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Art. IV. Justification as revealed in Scripture, in opposition to the Council of Trent and Mr. Newman's Lectures. By JAMES BENNETT, D.D. 8vo. pp. 418. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 1840.

OF F the three greatest controversies by which the visible Christian Church has been agitated since apostolic times, it is somewhat remarkable that the one having Justification by Faith for its subject stands the latest in historic order. First arose the question concerning the person of the Son, branching into the many forms given to it by the Gnostic, Arian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Apollinarian, and other errors, filling with discord and distractions the eastern and western empires. It was forced, thus early, upon the church by the wild vagaries of oriental philosophy; while at the same time it had pleased the wisdom of the divine Author of inspiration to unfold the true doctrine in a form less exempt from cavil, because less defined and dogmatic, than some other truths of holy writ. A little later, when the decaying vigor of experimental piety in the church, and a less wakeful spiritual discernment, had prepared a field in which Pelagius might disseminate his heresies, came the important controversy respecting the grace of God in the renovation of man, with other related doctrines. But, if we except the agitation, in the days of the apostles, of the question concerning the observance of the Jewish law, which was settled by divine authority, the great subject of justification by grace, through faith, never assumed the aspect of a distinct and prominent discussion until the period of the Reformation, when it took its place as a leading and carefully defined article in the creed of all the reformed churches. Are we to ascribe this late development to the greater palatableness of the doctrine which Scripture teaches on this point to the pride and prejudice of men, than of those other truths whose early discussion had rent the Christian world in pieces? Certainly not: but perhaps to these two causes, that on the subject of gratuitous justification the inspired Word has spoken with peculiar doctrinal decision,-while yet man's self-righteous mind, ingenious in error, has a strange facility in divorcing the doctrine from its practical bearings, so as that, while the form remains, the essential spirit may have fled. But when a truth is dead, it is within a step of being buried. The Scripture doctrine of justification, therefore, was not so likely to receive a direct denial in the early church as to vanish by a gradual obliteration. Accordingly, fallen as the western church was long before Luther's day, the course by which this article-articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesia-lost its place in the theology of Rome, was by the substitution of other inconsistent dogmas and superstitions in its stead. In the pope's

dealings with the great Reformer, his legate appeared willing to come to a compromise on the matter of justification, had Luther only promised to withdraw his opposition to indulgences and it is improbable that even the anathemas of Trent would have been launched against it had it not become identified with the progress of that great reforming movement which Rome bent herself, with all her energies, to suppress.

The gradual obliteration of which we speak is marked with melancholy evidence in the history of successive centuries. From the first we fail to discover in the faith of the early church, -in so far as we can gather it from the writings of the fathers and the symbols, -that distinct doctrinal prominence of this grand truth which would have been some security against neglect and error, and would have formed the most effectual barrier against that irruption of montanism, and monachism, and penitential superstitions, which so soon deluged the church. In the hearts of all true believers, the doctrine dwelt, doubtless, in its vital energy, uniting them to Christ for acceptance; and there is enough in the writings of the fathers, from Clemens Romanus downwards, to furnish us with a valuable testimony against the corrupt doctrines of later times. But we look to them in vain for the clear elucidation of the forensic character of justification as exhibited in the Jewish and apostolic Scriptures: that was reserved for Luther and the Reformation. Amongst the fathers of the fourth century, the terms justification and sanctification had come to be used convertibly; and even Augustine, if substantially right as to the doctrine of grace in acceptance, is involved in the same error of phraseology. The early obtrusion upon the church of the notion of an ascetic purity as the consummation of Christianity, tended, like all kinds of will-worship, to exclude Christ from his place as the Alpha and Omega in salvation, and nourished both the spirit and the forms of that selfrighteous devotion which men are always prone to substitute for a dependence by which pride is mortified. In the perspective ' of ancient Christianity,' says the ingenious author of the work of which the last two words quoted are the title, 'personal sanctity 'stood in front of the doctrine of justification.' What was the consequence? The sun is not indeed driven from the heaven in such a system, but it is eclipsed; and the Christian, for such we 'must still call him, droops, becomes pallid, gloomy, superstitious, timid, punctilious; a trembling attendant upon rites, a perfunctory 'practitioner of ceremonies; fretting, fasting, upbraiding himself, 'impatient of earth, afraid to hope for heaven.' But those false views which were thus misery to the sincere, were, in their next stage, prolific in fatal delusions; and the seeds of practical errors, thickly sown, soon ripened into maturity amidst the dense religious ignorance of Christendom during the middle ages.

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ances, pilgrimages, macerations, confessions, invocations of saints, priestly absolutions, masses, fastings, gifts to the church, were the methods resorted to in order to purchase peace with heaven; and the doctrine of a gratuitous acceptance to the guilty, through the merits of the only Mediator, was a thing forgotten.

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We do not mean to say that the sole cause why the doctrine of justification was formally condemned by Rome lay in its being the doctrine of the reformers. It was plain enough that the tenet itself, when made prominent and powerful as a practical truth, was death to the papal system. It struck at the roots both of its superstition and its spiritual despotism. While the all-important 'article of justification,' observes Milner, is firmly believed and reverenced, it is impossible for men to think of commuting for 'their offences with heaven, and it is itself the surest defence against clerical encroachments, superstition, idolatry, and hypo'crisy.' An immediate reliance of the sinner upon the grace of the Saviour, is destruction to all other false dependences, and priestly ascendency falls when ecclesiastical persons are no longer regarded as the immediate dispensers of grace and guardians of the gates of heaven. It is true we sometimes find evangelical piety strangely allied with lofty notions of sacerdotal power and the spirit of high-church tyranny. But the alliance is an unnatural one, formed by the lust of domination which inheres so strongly in the human breast, especially when that is fostered by the corrupt system of ecclesiastical establishments. The whole tendency of this great principle of the reformed religions was to a scriptural liberty of conscience and a rational worship; and, of course, it contained enough to rouse the spirit of Rome to inveterate antipathy.

