justification ; but because it is necessary, that he who is now justified by faith and reconciled to God through Christ, should study _ «ΜΡ — 270 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. to do the will of God, according to that: ‘ Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’ He assuredly who does not endeavour to do these works, but lives according to the flesh, has neither true faith, nor is justified, neither shall he obtain eternal life, unless he heartily reforms, and truly repents” (Art. 4). Tue Homitizs. “Thy deeds and works must be an open testimonial of thy faith: otherwise thy faith, being without good works, is but the devil’s faith, the faith of the wicked, a fantasy of faith, and not a true Christian faith.” ‘Be sure of your faith, try it by your living, look upon the fruits that come of it, mark the increase of love and charity by it towards God and your neighbour, and so shall you perceive it to be a true lively faith” (Homily on Faith, Part Third), “Without faith no work is good before God, as saith St. Augustine : ‘We must set no good works before faith, nor think that before faith aman may do any good works; for such works, although they seem unto men to be praiseworthy, yet indeed they be but vain, and not allowed before God. They be as the course of an horse that runneth out of the way, which taketh great labour, but to no purpose. Let no man therefore,’ saith he, ‘reckon upon his good works before his faith: whereas faith was not, good works were not. The intent, saith he, ‘maketh the good works; but faith must guide and order the intent of man.’ And Christ saith, 17 thine eye be naught, thy whole body is full of darkness (Matt. vi. 23). ‘The eye doth signify the intent,’ saith St. Augustine, ‘wherewith a man doth a thing.’ So that he which doth not his good works with a godly intent, and a true faith that worketh by love, the whole body besides, that is to say, all the whole number of his works, is dark, and there is no light in them. For good deeds be not measured by the facts themselves, and so discerned from vices; but by the ends and intents for the which they be done” (Homily on Good Works, Part First). Rome’s ‘Good Works.” —‘‘ Keeping in divers places, marts or markets of merits, full of holy relics, images, shrines, and works of overflowing abundance ready to be sold. ... Holy cowls, holy girdles, holy pardons, holy beads, holy shoes, holy rules, and all full of holiness. . . . But to pass over the innumerable superstitiousness that hath been in strange apparel, in silence, in dormitory, in cloister, in chapter, in’ choice of meats and drinks, and in such like things, let us consider what enormities and abuses have been in the three chief principal points, which they called the three essentials, or three chief foundations of religion, that is to say, obedience, chastity, and wilful poverty. First, under pretence or colour of obedience to their Father in religion (which obedience they made themselves), they were made free, by their rule and canons, from the obedience of their natural father and mother, and from the obedience of emperor and king, and all EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 271 temporal power, whom of very duty by God’s laws they were bound to obey. And so the profession of their obedience not due, was a forsaking of their due obedience. And how their profession of chas- tity was kept, it is more honesty to pass over in silence, and let the world judge of that which is well known, than with unchaste words, by expressing of their unchaste life, to offend chaste and godly ears, And as for their wilful poverty, it was such, that when in possessions, jewels, plate, and riches, they were equal or above merchants, gentle- men, barons, earls, and dukes; yet by this subtle sophistical term, Proprium ΙΝ Communi, that is to say, ‘Proper in common,’ they mocked the world, persuading, that notwithstanding all their posses- sions and riches, yet they kept their vow, and were in wilful poverty. But for all their riches, they might never help father nor mother, nor other that were indeed very needy and poor, without the license of their father abbot, prior, or warden ; and yet they might take of every man; but they might not give aught to any man, no not to them whom the laws of God bound them to help... . “ And briefly to pass over the ungodly and counterfeit religion, let us rehearse some other kinds of Papistical superstitions and abuses, as of beads, of lady psalters, and rosaries, of fifteen O’s, of St. Ber- nard’s verses, of St. Agathe’s letters, of purgatory, of masses satisfac- tory, of stations and jubilees, of feigned relics, of hallowed beads, bells, bread, water, palms, candles, fire, and such other, of superstitious fastings, of fraternities or brotherhoods, of pardons, with such like merchandise, which were so esteemed and abused to the great preju- dice of God’s glory and commandments, that they were made most high and most holy things, whereby to attain to the everlasting life, or remission of sins: yea also vain inventions, unfruitful ceremonies, and ungodly laws, decrees, and councils of Rome, were in such wise advanced, that nothing was thought comparable in authority, wisdom, learning, and godliness, unto them” (ibid. Part Third). Christ's Good Works.—‘ First you must have an assured faith in God, and give yourselves wholly unto him, love him in prosperity and adversity, and dread to offend him evermore. Then for his sake love all men, friends and foes, because they be his creation and image, and redeemed by Christ, as ye are. Cast in your minds, how you may do good unto all men unto your powers, and hurt no man. Obey all your superiors and governours; serve your masters faithfully and diligently, as well in their absence as in their presence, not for dread of punishment only, but for conscience’ sake, knowing that you are bound so to do by God’s commandments. Disobey not your fathers and mothers, but honour them, help them, and please them to your power. Oppress not, kill not, beat not, neither slander nor hate any man; but love all men, speak well of all men, help and succour every man as you may, yea, even your enemies that hate you, that speak evil of you, and that do hurt you. Take no man’s goods, nor covet your neighbour's goods wrongfully ; but content yourselves with that which ye get truly; and also bestow your own goods charitably, as need and case requireth. Flee all idolatry, witchcraft, and perjury ; 272 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. commit no manner of adultery, fornication, or other unchasteness, in will nor in deed, with any other man’s wife, widow, maid, or other- wise. And travelling continually during your life, thus in keeping the commandments of God (wherein standeth the pure, principal, and right honour of God, and which wrought in faith, God hath ordained to be the right trade and pathway unto heaven), you shall not fail, as Christ hath promised, to come to that blessed and everlasting life, where you shall live in glory and joy with God for ever: to whom be praise, honour and empery, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Ibid.) JEWELL’S APOLOGY. ‘Though we say there is no trust to be put in the merits of our works and actions, and place all the hopes and reason of our salvation only in Christ; yet do we not therefore say, that men should live loosely, and dissolutely, as if baptism and faith were sufficient for a Christian, and there were nothing more required. The true faith is a living faith, and cannot be idle.” Nowe.w’s CatEcHIsM. “So far, therefore, is faith from withdrawing our hearts from living uprightly, that contrariwise, it doth most vehemently stir us up to the endeavour of good life; yea, and so far, that he is not truly faithful that doth not also to his power both shun vices and embrace virtues, so living alway as one that