Ephesians ii. 5. By grace ye are saved.
We all hold that we are justified by faith, that is, by believing;
and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved. And of all men
who ever believed this, perhaps those who gave us the Church
Catechism believed it most strongly. Nay, some of them suffered for
it; endured persecution, banishment, and a cruel death, because they
would persist in holding, contrary to the Romanists, that men were
justified by faith only, and not by the works of the law; and that
this was one of the root-doctrines of Christianity, which if a man
did not believe, he would believe nothing else rightly. Does it not
seem, then, something strange that they should never in this
Catechism of theirs mention one word about justifying or
justification? They do not ask the child, 'How is a man justified?'
that he may answer, 'By faith alone;' they do not even teach him to
say, 'I am justified already. I am in a state of justification;'
but not saying one word about that, they teach him to say much more--
they teach him to say that he is in a state of salvation, and to
thank God boldly because he is so; and then go on at once to ask him
the articles of his belief. And even more strange still, they teach
him to answer that question, not by repeating any doctrines, but by
repeating the simple old Apostles' Creed. They do not teach him to
say, as some would now-a-days, 'I believe in original sin, I believe
in redemption through Christ's death, I believe in justification by
faith, I believe in sanctification by the Holy Spirit,'--true as
these doctrines are; still less do they bid the child say, 'I
believe in predestination, and election, and effectual calling, and
irresistible grace, and vicarious satisfaction, and forensic
justification, and vital faith, and the three assurances.'
Whether these things be true or false, it seemed to the ancient
worthies who gave us our Catechism that children had no business
with them. They had their own opinions on these matters, and spoke
their opinions moderately and wisely, and the sum of their opinions
we have in the Thirty-nine Articles, which are not meant for
children, not even for grown persons, excepting scholars and
clergymen. Of course every grown person is at liberty to study
them; but no one in the Church of England is required to agree to
them, and to swear that they are true, except scholars at our old
Universities, and clergymen, who are bound to have studied such
questions. But for the rest of Englishmen all the necessary
articles of belief (so the old divines considered) were contained in
the simple old Apostles' Creed.
And why? Because, it seems to me, they were what Englishmen ought
to be--what too many Englishmen are too apt to boast of being in
these days, while they are not so, or anything like it--and that is,
honest men and practical men. They had taught the children to say
that they were members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of
the kingdom of heaven; and they had taught the children, when they
said that, to mean what they said; for they had no notion that 'I
am,' meant 'I may possibly be;' or that 'I was made,' meant 'There
is a chance of my being made some time or other.' They would not
have dared to teach children to say things which were most probably
not true. So believing really what they taught, they believed also
that the children were justified. For if a child is not justified
in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the
kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being? Is not that
exactly the just, right, and proper state for him, and for every
man?--the very state in which all men were meant originally to be,
in which all men ought to have been? So they looked on these
children as being in the just, right, and proper way, on which God
looks with satisfaction and pleasure, and in which alone a man can
do just, right, and proper things, by the Spirit of Christ, which He
gives daily and hourly to those who belong to Him and trust in Him
and in His Father.
But they knew that the children could only keep in this just, and
right, and proper state by trusting in God, and looking up to Him
daily in faith, and love, and obedience. They knew that if the
children, whether for one hour or for their whole lives, lost trust
in God, and began trusting in themselves, they would that very
moment, then and there, become not justified at all, because they
would be doing a thing which no man is justified in doing, and fall
into a state into which no man is justified in remaining for one
hour--that is, into an unjustifiable state of self-will, and
lawlessness, and forgetfulness of who and of what they were, and of
what God was to them; in one word, into a sinful state, which is not
a righteous, or just, or good, or proper state for any man, but an
utterly unrighteous, unjust, wrong, improper, mistaken, diseased
state, which is certain to breed unrighteous, unjust, improper
actions in a man, as a limb is certain to corrupt if it be cut off
from the body, as a little child is certain to come to harm if it
runs away from its parents, and does just what it likes, and eats
whatsoever pleases its fancy. So these old divines, being practical
men, said to themselves, 'These children are justified and right in
being what they are, therefore our business is to keep them what
they are, and we can only do that as long as they have faith in God
and in His Christ.'
Now, if they had been mere men of books, they would have said to
themselves, 'Then we must teach the children very exactly what faith
is, that they may know how to tell true faith from false, and may be
able to judge every day and hour whether they have the right sort of
faith which will justify them, or some wrong sort which will not.'
And many wise and good men in those times did say so, and tormented
their own minds, and the minds of weak brethren, with long arguments
and dry doctrines about faith, till, in their eagerness to make out
what sort of thing faith ought to be, they seemed quite to forget
that it must be faith in God, and so seemed to forget too who God
was, and what He was like. Therefore, they ended by making people
believe (as too many, I fear, do now-a-days) not that they were
justified freely by the grace of God, shown forth in the life, and
death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ; no: but that they
were justified by believing in justification by faith, and that
their salvation depended not on being faithful to God and trusting
in Him, but in standing up fiercely for the doctrine of
justification by faith. And so they destroyed the doctrine of free
grace, while they thought they were fighting for it; for they taught
men not to look to God for salvation, so much as to their own faith,
their own frames, and feelings, and experiences; and these, as
common sense will show you, are just as much something in a man, as
acts of his own, and part of him, as his good works would be; and so
by making people fancy that it was having the right sort of feelings
which justified them, they fell back into the very same mistake as
the Papists against whom they were so bitter, namely, that it is
something in a man's self which justifies him, and not simply
Christ's merits and God's free grace.
