up for a memorial before God, was often quoted, by the advocates of the
church of Rome, to prove the merit of works before the reception of
grace; to prove the human will capable, by its own inherent rectitude,
of deserving the favour and approbation of Heaven. The Lutherans, on the
other hand, contended, that the argument supported not the conclusion
drawn from it, and was therefore irrelevant; that the works of Cornelius
were not the _causes_ but the _effects_ of grace; and that this is
sufficiently apparent from the context, in which he is described as a
devout man, who feared God and prayed continually.” The disciples of
Lombard, in whatever mode disposed to pervert reason and annihilate
Scripture, universally held, that neither before nor after the fall was
man in himself capable of meriting heaven; that by the gratuitous
endowments of his creation, even in paradise, he was only enabled to
preserve his innocence, and not to sin; and that he was utterly
incompetent to proceed one step farther, efficaciously to will a
remunerable good, and by his natural exertions to obtain a reward above
his nature; original righteousness being reputed not a connate quality,
but a supernatural habit. Thus, he could resist evil, but not advance
good to perfection; could in some sense live well, by living free from
sin, but could not without divine aid so live as to deserve everlasting
life. For such a purpose they asserted that grace was necessary, to
operate upon his will in its primary determinations, and to co-operate
with it in its ultimate acts. It was, therefore, in the loss of this
celestial aid, this superadded gift, and not in any depravity of his
mind, that they supposed the principal evil derivable from his lapse to
consist; a loss, however, which, by a due exertion of his innate
abilities, they deemed to be retrievable; and hence sprung that
offensive doctrine of human sufficiency which, in the Lutheran’s eye,
completely obscured the glory of the Gospel, and which, when applied to
the sinner’s conscience, taught the haughty to presume, and the humble
to despair. According, then, to the system under consideration, the
favour of God in this life, and his beatific vision in the life to come,
are both attainable by personal merit; the former by _congruous_, as it
was termed, the latter by _condign_; the one without, the other with,
the assistance of grace. By our natural strength, it was said, we can
fulfil the commands of God as far as their obligation extends; yet was
it added, that we cannot fulfil them according to the intention of the
divine Legislator; an intention of rewarding only those who obey them in
virtue formed by charity, under the influence of a quality rather
regulating the tendency, than augmenting the purity, of the action. They
stated, that we may so prepare ourselves for grace as to become entitled
to it congruously, not as to a debt which in strict justice God is bound
to pay, but as to a grant which it is congruous in him to give, and
which it would be inconsistent with his attributes to withhold. This
favourite doctrine was supported by every denomination of scholastics,
and by every individual of the church of Rome. Congruous merit was
universally esteemed a pearl above all price, the intrinsic value of
which attracted the regard, and conciliated the benevolence, of the
Almighty. According to their conception, we are endowed with an innate
propensity to good, which vice itself can never obliterate, and are able
not only to reverence and adore the supreme Being, but to love him above
other objects. They supposed man competent no less to the efficient
practice, than to the barren admiration, of holiness; enabled as well to
obey the laws, as to love the goodness, of the Almighty; and, if not to
deserve the rewards, at least to discharge the obligations, of religion.
Impressed, therefore, with such exalted notions of human ability, and
forgetful of the Christian propitiation for sin, the sophists of the
schools maintained, that the soul of man possesses in the freedom, or
rather in the capacity, of her WILL a faculty almost divine. Stimulated
by the most upright propensities, and undepraved in her noblest powers,
she directs her progress in the path of truth and the road to bliss, by
the pure and inextinguishable light of an unperverted reason. Although
mutable in her decisions, nevertheless complete controller of her
conduct, she becomes at pleasure either the servant of righteousness or
the slave of sin; and, disdaining to be anticipated by God himself,
prevents him in his supernatural gifts by a previous display of her own
meritorious deeds, challenging, as a congruous right, that which only
could have been otherwise conferred as a favour undeserved. By the bare
observance of my holy order,” exclaimed the secluded devotee, I am able
not solely to obtain grace for myself, but, by the works which I then
may do, can accumulate merit sufficient both to supply my own wants and
those of others; so that I may sell the superabundance of my acquired
treasure.” Can we be surprised that a reformer of Luther’s manly
disposition, who wrote without reserve and reasoned without control,
when adverting to opinions of so noxious a tendency, should sometimes,
from excess of zeal, lose sight of moderation in his censures? The
Lutherans commenced the attack upon these unscriptural dogmas, under a
persuasion that the position of their opponents militated against the
leading principles of Christianity. If man,” they said, be capable of
pleasing God by his own works abstractedly considered, without divine
assistance, where is the necessity, and what is the utility, of that
assistance?” They argued, that, were it possible for the moral virtues
of the mind by their own efficiency to render our persons acceptable to
God and obtain his lost favour, no need would exist of any other
satisfaction for sin, and thus the whole scheme of Gospel redemption
would have been fruitless, and Christ have died in vain. While,
therefore, the doctrine of the atonement presented nothing but _a cloud
and darkness to their adversaries, it gave light by night to these_; on
them it shone, amidst surrounding gloom, with lustre unobscured. Luther
advanced a proposition which proved highly offensive to the Papists, and
which they never ceased to condemn and calumniate. His assertion was,
that he who exerts himself to the utmost of his ability still continues
to sin. On the other side, unassisted man was thought incapable of
performing an action remunerably good, or, as it was usually termed,
condignly meritorious, even before his lapse; and that consequently, in
his fallen state, all to which he was conceived competent by his innate
strength was _not to sin_. When Luther therefore drew up his thesis for
public disputation against the tenet of congruous works, if little
delicacy, yet some caution, and much discrimination, appeared requisite.