looketh to give an account. “In good works, two things are principally required, First, that we do those works that are prescribed by the law of God; secondly, that they be done with that mind of faith which God requireth: for no doings or thoughts enterprised or conceived without faith can please God. “Tt is evident, therefore, that all works whatsoever we do, before that we be born again and renewed by the Spirit of God, such as may probably be called our own works, are faulty. For whatsoever show of gayness and worthiness they represent and give to the eyes of men, since they spring and proceed from a faulty and corrupted heart, which God chiefly considereth, they cannot but be defiled and corrupted, and so grievously offend God. Such works, therefore, as evil fruits, grow- ing out of an evil tree, God despiseth and rejecteth from him.” Tae Irish ARTICLES OF 1615. ᾽ν “ All that are justified, are likewise sanctified: their faith being always accompanied with true Repentance of good Works. “Repentance is a gift of God, whereby a godly sorrow is wrought in the heart of the faithful, for offending God their merciful Father by their former transgressions, together with a constant resolution for the time to come to cleave unto God, and to lead a new life. «ς Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot make satisfaction for our sins, and endure EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 273 the severity of God’s judgment: yet are they pleasing to God and accepted of him in Christ, and do spring from a true and lively faith, which by them is to be discerned, as a tree by the fruit. “The works which God would have his people to walk in, are such as he hath commanded in his holy Scripture, and not such works as men have devised out of their own brain, of a blind zeal and devotion, without the warrant of the word of God. “The regenerate cannot fulfil the law of God perfectly in this life. For in many things we offend all: and if we say, we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Such, then, is an index, and only an index, to the mind of the church and people of God, from the earliest age of Christianity down- wards, on the subject of our present Articles. How sadly has Rome caricatured and corrupted the truth of the Gospel, and departed from the pale of Catholic Christianity, in teach- ing, that good works fully satisfy the law of God, and of themselves merit eternal life; and that the plenary absolution of the filthy con- fessional imparts a power of perfection to the absolved, so that their works are free from all admixture of sin! Into what depths of depravity can the human heart, in pride, in ignorance, and in super- stition, descend ! And this is something of the mire and degradation into which Doctor Pusey and the Ritualistic School would attempt to drag the Church of England, whose Articles here and throughout, so clearly and emphatically proclaim—No Peace with Rome ! “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” The great secret, we believe, of England’s gravitation towards Rome is Political Expediency, with its background of Infidelity. Our statesmen bow down before the idol of party, instead of the “saving sign” of religion and national weal; men are promoted to high and commanding offices in the Church from all schools of thought, except as the exception from the school of Christ ; and, as a consequence, the floods of ungodliness flow fast over the land ; the rapids of revolution, anarchy and atheism, are nearing ; and the evangelical and only true life of England, as well as the state, is in danger. We want Faith and Prayer brought back again to their Prevalency with God. We want a Conference and an Organisation of the Faith- ful and Praying Men and Women of Christendom to command a blessing from on high, and stem the tide at once of Lawlessness, Infidelity, and Superstition. And we want, as we have said, another Luther, with a clear head, and a lion heart, to lead us, in God’s name, “Once more unto the Breach !” Shall it be told by the future historian, that, at the close of the nineteenth century, British, and European, and American Christianity, failed in outspoken allegiance to Christ and God; that as the hordes of the Philistines shouted for the battle, there was not one champion, having proved his armour, even though but a sling and a stone from 5 224 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. the brook, to come out and meet them in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom they defied ? An objection and a side issue grounded on the tenor of our thirteenth Article, may be briefly noted. The objection is, that Cornelius, Naaman, and the Ninevites, are examples in favour of the grace of congruity. And the side issue, If we accept the Article, must we not condemn the whole heathen world ? The Objection. Here the words of Luther are, we think, well balanced :— Cornelius.—“ The Popish schoolmen are deceived, when they say, for the maintenance of their opus congruwum, or merit before grace, that Cornelius, by the natural or moral work of reason, deserved grace and the sending of the Holy Ghost. For to be a just man and fearing God, are the properties, not of a Gentile or of a natural man, but of a spiritual man, who hath faith already. For unless he did believe in God, and fear God, he could not hope to obtain anything of him by prayer. The first commendation therefore that Luke giveth unto Cornelius, is this, ‘ That he is a righteous man and fear- ing God :’ afterwards he commendeth him for his works and alms- deeds. This our adversaries do not consider, but lay hold upon this sentence, ‘that he gave alms unto the poor:’ for that seemeth to make for the establishing of their merit of congruence or desert going before grace. But first the person or the tree must be commended, and then the works and the fruit. Cornelius is a good tree, for he is righteous and feareth God: therefore he bringeth forth good fruit, he giveth alms, he calleth upon God, and these fruits please God, because of his faith, Wherefore the angel commendeth Cornelius for his faith in Christ to come, and bringeth him from that faith, to another faith in Christ which was already come, when he saith: ‘Call for Simon, whose surname is Peter: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do’” (Comment. on Gal. iii. 2). Naaman the Syrian.—“ Likewise Naaman the Syrian was, no doubt, a good and godly man, and had a religious and reverent opinion of God. And although he was a Gentile, and belonged not to the kingdom of Moses, which then flourished ; yet notwithstanding his flesh was cleansed, and the God of Israel was revealed unto him, and he received the Holy Ghost. For thus he saith: ‘ Now I know assuredly that there is no other God in all the world but in Israel’ (2 Kings v. 15, &c.) . . . Moreover it appeareth that faith was not idle in him. For thus he speaketh to the prophet Heliseus: ‘Thy servant will henceforth neither offer burnt sacrifice nor offering unto any other God, saving the Lord’” (ibid.). The Ninevites, §c.