It is equally hostile to popery among Protestants as where we more expect to see it; so that it needs excite no surprise when we find those divines who have headed the Oxford movement, discovering, in its progress, their opposition to a cardinal article of that 'popular Protestantism' against which the battle has been directed from the first. The connexion between their denial of justification by faith, and the two great features of their theology, transmitted apostolical power and mystical sacramental virtue,—is far from being an accidental one. We see in it but a renewed development of that spirit of human dependence which, in earlier times, first substituted man's righteousness for Christ's in the matter of acceptance, and then took refuge, under the fears of guilt, in the virtue of ceremonies, and the mysterious endowments of human functionaries invested with heaven-derived authority. These minor errors are symptomatic, we apprehend, of the more radical one, and react to increase its virulence. Unfeignedly, therefore, as we deplore the existence of serious mistakes on the all-important concern of religion in the minds of any class of men, we confess we feel no regret that the secret spirit of this

pernicious school of religionists should display itself by its alliance with doctrinal principles, the avowal of which must rouse to a decided protest all the sound evangelical piety of the Church of England, as well as provoke the wholesome animadversion of other Protestant communities, zealous for the faith once delivered to the saints. We ought not to be expected to profess any full or distinct apprehension of what these principles are positively; to attain which, our readers must be aware, from the extracts from Mr. Newman in our June number, would be no easy matter. But this much is too evident,-is indeed unequivocally avowed, that on the vital question of man's acceptance with God, they are not the principles of the Reformation. In the extracts referred to, which were as copious as our limits would allow, the theology of Mr. Newman, which is that of the Oxford Tracts, spoke for itself, with but little comment from us. We have now the pleasure to introduce our readers to a treatise in reply, which comes seasonably from the pen of a writer who has long been honorably known to the Christian public, and especially the dissenting portion of it. Those of them who are conversant with the subject of justification as treated by systematic theologians, will not expect novelty in such a work, excepting that measure of it which almost every topic derives from passing through the mind of one who thinks for himself, and who thinks vigorously. As to this Dr. Bennett will not disappoint them. He discusses the subject on ground in which dissenting divines are generally at home, and on which all Protestants ought to be,-that of inspired testimony. What say the Articles?-is not the hinge of the controversy, as to doctrine, with any party-although it ought certainly to be that of another question which the conscience of a Churchman has to settle in almost every religious discussion. That the consciences of the Oxford Tractators have been exercised with this question there is no reason to doubt; and Mr. Newman now endeavors to furnish evidence to the world' that, notwithstanding all suspicious appearances, the writers of the Tracts honestly believed 'that the doctrines of the articles and homilies were not at variance' with the peculiar sentiments of the party. The evidence is such as would still leave impartial persons wondering, not at the ingenuity of the reconciling process, so much as at the satisfaction of the inventors in its results-if it had not long ceased to be subject for wonder how doctrines the most diverse from each other can all be peacefully held under the terms of the thirty-nine articles. This is a topic, however, on which Dr. Bennett touches but slightly, as having little to do with the great point; while at the same time he does not overlook the testimony borne by the Anglican formularies to the Protestant doctrine, in one of the later chapters of his volume. The question as to the opinions of

the fathers on justification, Dr. Bennett also waives, as having been treated in Mr. Faber's recent work on the Primitive Doc'trine of Justification;' as well as for an additional reason, with which it gives us pleasure to become acquainted, that it is his intention to prepare a volume for the press on the Theology of the First Three Centuries, for which many striking passages from the fathers that had been collected for the present work are now in reserve. Mr. Newman himself appeals to Scripture in preference to the fathers. The field therefore is common; and 'one who bows to inspired authority alone,' says our author, may be allowed to interpose, and say, with an ancient sage, I also will show my 'opinion.' That opinion, founded on an enlightened interpretation of the holy oracles, he vindicates with the acuteness in argument, force of expression, theological learning, and mastery of the subject, which were to be expected from a theologian of his acknowledged eminence.

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Dr. Bennett's title-page tells us that his volume is against The Council of Trent and Mr. Newman's Lectures.' The doctrine of the Council on the point under review is, that 'Justi'fication is not only the remission of sins, but also sanctification, and the renovation of the inner man by a voluntary reception of graces and gifts, whence a man from unjust becomes just, ' and from an enemy a friend, that he may be an heir according to the hope of eternal life.' With this doctrine Mr. Newman's appears to Dr. Bennett substantially to agree, differing merely, if there be a difference, in the mode of statement, which amounts 'not to as much as we find among those who composed the 'Council of Trent.' The lecturer, on the contrary, endeavors to make a distinction appear, which he represents to be this, that whereas Protestants and Romanists have separated two propositions from each other-that justification is by faith-and that justification is by obedience-the Protestants maintaining the former alone, and the Romanists the latter-he would unite the two, which are not at all inconsistent with one another,' but may be held both at once, or indifferently either the one or the other, as circumstances may determine.' Now, however this sentiment may distinguish him from such ultra-Romanists as Vasquez, Cajetan, and others,' we cannot discover the justice of representing the doctrine of justification by obedience alone as the symbol of Romanism,' when it was in fact maintained by the Roman scholastic divines, and argued against by those of the Reformation, that while faith, considered by itself, separate from charity fides informis-did not justify, it had this power when including or perfected by charity, which concurred with faith to vivify and justify the sinner before God. Leaving this doctrine to Dr. Bennett's reprehensions (p. 102), we compare with it Mr. Newman's language respecting faith, when, after representing