But our old Reformers were of a different mind; and everlasting
thanks be to Almighty God that they were so. For by being so they
have made the Church of England (as I always have said, and always
will say) almost the only Church in Europe, Protestant or other,
which thoroughly and fully stands up for free grace, and
justification by faith alone. For these old Reformers were
practical men, and took the practical way. They knew, perhaps, the
old proverb, 'A man need not be a builder to live in a house.' At
least they acted on it, and instead of trying to make the children
understand what faith was made up of, they tried to make them live
in faith itself. Instead of saying, 'How shall we make the children
have faith in God by telling them what faith is?' they said, 'How
shall we make them have faith in God by telling them what God is?'
And therefore, instead of puzzling and fretting the children's minds
with any of the controversies which were then going on between
Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and
Arminians, they taught the children simply about God; who He was,
and what He had done for them and all mankind; that so they might
learn to love Him, and look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to
Him, and so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever.
By doing which, my friends, they showed that they knew more about
faith and about God than if they had written books on books of
doctrinal arguments (though they wrote those too, and wrote them
nobly and well); they showed that they had true faith in God, such
trust in Him, and in the beauty and goodness, justice and love,
which He had shown, that they only needed to tell the children of
it, and they would trust Him too, and at once have faith in so good
a God. They showed that they had such trust in the excellencies,
and reasonableness, and fitness of His Gospel, that they were sure
that it would come home at once to the children's hearts. They
showed that they had such trust in the power of His grace, in His
love for the children, in the working of His Spirit in the children,
that He would bring His Gospel home to their hearts, and stir them
up by the spirit of adoption to feel that they were indeed the
children of God, to whom they might freely cry, 'My Father!'
And I say that they were not deceived. I say that experience has
shown that they were right; that the Church Catechism, where it is
really and honestly taught, gives the children an honest, frank,
sober, English temper of mind which no other training which I have
seen gives. I have seen, alas! Church schools fail, ere now, in
training good children; but as far as I have seen, they have failed
either because the Catechism was neglected for the sake of cramming
the children's brains with scholarship, or because the Catechism was
not honestly taught: because the words were taught by rote, but the
explanations which were given of it were no explanations at all, but
another doctrine, which our forefathers knew not: either Dissenting
or Popish; either a religion of fancies, and feelings, and
experiences, or one of superstitious notions and superstitious
ceremonies which have been borrowed from the Church of Rome, and
which, I trust in God, will be soon returned to their proper owner,
if the free, truthful, God-trusting English spirit is to remain in
our children. I know that there are good men among Dissenters, my
friends; good men among Romanists. I have met with them, and I
thank God for them; and what may not be good for English children
may be good for foreign ones. I judge not; to his own master each
man stands or falls. But I warn you frankly, from experience (not
of my own merely--Heaven forbid!--but from the experience of
centuries past), that if you expect to make the average of English
children good children on any other ground than the Church Catechism
takes, you will fail. Of course there will be some chosen ones here
and there, whose hearts God will touch; but you will find that the
greater part of the children will not be made better at all; you
will find that the cleverer, and more tender-hearted will be made
conceited, Pharisaical, self-deceiving (for children are as ready to
deceive themselves, and play the hypocrite to their own consciences,
as grown people are); they will catch up cant words and phrases, or
little outward forms of reverence, and make a religion for
themselves out of them to drug their own consciences withal; while,
when they go out into the world, and meet temptation, they will have
no real safeguard against it, because whatsoever they have been
taught, they have not been taught that God is really and practically
their Father, and they His children.
I have seen many examples of this kind. Perhaps those who have eyes
to see may have seen one or two in this very parish. Be that as it
may, I tell you, my friends, that your children shall be taught the
Church Catechism, with the plain, honest meaning of the words as
they stand. No less: but as God shall give me grace, no more. If
it be not enough for them to know that God, He who made heaven and
earth, is their Father; that His Son Jesus Christ redeemed them and
all mankind by being born of the Virgin Mary, suffering under
Pontius Pilate, being crucified, dead, and buried, descending into
hell, rising again the third day from the dead, ascending into
Heaven, and sitting on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, in
the intent of coming from thence to judge the living and the dead;
to believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy universal Church in which
He keeps us, in the fellowship of all Saints in which He knits us
together; in the forgiveness of our sins which He proclaims to us,
in the resurrection of our body which He will quicken at the last
day, in the life everlasting which is His life,--if, I say, this be
not enough for them to believe, and on the strength thereof to trust
God utterly, and so be justified and saved from this evil world, and
from the doom and punishment thereof, then they must go elsewhere;
for I have nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never
shall have.