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DIVINE SANCTIONS OF THE REFORMATION.

THE suicidal folly of certain writers, who proudly usurp the title of Catholic, though inculcating doctrines the most narrow and exclusive, provokes some severe reflections. Not content with advocating the most invidious pretensions to temporal supremacy, they have impiously presumed to prescribe limits to the influence of Divine Grace and the Holy Spirit, equally unsanctioned by reason and repulsive to revelation, on the plea that thus the same relation is preserved between pastor and congregation, in the present day, as, erewhile, obtained in the time of the apostles. "I do not say," writes one of them, "that the ministers of His word, in these days, can feel as sure as the apostles could, that in the commandments which they give they have the SPIRIT OF GOD; very far from it but I do say, that neither can the people feel sure, as in those days of miraculous gifts, that they have the SPIRIT of God with them; and thus the relation between the two parties remains unaltered."* To swell the full inflation of their pride, they hesitate not to despoil the Most Holy of His prerogative; and the Church, delivered over to the guidance of the uninspired representatives of its inspired apostles, is virtually declared deserted by the indwelling presence of God, which is alone its vigour and its light. Spiritual gifts, denied to the taught, become impossible to the teachers; and hence results a soulless formalism, death-stricken and loathsome. The same relation preserved, forsooth! The dead cannot bear relation to the dead, as the living bear to the living; nor a dead church and a dead priesthood be connected by virtue of their mortality, as is the living church and the living priesthood by virtue of their common life. Both parties being deprived of God's Spirit, no relationship legitimately belonging to a pastor and his people remains between them. But then, this assertion is made touching the Reformed Church. Relatively to the Church of Rome, they propose Theories of Developement, intended for its special benefit. Contrary dogmas, fatally aimed at the very vitality of Christianity, are invented for Protestant communions. These it is our purpose, in this article, fearlessly to expose; taking for our text certain statements made by D'Aubigné, in his "History of the Reformation."

God in history! Such is the reiterated exclamation of D'Aubigné. The historian is no longer to remain the tame chronicler-the mere collater of dates and of documents; he is to be invested with the mantle of a seer, and to interpret the parables of the Eternal. No longer will the sneers of the sceptic be permitted to disfigure the oracles of the past; the ways of God are to be historically justified to men; and infidelity deprived of its supposed impregnable stronghold.

However desirable such a result, it should yet be remembered, that he who arrogates to himself the office of God's interpreter to others, has need of awful preparation. He must do more than purge his vision

* Tracts for the Times, No. 24, pp. 9, 10.

with euphrasy and rue; he must do more than divest himself of passions, partialities, and imperfections; he must do more than view the whole of the past; he must possess the whole of the future, ere his testimony can be perfected and received as conclusive. Doubtless, God works in history-disposes of events according to a predetermined plan of ineffable wisdom; but, until the end of all shall be consummated, we shall not cease to see through "a glass, darkly," nor come fully to understand His dispensations.

Still, history is a revelation from God, authentic, and effectual to edification; and each man is at liberty to attempt the solution of its enigmas for himself, as best he may. For himself! Ay, he may take the responses of his conscience on this, as on other matters, and they will be of validity, confined to himself; although he must beware of endowing them with undue authority. Let him consider, that history, if a revelation, is yet a partial one-a portion of a great system not yet developed a few stray threads of a wondrous skein, not yet unwound; and he will be careful how he prejudges, from such limited experience, of the decrees of God.

History is ignorant of the future, and uncertain as to the past. Documents, essential to a righteous judgement, may have been lost or destroyed; and those that exist, may have been vitiated or deformed. Many particulars may never have been recorded; while, of a necessity, many of the motives that have swayed men at different epochs, must, for ever, rest unexplained. History, in fact, is a mere outline, often vague and indistinct; and our prejudices-our preconceived convictions -supply the lights and the shades of the completed picture.