—‘‘ Therefore God, when the kingdom of Moses was yet standing and flourishing, did show that he justified men without the law, as indeed he justified many kings in Egypt and in Babylon: also Job, and many other nations of the East. Moreover, Nineveh, a great city, was justified, and received the promise of God, that it should not be destroyed. By what means? Not because it EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 275 heard and fulfilled the law: but because it believed the word of God which the prophet Jonas preached. For so saith the prophet : ‘ And the Ninevites believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sack- cloth ;’ that is to say, they repented. Our adversaries do craftily pass over this word [believed], and yet the effect of all together resteth therein. Thou readest not in Jonas: and the Ninevites received the law of Moses, were circumcised, offered sacrifice, fulfilled the works of the law: but believing the word, they repented in sackcloth and ashes ” (ibid.). Calvin also well remarks :—‘‘ Some examples are brought forward as repugnant to this view. When Naaman the Syrian made inquiry at the prophet as to the true mode of worshipping God, we cannot, (it is said) suppose that he was informed of the Mediator, and yet he is commended for his piety (2 Kings v. 17-19). Nor could Cornelius, a Roman heathen, be acquainted with what was not known to all the Jews, and at best known obscurely. And yet his alms and prayers were acceptable to God (Acts x. 31), while the prophet by his answer approved of the sacrifices of Naaman. In both, this must have been the result of faith. In like manner, the eunuch to whom Philip was sent, had he not been endued with some degree of faith, never would have incurred the fatigue and expense of a long and difficult journey to obtain an opportunity of worship (Acts vill. 27, 31); and yet we see how, when interrupted by Philip, he betrays his ignorance of the Mediator. I-admit that, in some respects, their faith was not explicit either as to the person of Christ, or the power and office assigned him by the Father. Still it is certain that they were imbued with principles which might give some, though a slender, foretaste of Christ. This should not be thought’strange ; for the eunuch would not have hastened from a distant country to Jerusalem to an unknown God ; nor could Cornelius, after having once embraced the Jewish religion, have lived so long in Judea without becoming acquainted with the rudiments of sound doctrine. In regard to Naaman, it is absurd to suppose that Elisha, while he gave him many minute pre- cepts, said nothing of the principal matter. Therefore, although their knowledge of Christ may have been obscure, we cannot suppose that they had no such knowledge at all” (Instit. 1. 3, ¢ 2, sect. 32). Side Issue: Can the Heathen be saved? The foregoing considera- tions throw, we think, as much light on this subject as is possible for us to obtain. It is a question which Revelation has not fully an- swered ; and therefore one which we may not attempt dogmatically to solve. Still the examples quoted show us, as Luther says, that “ Gentiles were justified without the Law, and received secretly the Holy Ghost.” Ethiopia, Nineveh, Rome, and Syria had saved ones : why, therefore, may not God’s saved ones be found throughout all the earth? ‘In every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh right- eousness, is accepted with him” (Acts x. 35). But we must ever bear in mind the universal truth, that “the preparations (or, dispos- ings) of the heart in man ”—heathen, as well as Jew and Christian— “are from the Lord” (Prov. xvi.1). And therefore the acceptability 276 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. of a virtuous heathen, arises not from his natural light and moral purity, but clearly from God’s preventing grace. Thus we have the possibility of the affirmative to the question demonstrated ; but that is all. The language of St. Paul, Rom. ii. 14, 26, 27, has been taken by some in a much stronger light ; but we should remember that the reasoning of the Apostle is altogether hypothetical, and grounded indeed upon a manifest impossibility—the Gentile (much less than the Jew) fulfill- ing all the (moral) requirements of Law. We may add that the question is one which has been long agi- tated: Clement of Alexandria holding that Philosophy was given to the Gentiles, for the same purpose for which the Law was given to the Jews—to prepare them for Justification by Faith under the Gospel. Nor does the inquiry necessarily arise out of our Article, which treats rather of those within, than without, the Church. And it may be that one reason why God has not fully revealed the matter to us is, that our love for his children in their blindness may be a test of our love to him in us who say, “" We see.” SCRIPTURAL PROOF. ARTICLE XII. (1.) Good Works are the fruits of Faith, and follow after the Justification of the Person (‘justificatos”—not justificationem— “ sequuntur ”). Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification | “ And put no difference between us and them [Jews and Gentiles], purifying their hearts by faith (s7r/ore:—the faith [in Christ]: the fountain of all Sanctification) ” (Acts xv. 9). “Seeing ye have purified your souls” (τὰς ~uxas—“ the centres of personality ”) “‘in obeying the truth through the Spirit [the agent of Sanctification] unto unfeigned love of the brethren [the one great practical proof of our love to God]. . . . Being born again [the un- questionable origin and only begetting cause of the new life of holi- ness}, not of (¢«—out of, as the origination) corruptible seed [the semen humanum of the natural heart], but of incorruptible [super- human and Divine], by means of (διά, as the instrument, not é as above—the origination here being the will of God the Father who ‘begat us,’ James 1. 18) the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. i. 22, 23). “The Gospel is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and fully knew (éa1y:&0xw—the objective exchanged for the sub- jective transforming knowledge) the grace of God in truth ” (Col. i. 6). “‘Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all law- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 277 lessness (ἀνομία), and purify unto himself a people peculiarly his, zealous of good works” (Titus ii. 14). (2.) Good Works have no merit to justify us. Cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judg- ment “Ὁ my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my good extendeth not to thee ”—or, My good is not beyond or beside thee; or, as the Arab, “Thou needest not my good actions; ” or, as the Chald., “ My good is not given save of thee:” the soul’s response to Ex. xx, 2, “I am the Lord thy God”—‘“ Yea, Lord, thou alone art my salvation, my goodness, my acceptability, my all in all” (Ps. Xvi. 2). τ ὧν likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke xvi. ro). ‘ Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified ” (Ps. exliii. 2). “ΤῈ thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, Ὁ Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps. exxx. 3). ‘And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through (é:¢—the medium) the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God upon (¢7/—on condition of) my faith” (Phil. iii. 9). “ Because (διότι) by the works of the law [‘God’s Law: whether in the partial revelation of it written in the consciences of the Gentiles, or in the more complete one given by Moses to the Jews’—Alford],. there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the full knowledge (¢a/yvwoi¢—the clear detection of revelation) of sin. But now [as things are ordained] the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets ; even the righteousness of God which is by the faith in Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe ; for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. . . - Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law” (Rom. iii. 20-24, 28). (3.) Good Works, nevertheless, are pleasing to God in Christ ; and are necessary as the evidences of faith. Yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith ; insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree dis- cerned by the fruit] ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and that ye may become disciples unto me (καὶ γένησθε ἐμοὶ μαθηταί)" (John xv. 8). ‘In every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteous- ness, is accepted with him” (Acts x. 35). “For we are his work- manship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God before prepared, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 11. 