Had he stated them to be thus good in a scholastic sense, he would have
completely lost sight of his object, and allowed more than even his
opponents themselves. Had he described them as not demeritorious, or, in
other words, not sinful, he would have precisely maintained the adverse
position, and might consequently have spared his labour, at the same
time that he would have tacitly acknowledged them to possess, what he
could not consistently with truth attribute to them, every natural
perfection of virtue and holiness. Under what denomination, then, could
he class them, except under that of _sinful_? a denomination which he
the more readily adopted because, even among his adversaries themselves,
the words SIN and GRACE, as he remarked, were in general immediately
opposed to each other. Anxious to rescue Christian theology from the
grasp of those who embraced only to betray, the Lutherans laboured to
restore that importance to the doctrine of redemption with which the
Scriptures invest it, but of which, by a subtle perversity, it had been
deprived. The principal object, therefore, in their view evidently was,
to Christianize the speculations of the schools; and the principal drift
of their argument is to prove, that human virtue, how extravagantly
soever extolled by a vain philosophy, is wholly insufficient (because
imperfect) to merit the favour of Heaven. Allowing no medium between
righteousness and unrighteousness, the approbation and disapprobation of
the Almighty, characterizing that as sinful which is confessedly not
holy, and thus annihilating every ground of self-presumption, they
inculcated the necessity of contemplating with the eye of faith those
means of reconciliation which Christianity alone affords. But it has
been insinuated, that the Lutheran doctrine went to prove man’s total
inability to extricate himself from crime, until the arrival of some
uncertain moment, which brings with it a regeneration from on high, the
sudden transfusion of a new light and new virtues. But those who thus
conceive of it are not probably aware, that Melancthon, the venerable
author of the Augsburgh Confession, warmly reprobates this precise idea,
which he denominates _a Manichean conceit and a horrible falsehood_.
Upon the abstract question of free will it is indeed true, that
Melancthon, no less than Luther, at first held opinions which he was
happy to retract. But when this is acknowledged it should be added, that
he made ample amends for his indiscretion by not only expunging the
offensive passages from the single work which contained them, but by
introducing others of a nature diametrically opposite. And although the
more inflexible coadjutor of Melancthon was too lofty to correct what he
had once made public, and too magnanimous to regard the charge of
inconsistency which his adversaries urged against him; yet what his
better judgment approved clearly appears from a preface written not long
before his death; in which, while he expressed an anxiety to have his
own chaotic labours, as he styled them, buried in eternal oblivion, he
recommended in strong terms, as a work admirably adapted to form the
Christian divine, that very performance of his friend which was
remarkable for something more than a mere recantation of the opinions
alluded to. It was not against any conceived deficiency in the quality
of our virtue that they argued, but against its supposed competency,
whether wrought in or out of grace, with greater or less degrees of
purity, to effect that which the oblation of Christ alone accomplishes.
Upon both points Luther treated the doctrine of his adversaries as
altogether frivolous, and incapable of corroboration by a single fact.
Futile, however, as the scholastical tenet appeared to be, although
deficient in proof and unsupported by example, upon this, he remarked
with indignation and grief, was founded the whole system of papal
delusion.
Justification was on both sides supposed to consist entirely in the
remission of sins. The popish scholastics, on this head, were
remarkably distinct in their ideas, and express in their language.
