yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love."1

It is clear that in this view justification is the first step in the religious life; that prior to justification man is lost in sin; and that he can do nothing whatever to obtain justification. It is easy to understand how this doctrine might seem to be a true interpretation of spiritual experience. To certain men, in the creative epochs of religious history, it appears as though a diviner life came and took possession of them without any effort on their own part, and the beginning of this life was faith, a high confidence in the nearness and love of God, producing an inward power, of which good works were the natural fruit. And such men, absorbed in the contemplation of the Divine holiness and its requirements, can see nothing in themselves but ill-desert, and therefore can ascribe their peace of mind, and the whole of their life in God, solely to the grace which had pity on them, and chose to justify the ungodly by imputing to them a righteousness which they did not possess. If this experience were universal, it would not raise any very serious difficulty; but it is so far from universal that we have to explain not only the goodness of the saint, but the wickedness of the depraved. Under this doctrine human responsibility vanishes, and sin becomes merely a disease. If men are lost, they are lost because a faith, which they cannot of themselves obtain, has never been given to them. And so this difficulty constantly recurs, and God, by withholding the faith which alone can appropriate the proffered grace, is made the real cause of all the world's iniquity.

The Catholic doctrine is perhaps sufficiently apparent from what has already been stated about grace and free will; but the following points may be emphasized. Grace is not the favour whereby a righteousness which they do not possess is imputed to men, but is that whereby they are made 1 Chap. xi. 1, 2.

2K

righteous.1 Instead of denying, with the Protestants, all human agency in justification, the Catholic insists that, though the grace is prevenient, it bears fruit only through the free co-operation of the will. It is not till men are thus prepared through penitence and a determination to begin a new life that justification takes place. Accordingly, an anathema is pronounced against those who say that all works which are done before justification, with whatever reason they are done, are truly sins, or deserve the hatred of God, or that the more vehemently anyone strives to dispose himself towards grace, the more grievously he sins. Justification, which comes only after the soul has been prepared for its reception, is defined as not only the remission of sins, but also sanctification, a renewal of the inward man through a voluntary acceptance of the grace and gifts whereby man, from being unrighteous, becomes righteous, and from an enemy, a friend. The causes of justification are the following:The final cause is the glory of God and Christ, and eternal life; the efficient, the merciful God, who freely sanctifies, and seals with the Holy Spirit of promise; the meritorious, the most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who earned our justification by his passion on the cross, and satisfied God the Father for us; the instrumental, the Sacrament of Baptism, which is the Sacrament of that faith without which no one obtains justification; and finally, the formal cause is the righteousness of God, not that whereby he himself is righteous, but that wherewith he makes us righteous, and we are not only reputed to be, but are truly called and are righteous, receiving righteousness in ourselves, every one according to his measure, which the Holy Spirit imparts to men severally as he will, and according to each one's own disposition and co-operation. For, although no one can be righteous unless the merits of Christ's passion are communicated to him, nevertheless, by the merit of that passion the love of God is diffused, through the Holy Spirit, in the

1' Qua justi fiunt.'

hearts of those who are justified, so that along with the remission of sins man receives, through Jesus Christ, faith, hope, and love. For faith, without hope and love, cannot make a man a living member of Christ's body. Hence it is truly said that faith without works is dead; and it is only faith which works through love that can secure eternal life. Men are said to be justified by faith because faith is the beginning and foundation of human salvation, the root of all justification; and they are justified freely (gratis) because none of the things which precede justification, whether faith or works, deserves the grace of justification. Thus, in opposition to Protestantism, justification is represented as contingent, and those are censured for their vain and impious confidence who are certain of their own justification, and maintain that no one is justified who has not this unhesitating belief, as though one who had not this belief doubted about the promises of God and the efficacy of Christ's death and resurrection. But though no one ought to doubt about the compassion of God, the merit of Christ, or the efficacy of the Sacraments, nevertheless, regarding his own infirmity and indisposition, one may have fears respecting one's own grace. Therefore they that stand should take heed lest they fall, and should work out their salvation with fear and trembling, in labours, in vigils, in alms, in prayers and offerings, in fasts and chastity. Those who through sin have fallen from the grace of justification can be again justified through the Sacrament of Penance.1