The Reformation, asserts D'Aubigné, was of God; the proofs of which assertion he labours, with success, to make apparent. Of a truth, it was of God; cherished, ripened, quickened by him. But, cannot the Papists declare the same of the system it combated? Has not Rome had a purpose to serve, a mission to accomplish, to the sons of men? Has she not counted triumphs nearly as glorious as those of the Reformation, and times out of number been supported against enemies that would have trampled her into the dust? Her very existence at the present day is a miracle! Stripped of the power that commands, and of the splendour that dazzles, the consciences of men; conquered, spoiled, and derided; she, in spite of all, retains dominion and influence. Does D'Aubigné reluctantly concede that the Christian, who makes use of her ordinances, may be saved? the Romanist can rejoin, that for many ages those ordinances were the only visible means by which the faithful could be saved. The adherents of the old, and the adherents of the new, can equally read God in the histories of their respective faiths can equally claim him as their Sovereign and their Strength.

The Church of Rome was, indeed, corrupt and sensual; she had fallen from her high estate-had degraded the mysteries of the temple, and made traffic of the holiest impulses of the soul. What then? She was punished! We do not, however, conceive that she sinned in

admitting the perpetual presence of Inspiration, and of the gifts of the Spirit, within the bosom of the Church. She may have abused the doctrine-have forced it to subserve the ends of superstition and of selfish aggrandisement; she may have promoted, by its means, the credit of deceptive miracles and pious frauds: but no Church can rightfully forego its legitimate assertion. Yet this, in the eyes of D'Aubigné, is one of her foulest plague-spots. According to him, inspiration has ceased for aye; spiritual illumination is a fanatic delusion; internal lights and heavenly monitions are impossible; and it is only by a species of inductive and secondary evidence that we can assure ourselves of spiritual truth. "Evangelical Christianity," says he, "recognises inspiration only in the writings of the Apostles and the Prophets." Surely, in order to inspiration, at any period, there must remain an eternal possibility of inspiration; and if so, that possibility must be recognised by the true Church and the true Christian. Where is it stated in Scripture that inspiration shall ever desert the Churchthat the Holy Spirit shall ever cease to illumine the faithful? Nay, are not both promised to the end of time? At the least, a denial comes with ill grace from the advocate of God in history. Was Luther sent by God to labour in a certain work? Then, undoubtedly, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Nor does the fact that the Reformer was frequently misled by human frailties, militate against this conclusion. The prophetic character decides the individual merely as engaged in an ascertained mission; leaving his conduct, in all indifferent matters, to the ordinary influence of circumstance. The Word of God came to Balaam, notwithstanding he lusted for the gold of Balak; and to Jonah, notwithstanding his disobedience and continued perverseness. If Luther, towards the end of his career, was alarmed at the more extreme reforms contemplated by Zuingle and others, and was, accordingly, induced to exhibit tendencies of a return to the scholastic theology which he had before repudiated; if he wished to conserve those traditions and usages of the Church, which, though unsupported by the Sacred Volume, were yet not directly opposed to its letter; if he tampered with the doctrine of the real presence, substituting Consubstantiation for Transubstantiation-thus altering the terms, but retaining the fundamental error;* then, these failures only prove, that when he battled so nobly and so fearlessly for the great doctrine of justification by faith, for the pre-eminent authority of the Scripture, and for the rights of the laity-that when he reprobated the manifold abominations of the monks and the clergy, the impious trade in

* Religionists, however, who maintain that the sacrament is only a sign, are guilty of a fatal confusion. There is no "magic,” indeed, in the ceremony; but, as stated in the Articles of the Church of England, "to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the Sacrament, the bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ. Yet we must bear in mind, that "the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner; and that the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is FAITH." (See Twenty-eighth Article.)

indulgences, and the supremacy of Rome-he was miraculously upheld and directed by a power and wisdom not his own. In short, in these weaknesses we behold the mere Luther, struggling with difficulties and doubts; but when he vindicated the insulted Truth, in face of all Christendom-when he hurled defiance at the Pope and his courtwhen he stood, at the Diet of Worms, before the assembled princes of Germany, calm, resolute, and collected-we behold the conscious prophet, doing the work, and denouncing the judgements, of the Most High.

