ject of raising the soul immaturely to the condition of a darling favourite with heaven, while it is unripe for it, by procuring a mere empty pardon of sin; it desires not only to stand upon clear terms with Heaven by procuring the crossing of all the debt books of our sins there; but it rather pursues after an internal participation of the divine nature. We often hear of a saving faith, and that, where it is, is not content to wait for salvation till the world to come; it is not patient of being an expectant in a probationership for it until this earthly body resigns up all its worldly interest, that so the soul might then come into its room; no, but it is here perpetually gasping after it, and effecting of it in a way of serious mortification and self-denial: it enlarges and dilates itself as much as may be, according to the vast dimensions of the divine love, that it may comprehend the height and depth, the length and breadth thereof, and fill the soul where it is seated with all the fulness of God; it breeds a strong and insatiable appetite, where it comes, after true goodness." * * Select Discourses, by John Smith, late Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, p. 330, 331. CHAPTER VI. THE DOCTRINE OF MERIT CONTINUED-MERIT OF GOOD WORKS. Church of Rome. "I embrace and receive all things, and every thing, which have been defined and declared by the holy Council of Trent concerning sin and justification." -Trent. Profess. Art. iv. The following is the decree of the Trent Council concerning the merit of good works:: "If any man shall say that the good works of a justified man are so the gifts of God, that they are not the justified person's merits; or that he who is justified, by good works done by him, through the grace of God, and the merit of Jesus Christ, of whom he is a living member, does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and (if he depart this life in grace) the obtaining of eternal life, and even an increase of glory; let him be accursed." * Church of England. "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." -Art. xii. "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) deserve grace of congruity; yea, rather for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to * "Si quis dixerit hominis justificati bona opera ita esse dona Dei, ut non sint etiam bona ipsius justificati merita, aut ipsum THE church of Rome charges the church of England, and all other Protestant churches who hold in common with her the doctrine of justification by faith only, as superseding the necessity of good works, and releasing men from the eternal obligations of the moral law. The church of Rome, confounding justification with sanctification, insists on the merit of good works, in connexion with the merit of the Saviour, as necessary to procure our acceptance with God, and remission of our guilt. The church of England, on the contrary, declares, that “we justificatum bonis operibus, quæ ab eo per Dei gratiam, et Jesus Christi meritum, cujus vivum membrum est, fiunt, non vere mereri augmentum gratiæ, vitam æternam, ipsius vitæ æterna (si tamen in gratia decesserit) consecutionem, atque etiam gloriæ augmentum; anathema sit."--Sen. vi. cass. 32. 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." Though she thus decisively rejects works as the meritorious cause of justification, it is clear, from the Articles given above, she most strongly and scripturally insists on them as the necessary fruits of true faith, and the indispensable evidences of Christian character. One leading argument which the Romanists adduce in support of their own doctrine, and against justification by faith only, is founded on the words of St. James-" You see, then, how by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." (ii. 24.) These words are regarded by them as conclusive against the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith only, and as decisive of the necessity, merit, and concurrence of good works. The seeming discrepancy in the statements of St. Paul and St. James, on this important doctrine, appeared so great to Luther, at an early period of his career, that for a time he doubted the inspiration of the epistle of the latter apostle. Though St. Paul declares that we are justified by faith only, and not by works; and St. James, that justification is by works, and not by faith only; there is, in fact, no difference of opinion between them. It is not necessary, according to the hypothesis adopted by some, to suppose that the one apostle means our justification before God, and that the other speaks The two inspired "The object of our justification before men. writers differ entirely in their object. of St. Paul is to point out the way of justification; and this is by faith without the deeds of the law.' St. James, writing to those who held the truth, but held it in unrighteousness, has no occasion to press the point of justification by faith as the only way of acceptance, for on this point he and his opponents are agreed; but his object is to show them that they are totally mistaken as to the nature of that faith, through which they must be reconciled to God. The faith in which they trusted was the mere name, and profession, and shadow of faith; he tells them that they cannot be justified, except by a true, and lively, and operative faith,-by a faith really existing in the heart, and evidencing itself in the life."* This statement, which furnishes the true key to the apostle's meaning, is confirmed by the way in which St. James introduces the subject-" What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he bath faith, and have not works?" He supposes the case of one who said, or boasted, that he had faith, but who gave no evidence of it by his works: he asks, "Can faith save him?" or, as the original, which has the article (sic) would be more correctly rendered, "Can this faith save him?" Such a faith as he *St. Paul and St. James Reconciled"-A sermon preached before the University of Cambridge, by Professor Scholefield, p. 8, 9. |