In comparing these contrasted doctrines we may notice first the distinction which the Protestant draws between justification and sanctification, a distinction which is rejected by the Catholic, who makes the former include the latter. This is partly a difference in the use of terms, but not wholly So. The Protestant, rejecting all human conditions of acceptance with God, regards justification as a forensic acquittal, a merciful judgment of God that is not according to truth,

1 Council of Trent, Session vi.

an imputation of righteousness that has no existence. Justification, therefore, is the initial process, a taking of man into favour while he is still sunk in sin; and sanctification comes later, after a man has through faith received the justification. The Catholic rejects wholly this doctrine of legal fiction, and, believing that God's judgment must be according to truth, maintains that some preparation on man's side must precede the remission of sins, and that this must be accompanied by the infusion of real goodness. The strong point on the Protestant side is the assertion of the impotence of external works to merit or procure the favour of God. Obedience to a law for the sake of our own safety is not righteousness, but at the best a discreet selfishness. Accordingly, as it is impossible for man to change his inward nature, and lift himself to unknown levels of thought and sentiment, there is no resource unless God take him unconditionally into favour, and attribute to him a righteousness which he is far from possessing. But here, after all, comes in a human condition, not indeed as a meritorious claim, but as a receptive organ. It is laid down, on both sides of the controversy, that faith is essential. For a man cannot come to God unless he believe that God is willing to receive and to forgive him. The prodigal would never have returned to his father's home if he had expected nothing but blows and curses. But this faith in God's forgiving love, and confident resting in his grace, in itself implies a spiritual revolution of the most momentous kind. It surely makes a world of difference whether a man is on the side of God, feeling himself folded in Divine Love, and earnest to live in conformity with the Divine will, or is opposed to God, rebelling against his will, and viewing him as a cruel and inexorable Judge.1 Now, if a man have the former faith, it requires no make-believe to

1 This is clearly recognized by Melanchthon, who says that faith makes righteous and brings life, and that the comfort which it imparts is a new birth and a new life (Apol., p. 71, in the German), and cannot coexist with deadly sin (Apol., p. 71).

justify him, in the sense of receiving and forgiving him, as the father received his repentant and returning prodigal. Nevertheless this great spiritual upheaval does not imply the finished righteousness of a saintly child of God. The scars of sin, the imperious behests of evil habit, may long remain; and therefore justification, in the Protestant sense, may be sudden and complete, while sanctification is slow, and perhaps never completed on this side of the grave.

On the subject of the will sufficient may have been already said. The Catholic doctrine is, I think, both truer psychologically and more conducive to a holy life. It is the province of the will to accept or to reject, to be faithful or unfaithful ; and though the belief that they were simple instruments in the hand of God has, in exciting times, filled men with courage and enthusiasm, and made them equal to vast enterprise and heroic suffering, I think that in quiet times and with ordinary men the conviction that all human effort was futile, and that we could do nothing but wait for an irresistible grace, would have a depressing and demoralizing effect. It is surely a good and strengthening thought that while we must depend upon God for every good and perfect gift, it is for us to receive or to reject it; that within certain limits, we are arbiters of our own destiny; and that we shall reap as we have sown.

To one question neither doctrine gives any satisfying answer why do some men believe, and others not? This is a great mystery. If God be the Father, whose essential attribute is love, why does he hide himself from so many? The Calvinist does not shrink from the answer which follows logically from the whole Protestant position: God chooses that the vast majority should be damned for the glory of his justice. That is an answer which it is impossible to accept, even if we can give no other. We must refer it to the Divine will, acting, no doubt, in the plenitude of love, however dark it may seem to our eyes, that one man has this gift, and another that, that some walk upon the luminous heights of