10). ‘As we might say of the trees, they were created for fruits which God before prepared that they should bear them: 7.c., defined and assigned to each tree its own, in form, and flavour, and time of bearing. So in 278 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. the course of God’s providence, our good works are marked out for and assigned to each one of us.”—Alford. “ Not that I desire the gift, but I do desire the fruit which abounds to your account” (Phil. iv. 17). ‘‘ But todo good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Heb. xiii. 16). ‘* Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit ; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. . . . Wherefore by their fruits ye shall thoroughly know them (ἐπιγνώσεσθε) " (Matt. vil. 17, 18, 20). ‘‘Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (τ John iii. 17). “These things I would have thee positively affirm, in order that they who have believed God may be careful to maintain good works” (Titus iii. 8). ‘Now the end of the commandment is Love, out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. 1, 5). ArticLe XIII. (1.) Works done before Justification are not pleasing to God. Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of Jaith in Jesus Christ} *‘Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?” (Matt vii. 16). “They that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. viii. 8). “ Except a man be born afresh (é»w##:y—from the very beginning), he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John iii. 3). ‘*‘ The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that Iam not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week [voluntarily : ‘on the Mondays and Thurs- days; the only prescribed fast in the year being the great day of atonement. So that he is boasting of his works of supererogation "-- Alford], I give tithes of all that I acquire (xraé«a:—see Deut. xiv. 22). And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, sinner that I am. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (Luke xviii. 11-14). ‘Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must have believed (cisreica:—aorist: his coming was the fruit of faith) that he is, and becomes (γίνεται) a rewarder of them that seek him out (ἐκζητοῦσιν) " (Heb. xi. 6). ‘‘ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. Iam the Vine, ye are the Branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for separate from me (χωρὶς ἐμοῦ) ye can do nothing ” (John xv. 4, 5). (2.) And, therefore, such works not being acceptable to God, be- cause not done in Christ’s faith and strength “unto the glory and EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 279 praise of God” (Phil. i. 11), cannot, it is clear, deserve or procure grace and favour from Him. Neither do they make men meet to receive grace, or (as the School- authors say) deserve grace of congruity | “Tf ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see. Therefore, your sin remaineth” (John ix. 41). ‘ For in the Gospel is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1. 17). ‘For they being ignorant of (or, not recognising God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, subjected not themselves (ὑπετάγησαν —passive Aorist, with Middle meaning: against Alford’s merely his- torical ‘ were not subjected’) to the righteousness of God” (Rom. x. 3). ** For we do not present our supplications before thee for our righte- ousness, but for thy great mercies” (Dan. ix. 18). “ But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. lxiv. 6). “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory. But not before God... . To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness ” (Rom. iv. 2, 4,5). “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness would have been by the law. But on the contrary (ἀλλά) the Scriptures shut up all under sin, in order that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe” (Gal. iii. 21, 22). ‘‘ Not by virtue of (ἐξ) works in righteousness which we did (ἐποιήσαμεν--- Δου 50), but on the contrary, according to his mercy, he saved us ” (Titus 11]. 5). (3.) Yea, rather, such works being done in self-righteousness, belong doubtless to the category of sin. Yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and com- manded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of εἴη) “ Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin” (Rom. xiv, 23). ‘The sacrifice of the wieked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight” (Prov. xv. 8). ‘Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Put your burnt offering unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: but this thing com- manded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have com- manded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagina- tion of their evil heart” (Jer. vii. 21-24). ““Ὁ Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your good- ness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away. For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea vi. 4, 6). ‘‘ Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name do (the three verbs are Aorists) 280 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. many wonderful works? And then will I confess unto them (ὁμολογήσω, avroi;—plainly tell them), I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. vii. 22, 23). ‘So then they which be οὗ Faith, are blessed together with (oiv—in the same fellowship and heir- ship with) faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the Law, are under the curse” (Gal. ili. 9, 10). 28: ) ARTICLE XIV. HISTORY AND DOCTRINE, WITH SCRIPTURAL PROOF. Of Works of Supererogation.—Voluntary Works, besides, over and above God’s Commandments, which they call Works of Superero- gation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety. For by them men do declare, that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for His sake, than of bounden duty is required ; whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants. De Operibus Supererogationis. —Opere, que Supererogationis appellant, non possunt sine arrogantia et impietate predicari. Nam illis declarant homines, non tantum se Deo reddere, que tenentur, sed plus in ejus gratiam facere, quam deberent ; cum aperte Christus dicat, lum feceritis omnia quecunque precepta sunt vobis, dicite, Servi inutiles sumus. History. When we consider what has already been said on Justification and Good Works in previous Articles, and what must necessarily be said under the fifteenth Article of Christ alone without Sin, it would seem to be indeed supererogatory to devote a chapter to the Doctrine of Supererogation. Nay more, were it not that the Romish Church has had the effrontery to formulise and flaunt the delusion in the face of Christendom, and that a School of the English Church has seriously endorsed it, we might safely pass it over as one of those hallucinations which belong rather to the history of frenzy and fanaticism than to that of theology. But though, as elaborated, the wildest and most monstrous of all Papal pretensions, it is nevertheless, strange to say, Just the one which has proved most prolific to the Church of Rome, being the veritable fountainhead of her traffic in Pardons and Indulgences, and Purgatorical impostures. And there- fore, on this account also, we may reconcile ourselves to a brief examination and exposure of it. Rogare Populum or Legem, was the formula for the introduction of a bill or law in the Roman Comitia. Hrogare was the term used for , 282 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. expending, or paying out money from the public treasury after asking the consent of the people. While Supererogare meant to spend or pay out over and above the amount thus granted. ‘Si quid forte supererogasti” (Codex Justianus.