They represented it as an effect produced by the infusion of divine
grace into the mind; not as a consequent to a well spent life, but as
preceding all remunerable obedience, as the intervening point between
night and day, the gloom of a guilty and the light of a self-approving
conscience; or, in other words, and to adopt their own phraseology, as
the exact boundary where merit of congruity ends and where merit of
condignity begins, the infallible result of a previous disposition on
our part, which never fails of alluring from on high that supernatural
quality which, being itself love, renders the soul beloved. While the
Lutherans, however, adhered to the general import of the term as
understood in the schools, they waged an incessant warfare upon
another point; while they allowed that justification consists in the
remission of sin, they denied that this remission is to be acquired by
the merit of the individual. Their scholastic opponents maintained
that man is justified in the sight of God in consequence of his own
preparation, and on account of his personal qualities. They, on the
other band, argued with an inflexibility which admitted of no
compromise, that, possessing not merits of his own to plead, man
freely received forgiveness through the mercy of God solely on account
of the merits of Christ. The effective principle, therefore, or
_meritorious cause of justification_, was the great point contested.
The doctrine of the popish divines, explained more at large, was this:
When the sinner, conscious of his past transgressions, inquired where
he was to seek the expiation of his crime, and deliverance from the
dreadful consequences of it, the general answer was, _In the merit of
penitence_; a merit capable of annihilating guilt, and appeasing the
anger of incensed Omnipotence. He, they argued, who, having disobeyed
the laws of Heaven, is desirous of returning into that state of
acceptance from which he has fallen, must not expect free forgiveness;
but previously by unfeigned sorrow of heart deserve the restoration of
grace, and, with it, the obliteration of his offences. To effect this
desirable purpose he is bound strictly to survey and detest his former
conduct, accurately to enumerate his transgressions and deeply feel
them; and, impressed with a due sense of their magnitude, impurity,
and consequences, to condemn his folly and deplore his fault, which
have made him an outcast of Heaven, and exposed him to eternal misery.
So far he can proceed by that operation of the mind which they
denominated ATTRITION, and which, being within the sphere of his
natural powers, they regarded as _congruous piety meritorious of
justification_, as a preparation of the soul more or less necessary to
receive and merit justifying grace. When, therefore, he is arrived at
this point, ATTRITION ceases and CONTRITION commences; the habit of
sin is expelled, while that of holiness is superinduced in its stead,
and with the infusion of charity, the plastic principle of a new
obedience, justification becomes complete. But even here it was not
conceived that a total deliverance takes place; a liberation from
guilt and _eternal_ punishment is effected, but not from _temporal_,
which is never remitted unless either by the infliction of some
personal suffering or satisfactory compensation required of him who is
already justified and approved by Heaven. However, to accomplish this
remaining object, nothing more is wanting than a continuation, to a
sufficient intensity, of that compunction of heart which is now
denominated CONTRITION, grace supplying the defects of nature, and
enabling penitential merit not only to justify, but to obtain
exemption from punishment of every species. But so great appeared to
the popish scholastics the frailty of man and the severity of God,
that no inconsiderable difficulty occurred in the due application of
this favourite doctrine to individuals; for the means of expiation,
they imagined, ought always to be proportionate to the magnitude of
the offences. How,” they reasoned, are we to be assured that our
contrition has been either sufficient or sincere, and whether it has
been so in the obliteration not only of one crime, but of all; whether
it has atoned for past transgressions of every kind, the number of
which may perplex, as well as their guilt confound, us?” Instead,
therefore, of penitence in its strictest acceptation as a perfect
virtue, God, they said, in condescension to human infirmity, has
substituted for general practice _the sacrament of penitence_, which,
for the attainment of full remission, requires only a moderate
compunction of soul, with confession to the priest, and the discharge
of such satisfaction as he may enjoin. And, still lower to reduce the
terms of acceptance, they even argued that it is not absolutely
necessary for the penitent to experience an entire conversion of
heart, but only not to oppose the impediment of mortal crime, to feel
some displeasure at his past conduct, and to express a resolution of
amending it in future. But, after all, and in spite of the boasted
authority of the keys, complete confidence in divine forgiveness was
never inculcated; for it was neither the interest nor the inclination
of the church of Rome to teach the simple doctrine of Christian faith,
but rather to involve it in metaphysical obscurity. Under the pretext,
therefore, of relieving the throbbing breast from its apprehensions,
they had recourse to numerous inventions for propping the insecure
fabric of penitential hope; asserting, among other extravagancies,
that the sacraments are in themselves efficacious by virtue of their
own operation, exclusively of all merit in the recipient; and that the
sacrament of the altar, in particular, acts so powerful in this
respect as to communicate grace not only to those who partake of it,
but to others from whom it is received by substitution, provided its
operation be not hindered by confessedly flagrant immorality. So