No slight thing is it to be called of God; nothing of pleasant dreams and midnight rhapsodies. God only discovers his presence in the soul amidst the throes of agony, the cries of pain, the clamours of conscience, the fears of condemnation. Man is humiliated to the lowest depths, ere he is permitted to hear the still small voice that speaks of mercy, deliverance, and favour; lest he should take the glory to himself. So well had his own direful experience taught this to Luther, that it forms the test which he proposes to apply to certain enthusiasts, who, during his absence from Wittemberg, had laid claim to extraordinary gifts :"Ask them," he wrote to Melancthon, "if they have felt those spiritual torments, those creations of God, those deaths, and those hells, that accompany a real regeneration; and if they talk to thee only of agreeable things, of tranquil impressions, of devotion and piety, as they say, believe them not, though they should pretend to have been rapt to the third heaven. That Christ should arrive at his glory, it was necessary that he should pass through death; so must the believer pass through the agony of sin, before arriving at peace. Wilt thou know the time, the place, the manner, in which God speaks with men? Hearken! He hath broken all my bones as a lion; I am rejected from before His face, and my soul is brought low, even to the gates of hell." The systematic depreciation of the Scriptures, countenanced by the Romish priesthood, is utterly indefensible; and any later clergy that shall revive it, can scarcely be deemed less than apostates to their cause. But in the heat of debate a man may sometimes rashly utter paradoxes which, though true when taken in connexion with the qualifications existing in his own mind, are yet expressed in terms occasioning frequent misquotation. "The Gospel!" said Faber, the papal Vicar-general at the great Council of Zurich, A. D. 1523; "always the Gospel! One might live in holiness, peace, and charity, though there were no Gospel!" Whereat the indignant Reformers present, started from their seats and closed the discussion. No doubt, these words are injudicious and inflammatory enough; and partake more of passion than of calm ratiocination. Properly explained, however, they are altogether innoxious, and enunciative of a truth too little appreciated by D'Aubigné. Faber intended no denial of the Gospel; he merely affirmed that the grace of God might effectually work upon the heart, and produce the fruits of righteousness, even if the favoured recipient were prevented, by the circumstances attending his birth or education, from becoming personally acquainted with the inspired record. St. Paul clearly admits

of a similar provision in the case of virtuous Heathens, necessarily ignorant of the Law as revealed: "For not the hearers of the Law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles that 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 meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another."* How many are unable to read; and of the better instructed, how many are unable to understand! To all such the treasures of the Bible are unavailable, and their knowledge of its contents must wholly depend upon the reports of others. And for this reason, shall we exclude them from all participation in the Redemption it announces— condemn them to an eternal callousness to the regenerating ministrations? God forbid! He, in his good pleasure, will sanctify other means, and make known to them the wonderful secrets of his mercies and his love. And is not the natural man, however learned, in the same sad predicament as the most unlettered clown? Is not the Bible to him equally unprofitable? He can, indeed, acquire the letter that killeth, but not the Spirit that giveth life; for this is a gift not vouchsafed except to the spiritually informed. Nay, the founders of our Established Church asserted more; they maintained direct Inspiration to be essential to the due exposition of Sacred Writ. Take their own strong statement: "Man's human and worldly wisdom and science is not needful to the understanding of the Scriptures, but the revelation of the Holy Ghost, which INSPIRETH the true meaning into them that with humility and diligence do search therefor." And such inspiration, according to those venerable Divines, is the sole mean through which we can receive renewed affections and a perfect love of God: hence they have taught us thus to pray:

"Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy Holy Name, through Christ our Lord."

D'Aubigné's objection is, we venture to state, founded on a misapprehension. The Bible in no place professes an exclusive inspiration; nor were its writers the only prophets of their day and generation. To claim more for the Bible than the Bible claims for itself, can hardly be judicious. We are not even certain that we possess the whole of the prophetic books. Several are mentioned which are now lost; and being referred to as unquestionable authorities, we are compelled to suppose that they were just as authentic as others which have been preserved. True, we have every reason to believe that they were merely historical, treating of events already sufficiently narrated; nay, we have a right to argue, à priori, that Providence has caused all writings to be transmitted to our

* Rom. ii., 13-15.

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Homily on reading the Scriptures. As, for instance, the books of "Nathan the Prophet," and of Gad the Seer," mentioned 1 Chronicles chap. xxix. v. 29; the "prophecy of Ahijah," the "visions of Iddo the Seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat," mentioned 2 Chronicles, chap. ix., v. 29; &c., &c., &c.