—See White and Riddle’s Lat. Dict.). Bishop Browne sees “in the admiration of the early Church for martyrdom, and in the admission of the intercession of the martyrs for the deliverance of others from church-censures, and in the respect © paid to virginity, the germ of the doctrine of works of supereroga- tion.” But we venture to think that neither the germ nor first develop- ment of the delusion is here. Rather is the germ to be found in that vanity of the human heart, begotten of Satan, which would be wise above that which is written, and that consequent pride which must have something to do in God’s salvation. And the whole history of religious fanaticism gives abundant evidence of the fruit. All fond inventions of the uncircumcised heart, whether under the Law or the Gospel, and all undue magnifying of God’s ordinances, are of the righteousness that is “‘ overmuch ”—a supererogating over and above of the righteousness of God. And this we find all along the whole line of Old and New Testament times: from Cain to the age of Christ ; from the days of the Apostle down to our own persistent and rampant Ritualism. And in Heathenism as we proceed, we shall find, far prior to the infant Church of Christ, distinct and historic parent- age, if we mistake not, of the imposture. For the Church of Rome, however, it remained here as elsewhere to graduate in the wilds of error; and to mould first into a system the doctrine of a Treasury of the Supererogation of the Perfect. Let us not be misunderstood either in our history or diagnosis. We look deeper into human nature than to accredit Rome with the high element of creative genius, that is rather the gift of God to His humble children. If we are asked for proof, her one scholar Bellar- mine seldom rises above the level of a commonplace interpreter. But we do accredit Rome with being able to grasp the floating and existent elements of the atmosphere of aberrant thought, and precipitate these into dangerous and potent crystallisations of dogma. Take any article of her anti-Catholic creed, and the merest tyro in history will find for it superabundant paternity in fanaticism. It may be asked, Why all this “onslaught?” Our answer is, Parriotic AND RigHtTEous Drrence. Our answer is, The Church of God and the Church of Rome are simply, the one the Church of Christ and the other the Confederation of Antichrist. Our answer 15, The one is the Kingdom of God, and the other is the travestied antagonistic Kingdom of Satan. Our answer is, The one is National, Social, and Spiritual Life, the other is National, Social, and Spiritual Death. And it may be well here to digress for a little, and once for all realise our situation, and earnestly proclaim the duty of the followers of Zion’s King. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 283 Nationally, then, as we have elsewhere said: ‘‘ We are in evil and un-English haste to declare that religion forms no part whatever of the business of statemanship. We began by forsaking the old paths of distinguishing between Christ and Antichrist—of living as a nation for God, and stamping out every vestige of him who exalteth himself above all that is called God; and we bid fair to end by striking God altogether out of the ‘knowledge’ of our constitution. And the wretched veneer with which we would cover this latitudinarianism and sin we misname liberalism. Time was when England and purity of faith, or at all events to staunchness for the faith, obtained as synonymes throughout Christendom. Now, we are not only becalmed, but in part also in direct and frenzied antagonism to our best charac- teristics hitherto as a nation ; in a state, on the one hand, of politico- religious coma, and on the other, as regards large and important sections of our countrymen, bordering on the verge of politico-religious libertinism. The intoxication of wealth and power, like the intoxica- tion of alcohol in different subjects, has had these two dissimilar results. It has brought to the surface a class of men whose life-blood is stimulated to a heat that threatens destruction to the best interests of society ; who forget or despise the fountains of England’s strength, the steps and the monuments of England’s greatness ; whose motto when practically translated is, Anarchy for the present, for the stake of anything or nothing in the future, and all this even though we play the dark dread card of mobocracy. But another and equally deplorable result has been to stupefy the quondam exponents of true liberty. A reign of peace and plenty, and of the all but unclouded triumphs of Protestantism, has lulled them into a sleep of fatal security ; they complacently rest on the laurels which their fathers on a hundred hard-fought battlefields won, and have transmitted them ; they have yet to learn the lesson that victory gained is victory to be sustained, that they are sons of sires whose sacred testament, sealed with their best energies and their blood, may be best epitomised. Remember how you have received and heard, and hold fast . . . “ And in the train of these avant-couriers of our decadence—this grand army of Americanised Englishmen—we have the Freethinker and the Medizval Priest: the puerile copyists on the one hand of the state and long-exploded platitudes and crude postulates of aberrant thought, and the pigmy intellects on the other hand which would swell them- selves into importance by the assumptions of sacerdotalism. Nor does it require any depth of philosophy of men and manners to depict the effect of these two classes upon society, and the aid they render the anarchists. It may be graphically written in one word, they wnhinge - the obvious tendency is to unfasten and cut away the religious and the rational moorings of the English mind. “And now for the lesson. Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s’achéve. The epoch of Reformation peace and purity has closed ; the epoch of a struggle—violent and protracted it may be, though ultimately triumphant on the side of truth it must be, for God and reason cannot fail to rule the right—between national order { Ϊ t ἵ - a ne. 288 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. and national chaos impends” (Extracted from “Letters for the Times,” published some years ago in the Liverpool Daily Courier.) But on the other hand, when we turn to the Signs of the Times, as they less or more plainly unveil the Second Coming of the Lord ; and especially when we reflect on the deadly shocks which the Romish power once and again is now righteously receiving—a sure presage of the nearing final doom of the Man of Sin, and that the Day of Christ is at hand—we cannot but here emphatically repeat what we have also written, in the series as noted above, solemnly calling upon the churches to unite in one grand Protestant Scriptural Confederacy, to prepare for the events which are approaching :— “We are on the eve of the downfall of mystical Babylon, and of the Jubilee of the world. “ Direst—yet brightest—most eventful hour of time! “ἐς And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great’ prince which standeth for the children of thy people ; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.’ “Α very little while, and the knell may be sounded of the kingdom of Satan, in its culmination of the Papacy; and the sweet gladsome notes pealed forth of the Millennium—the culmination of the kingdom of Christ—the era of the Church’s liberty, release, rest. . . . “Our object on the present occasion is not to attempt to fix the precise limits of the judgment-day of Papal Europe ; for, after all, this perhaps were to be wise above that which is written. Neverthe- less, as intimated, we are free to confess that, from a careful reading of God’s Bible of inspiration, and God’s Bible of everyday demon- stration, we are not without hope that—if only indeed Christians will but ‘quit them as men’ in this the most momentous crisis of the church and of the world—a very brief space may suffice to usher in the outbursts of the rending chorus of heaven and earth, ‘ Alleluia! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth !’ “Our object is to bespeak attention to the cry, ‘ Behold the Bride- groom cometh! Go ye out to meet him!’ “When Christ was about to enter on his first great personal world- mission, that of humiliation, his forerunner was a solitary individual from the wilderness. When Christ is (now) about to inaugurate his second Coming, that of triumphant glory, he will be met and wel- comed by a company of ‘virgins ’"—the faithful throughout the churches who have not ‘worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither have received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands.’ “Let us scan for a moment the situation and its history. “ On the theatre at least of earth, ever since the Fall, two principles have been in utter antagonism—the power of evil and the power of good—the kingdom of Satan and the kingdorn of Christ. In the deeply mysterious but wise Providence of God, the former, with few and far between and comparatively fitful exceptions, has been per- mitted to eclipse the latter. EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 285 “The obverse. ‘Antediluvian giantism—the wisdom and the wealth of Egypt—the splendour of Babylon—the consolidations and brilliancy of the Medo-Persian empire—the culture and refinement of Greece—the military genius of Rome pagan—the superstition and will-worship and astuteness of Rome papal: centuries of age— pyramids of power and despotism—dark and uncouth, or gorgeous and artistic colossal pantheons of demonolatry: in a word, the king- doms of this world, and the material and spiritual glory of them, all have been subordinated to, laid at the feet of Satan, to demonstrate, not only to man, but to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, one of the high problems of the universe—THE ImporENcy or Evit. “‘ And the reverse is—Christ on the Cross, of suffering and salva- tion, from the Fall to the Millennium. “<«Tn all their affliction He was afflicted: and the Angel of his Presence saved them.’ ‘Afflicted’ in the expulsion of our first parents from paradise, yet whispering words of comfort to the fallen. ‘ Afflicted—grieved at his heart,’ as the tide of antediluvian wicked- ness overwhelms His church, yet building an ark for eight solitary witnesses. ‘ Afflicted’ by the groaning of Israel as they rear the stately monuments of Egypt—an infant nation’s baptism of suffering, a people’s servitude for their domestic and social sins, yet sending them a deliverer, in the plenitude of his power, and the wondrous condescension withal of his office, as the Angel of God. ‘ Afflicted’ in his theocracy being swept away into Babylon—the independence of his church sunk in the tyrannical or tolerating rule of idolatry from Nebuchadnezzar even to the present, yet on Calvary, the while ratifying with his blood the charter of his church’s final and ever- lasting liberty. Thus demonstrating throughout, not only to man, but to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, the other high problem of the universe, that Gop ALONE 1s Goop—that Gop 1s Love. “ And now that these high problems are solved, and only hourly, as it were, await their actual solemn ratification amid the throes of a dissolving world ; that the end of the present dispensation has thus far, in the main, been served ; that the Seed of the Woman hastens, in righteous retribution, and in the outgoings of the justice of the Eternal, finally to bruise the Head of the Serpent; that the judg- ment of the ‘great whore’ closes; and that the kingdoms of this world are about to become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, what is the duty of the Christian in the crisis? Assuredly not either unbelief or mere stoical spectatorship. Recurring to the parable of our Lord, the duty of Christians at the present especially appears to be— “1, Wisdom. Five of the virgins are wise. ‘ Wise’ to beware of the false Christs and false prophets of the day, who say, ‘ Behold, he is in the desert ’—the desert of ceremonial observances—the desert of a sacramental corporal presence ; ‘ Behold, he is in the secret chambers’ of the polluted confessional. ‘ Wise’ to trim their lamp of external profession, not with the oil of priestly absolution, but with the oil of the Spirit of God. 286 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. “9. The exhibition of a joint faithful testimony. Five of the virgins are ΒΕ. A holy confederacy, displaying unity of sentiment, unity of purpose, unity of action; and, in marked antithesis, in direct antagonism to the corrupt confederacy of carnal and unsanctified combinations. “In these last days we have had a renewal and reorganisation of the confederacy of Antichrist. Not only has the order of the Jesuits been restored, and the Bull for their re-establishment been of late con- firmed, but societies in aid are detailed all over the world. A ‘sword whose hilt is at Rome, and whose edge is elsewhere.’ A one mind of sentiment—power and strength unto the Beast; a one mind of purpose—the suppression of liberty—the annihilation of Protes- tantism ; a one mind of action—the end justifies the means. “Now, we cannot conceive of a more fitting development of the age, a grander or more interesting or more dutiful display on the part of the Church of Christ, than an organisation in distinct and definite contrast and antagonism to this confederacy of Antichrist. **An organisation whose unity of sentiment shall unequivocally affirm the Headship of Messiah the Prince—the keynote of all truth ; whose unity of purpose shall be the protection and the exten- sion of liberty and righteousness, the palladium and the propagandism of Protestantism ; whose unity of action shall consist in having for its base-line—yea, all its lines and all its angles—the Word of God. “Christ has been stripped of his crown ever since his theocracy was carried away into Babylon by the Dragon. True, in the cycles of ages which have intervened, some noble and ever-memorable efforts have been made to bring the King back. But the blessing remains for us who come to the ‘thousand three hundred and five and thirty days’ to write on the vesture and the thigh of Jesus the name, ‘ King of Kings and Lord of Lords !’—the blessing remains even for us, the churches ‘at the end of the days,’ to prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight—to be the pioneers of the mighty moral revolution which shall unseat Satan from the thrones and dominions of his usurpation, and place upon the head of Christ, the Mediator, the diadem of universal, uncontrolled, everlasting sovereignty. “Such, briefly, are the nature and objects of the organisation which we would earnestly commend to the prayerful consideration of Chris- tians. ‘“‘Such, reading the phenomena and impending issues of the times in the light of revelation, would seem to be the interpretation of the cry now so audibly addressing the Protestant Churches of Christendom —‘Berxnouip! tHe Bripecroom comeTH! Go YE OUT TO MEET HIM.’ “The science of prophecy, as it relates to the Time of the End, has been admirably written, and some of the results, so to speak, are here freely embodied ; but the age beckons from the life and the lore of the student to the sterner and more material and more glorious work of unfurling among the nations the standard of Christ’s Crown Rights and Prerogatives—of marshalling, in Christian array, the thousands of willing and expectant recruits of liberty, who are at this moment EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 237 siching throughout the length and breadth of the Papal earth, and elsewhere, for action—of proclaiming in the ears of princes the im- perative duty, the distinguished honour, the unspeakable privilege of consecrating their power and resources to the King of Zion—of raising aloud, in parliaments and assemblies of legislation, despite the sneer of the infidel, or the opposition of determined foes, a voice clear and unmistakable against the world’s statute-book of expediency, and in favour of the statute-book of high heaven—of forming a nucleus—a phalanx—an army of faithful and devoted soldiers of the Cross, who shall bear aloft the Banner of Truth, and plant it triumphantly, with its every fold unfurled, on the proudest ramparts of ignorance and despotism, of Antichristian thraldom and superstition—thus ‘looking for and Hastine (as the word is rendered in Isaiah) the Coming of the Day of God.” But to return to our history. We frankly admit the early Christian Church soon fell into extravagant notions respecting Martyrdom, Celibacy, and Fasting. But these were a rebound to the idols of the den—the idols of preconceived opinions in which the first converts had been educated in heathendom or heretical philosophy ; and formed no part whatever of Christianity. To the Pythagorean and Essene philosophy, both we think fairly traceable to Babylon and Buddhism, must we attribute the historic origin of these strange prepossessions ; which though at the outset, in the Christian Church, contemplated little more than a larger accession of blessing to the individual, yet soon afterwards prepared the way for still more gracious error. That the leaders of opinion in the primitive Church had no bona Jide intention however of undervaluing the Atonement of the Saviour, is abundantly clear. Thus the blessed Polycarp, who at the advanced age of perhaps over four score and ten years, suffered martyrdom with the utmost cheerfulness and constancy, writes: ‘“ Abstaining from all wrath, respect of persons, and unrighteous judgment, being far from all covetousness, not easily believing anything against any, nor over severe in judgment, knowing that we are all debtors in point of Sin” (ad Philip. s. 6). And Clement of Alexandria, who, though he stood aloof from many of his age and incurred the epithet of Sensualist, because among other things he would not court but avoid persecution, and yet with the general Church of the second century held martyrdom to be in some way efficacious as an expiatory act, still ever testifies throughout his writings to the fulness of Christ’s righteousness. Tertullian even, who on the other hand vehemently taught that it was sinful to fly from persecution, as counteracting the purpose of in- finite wisdom, and whose language is otherwise not without severe reprehension, thus writes: ‘Sufficient be it for a martyr to have wiped away his own sins.—Who looses another’s death by his own, except the Son of God alone? For he freed the malefactor in his very Passion. For this cause he came, that being himself free from sin, and holy in all things, he might be obedient for sinners. Thou, 288 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. therefore, who dost emulate him in pardoning sins, if thou hast thy- self sinned in nothing, by all means suffer for me. But if thou art a sinner, how can the oil of thy touch [the flames of martyrdom] be sufficient both for thee and me?” (de Pudicit, 6. 22). But the leaven was already at work—the leaven of the Doctrine of Christian Perfection. A perfection only to be attained by the crown of Martyrdom or the mortifications of Asceticism : the one assimilating to the Divine impassibility of suffering; the other elevating to the Divine impassibility of evil impressions. Thus the angel of Hermas, whose teaching is in full point, whether we assign his revelations to the commencement of the second century or a higher antiquity, engrafts upon Christianity the wild olive-tree of Gentile tradition ; is eager to add to the words written in the Book of Life ; and enlarges the ‘‘commandment which is exceeding broad” by the Stations. (Diées Stationarii—half fasts to the ninth hour, the time of the supernatural darkness; on Wednesday, when the Jews took council against Christ; and on Friday, when our Saviour was crucified.) ‘Keep the commandments of God and thou shalt be approved, and shalt be written in the number of those that keep his commandments. But if, besides those things which the Lord hath commanded, thou shalt add some good thing, thou shalt purchase to thyself a greater dignity, and shalt be more in favour with the Lord than thou shouldst otherwise have been. . . . The Station, therefore, is good and pleasing, and acceptable to the Lord.” But it remained for Tertullian, towards the close of the second century, to reveal the prevalent and dangerous opinions of the Church on the value of Fasting—fondly cherished, but not yet enacted by law. For though in all the furious excess of an ultra ritualism, he pushes the delusion to the extremes of Montanus and his prophetesses, and in the coarse language of licentious fanaticism, not unfrequently unfit for us to transcribe, yet was he never called to account, nor accused of heresy in the matter: but stood to the general Church, in something of the same position as the extreme Ritualist of our own day stands to not a few of our Bishops—if not favoured, yet not condemned. To the argument—‘I will believe with all that is within me; I will love God and my neighbour as myself: on these two command- ments hang all the Law and the Prophets, and not on the emptiness of my stomach and bowels,” Tertullian answers: ‘‘ Adam ate, and fell; we must fast, that we may be recovered. Adam’s sin consisted in eating, all men must abstain from eating, that they may expiate that offence. Man must atone to God in the same matter as that wherein he first offended ; that is, by abstinence.” Τὸ the objection, If fasting recovers the favour of God, how is it, that while God permitted Adam only herbs and fruits, he yet extended that permission, after the Deluge, to Flesh? our author ingeniously replies: “God conceded this greater liberty, in order that man might acquire more merit by fasting ; and that by the practice of a greater abstinence, upon the occasion of a greater licence, he might make a greater expiation of the EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 289 primary offence!” And this is his coarse and irreverent, frantic Pan, in the praises of Fasting, as a sort of prelude to a passage too disgusting to reproduce: “Ὁ Saint! God is thy belly, and thy lungs are his temple, and thy stomach is his altar, and his priest is thy cook, and the Holy Spirit is thy savour of cooked meats, and his grace is thy sauce, and prophecy is the eructation of thy full stomach! But O thou that indulgest thy gorge! thou art like Esau, thou wilt sell thy birthright, any day, for a mess of pottage; thy charity boils in thy pots, thy faith warms in thy kitchens, thy hope les in a cradle spit.” ἐπ reader will not fail to observe, what is every way most im- portant to note, that all these nostrums of Asceticism, whether Stations or Fastings, as well as the impassibility of Martyrdom, were not Means of Grace, but mere acts of bodily sufferings and macerations acceptable, in themselves, unto the God of Love! and efficacious in his sight, not, we have reason to conclude, as superseding the merits of Christ, but as an additional ground of reward on the one hand, and on the other as a sort of individual following up of the one great Propitiatory Sacrifice. But an essential point in the development of the doctrine of Per- fection was to secure a foothold, or something which might show and serve as such, in the New Testament. Nor was this so difficult. Once diverge, by ever so little, from the express Word of God, and fallacies are never wanting to make the Bible say anything. St. Paul had written: ‘‘ Concerning virgins, I have no command- ment (praceptum—precept) of the Lord, yet I give my judgment (consilium—counsel)” (1 Cor. vii. 25). A very simple and candid statement, one would think ; yet upon this was solemnly constructed the doctrine, that Scripture distinguishes between Precepts and Counsels! and in the sense, that while the former are binding upon all men, with penalties for their neglect, the latter are desirable, with reward for their observance ! Thus Cyprian: ‘The Lord does not command celibacy, but exhorts to it. He does not impose a yoke of necessity, when the free will of the choice remains. But when he says, that in his Father’s house are many mansions, he points to the hospitalities of the better mansion. Those better mansions ye seek, expurgating the desires of the flesh, the reward of the greater in heaven ye obtain” (de Habitu Virginum). And Augustine: “For not as, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill? can it be so said, Thou shalt not wed. The former are demanded, the latter is offered. If the one is observed, there is praise. If the other is neglected, there is condemnation. In the former the Lord commands us what is due. But in the latter, if ye shall have spent anything more (swpererogaveritis), on his return he will repay you. Think of (whatever that be) within his wall ‘a place named, much better than of sons and of daughters.’ Think of ‘an eternal name’ there. Who unfolds of what kind that name shall be ? Yet, whatever it shall be, it shall be eternal. By believing and hoping and loving this, ye have been able, not to shun marriage, as for- At 290 EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. bidden, but to fly past it as allowed” (de Virginitate, s. 30). But further on he speaks in language we think more to be trusted, and is Augustine still: “ ‘Who shall boast that he hath a chaste heart? or who shall boast that he is clean from sin?’ Holy virginity is indeed inviolate from the mother’s womb; but ‘no one,’ saith he, ‘is clean in thy sight, not even the infant whose life is of one day upon the earth.’ There is also in faith inviolate a certain virginal chastity, whereby the Church is joined as a chaste virgin unto One Husband : but that One Husband hath taught, not only the faithful who are virgin in mind and body, but all Christians altogether, from spiritual even unto carnal, from Apostles even unto the last penitents, as though from the height of heaven even unto the bounds of it, to pray, and in the prayer itself hath admonished them to say, ‘ And forgive us our debts, even as we also forgive our debtors :’ where, by this which we seek, he shows what also we should remember that we are. . . . But whereas it is what baptized persons pray, rulers and people, pastors and flocks ; it is sufficiently shown that in this life, the whole of which is a trial, no one ought to boast himself as though free from all sins” (ibid. s. 48). But the transition, in time, was easy. From particulars to generals. From individual merit and reward, to a reserve fund for satisfactions for other men’s sins. Out of the superabundant merits of the super- eminently holy, gained and obtained by their “voluntary works, besides, ever, and above God’s commandments,” to supply as by a cheque, in the shape of indulgences, upon the Bank of Supereroga- tions, value sufficient for the salvation of souls in necessity. And this was exactly what Rome did in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, and since continues to do. In the twelfth century. ‘The bishops when they had occasion to raise money, either for good and laudable or for base and criminal objects, allowed transgressors to buy off the penalties enjoined by the canons, by advancing money for certain religious purposes; that is, they published indulgences ; and what mighty enterprises and expen- sive works were accomplished in this century by means of indulgences, is known toall.... “The Roman pontiffs, perceiving what advantages the inferior bishops derived from their indulgences, concluded that the power of the bishops to remit ecclesiastical penalties ought to be circumscribed, and the prerogative be almost wholly transferred to the Roman see. Accordingly they began, as the necessities or convenience of the church or their own interests required, to publish not merely the common and ordinary but likewise the entire and absolute, or the plenary remission of all finite or temporal penalties; and they can- celled not only the punishments which the canons and human tribunals inflict, but also those to be endured after death, which the bishops had never attempted to set aside. They first resorted to this power for the sake of promoting the crusades, and were sparing in the use of it; but afterwards they exerted it for objects of far less importance and of various kinds, and very often merely for their private emolu- EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 2091 ment. Upon the introduction of this new policy, the ancient system of canonical and ecclesiastical penances was wholly subverted ; and the books of canons and the penitentials being laid aside, transgressors were no longer under restraints. To support this proceeding of the pontiffs an unheard-of doctrine was devised in this century, and im- proved and polished in the following century by St. Thomas (Aquinas) ; namely, that there is an immense treasury of good works which holy men have performed over and above what duty required; and that the Roman pontiff is the keeper and the distributor of this treasure, so that he is able, out of this inexhaustible fund, to give and transfer to every one such an amount of good works as his necessities require, or as will suffice to avert the punishment of his sins. This miserable and pernicious fiction, it is to be lamented, is still retained and defended” (Mosheim, cent. xii., chap. 111.). In the thirteenth century. ‘The Aristotelian divines readily en- tered on the task of vindicating dogmatically this most monstrous of all Papal pretensions. Alexander of Hales [an Englishman of Glou- eestershire, but who spent most of his life in teaching theology at Paris] and Albert Magnus invented [first moulded into a system ἢ] the doctrine of the Thesaurus Supererogationis Perfectorum, out of which, by virtue of the power of the keys, not only the temporal penalties of the living for sin, but agreeably to the extension of the power of the keys over the dead long ere now established, the penalties also of men suffering in purgatory were discharged. Thomas Aquinas completed this theory” (Gieseler). And this is how, as Gieseler quotes, Aquinas “ polished” this soul- Tuinous and blasphemous dogma: ‘Indulgences hold good both ecclesiastically and in respect of the judgment of God, for the remis- sion of the residuum of punishment after contrition and absolution and confession. The reason why they hold good is the unity of the mystical body in which many have supererogated in works of peni- tence beyond the measure of their debts, and have patiently endured many unjust tribulations, by which a multitude of punishments could have been discharged, had they been owing. Of whose merits so great is the abundance, that they exceed the punishment now due to the living, and especially by reason of the merit of Christ... . But the saints, in whom a superabundance of works of satisfaction is found, wrought not works of this kind definitely for him who needs remis- sion (otherwise he would obtain remission without an indulgence), but in common for the whole Church ; and so the aforesaid merits are the common property of the whole Church. But that which is the com- mon property of a number is distributed to individuals of that number, at the will of him who presides over it” (Thomas Aquinas, Comm. in Sent. 1, iv.—See Gieseler’s Eccl. Hist. Period 3, Div. iii.). Pope Boniface VIII., in 1300, proclaimed the first jubilee of Indulgences, by which he drew vast crowds of pilgrims to Rome, and granted plenary indulgence to all whose pockets were not empty. Succeeding Pontiffs (Clement V. and Boniface IX.), in pecuniary ——————