deeply rooted in the minds of the papists had become the persuasion of
its thus effecting the best of purposes, and that even without the
necessity of an actual participation of it by him upon whom the
benefit is conferred, that the celebration of the mass was universally
regarded as the means of appeasing the anger of Heaven, and obtaining
pardon and peace, of procuring divine assistance for the living, and,
for the dead, deliverance from the bitter pains of purgatory. Nor by
the sacraments alone, but by every good external work, as well as
internal disposition, was justifying grace supposed to be merited
_congruously_, and satisfaction for sin to be made _condignly_. In
monastical institutions, likewise, were found no mean materials for
similar purposes; for in those feigned religions,” as the homily _On
Good Works_ describes them, the devotees boasted of having lamps which
ran always over, able to _satisfy_ not only for their own sins, but
also for all other their benefactors, brothers and sisters of
religion, as most ungodly and craftily they had persuaded the
multitude of ignorant people; keeping in divers places marts or
markets of merits, being full of their holy relics, images, shrines,
and works of overflowing abundance, ready to be sold.” Yet, whether
the dubious penitent was instructed to derive consolation from the
efficacy of the sacraments, from his own personal qualities, or from
any of what Cranmer aptly termed “the fantastical works of man’s
invention,” it should be observed that he was not directly taught to
consider these as wholly superseding the virtue of repentance, but as
supplying his deficiencies in the performance of it; an incongruous
system of atonement, fabricated by the avarice of Rome, and the
obsequiousness of scholastical philosophy, to augment the treasures
and extend the influence of the church, to extinguish the light of
Gospel truth, and, while keeping the world at large in ignorance, to
hold the conscience of the individual in slavery. Upon the whole,
then, the scholastics maintained that justification is unattainable
without repentance, at least, without some degree of attrition on our
part; but in the common apprehension of the doctrine even this seems
to have been forgotten, and merit of congruity considered in a general
point of view as alone efficacious. Thus good works of every species
preceding grace were said to deserve it, and, by deserving grace, to
deserve the justifying principle. And always were they careful to
impute the cause of forgiveness, not to the mercy of God in Christ,
but to the sole change in the individual, to his transmutation from a
state of unrighteousness to one of righteousness, to his possession of
a quality which renders him a worthy object of divine approbation. For
in every instance personal merit was conceived to be the solid basis
upon which rests the complete remission of sin. Upon no one point,
perhaps, has the opinion of Luther been more misrepresented than upon
this. Some have ascribed to it a solifidian tendency, if not of the
most enthusiastical, at least, of the most unqualified, description.
But it seems indeed impossible accurately to comprehend the position
which he maintained, if we examine it in an insulated point of view,
unless we connect it with that of which in the church of Rome it
properly formed a part, and from which he never intended to separate
it,--the doctrine of penitence. In opposing the absurdity of papal
indulgences, (the first impiety against which his manly mind
revolted,) a ray of light, before unnoticed, darted upon him, and
opened a completely new scene, which, while it stimulated his efforts
as a reformer, animated his hopes as a Christian. Hence, averting with
disdain from the speculations of sophists, and turning to the sacred
page of revelation, he there beheld an affiance very different from
what the schools inculcated; and thus, while _their_ vain language
was, Repent, and trust to the efficacy of your contrition, either with
or without extraneous works, according to the degree of its intensity,
for the expiation of your offences;” _his_, more Scriptural and more
consoling, became simply this: Repent, and trust not for expiation to
your own merits of any kind, but solely to those of your Redeemer.”
Rejecting the dreams of their adversaries with respect to the nature
and effects of this important duty, they represented it as consisting
of two essential parts, CONTRITION and FAITH, the latter as always
associated with the former. Hence, in the Apology of their Confession,
they repeatedly declared a disavowal of all faith, except such as
exists in the contrite heart. Far was it from their intention to
encourage the presumptuous or fanatical sinner in a false security;
their object was very different and laudable,--they laboured to fix
the eye of him who both laments and detests his offences, upon the
only deserving object of human confidence and divine complacency.
Properly, then, as they frequently remarked, their doctrine of
justification was appropriated to troubled consciences, at every
period of true repentance, and particularly at the awful hour of
death, when the time for habitual proofs of amendment has elapsed, and
when the past appears replete with guilt and the future with terror.
At such moments, they taught not, with the schools, an affiance in
human merit, but in the gratuitous mercy of God through Christ: to
contrition, as a preparatory qualification or previous requisite, they
added faith; and from faith they deemed every principle of real piety
and virtue inseparable. Good works, or the outward fruits of an inward
renovation of mind, were said to _follow_ remission of sins;
_internal_ necessarily preceding _external_ reformation. For the
individual, they argued, must himself be good before the action can be
so denominated, be justified before it can be deemed just, and
accepted before it can prove acceptable,--distinguishing between the
primary admission into God’s favour, and the subsequent preservation
of that favour.