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. To this they constantly looked as to that sun of righteousness, which illuminating the heart of man attracts the eye of heaven to the brightness of its rising; forgetful of the prophetical annunciation to the Church of Christ," the Lord shall be unto thee an "everlasting light, and thy God, thy glo“ry.”(9)

Having thus briefly explained the doctrine of the Scholastics on this subject, I proceed to that, which on the other side was opposed to it by the Lutherans.

Upon no one point, perhaps, has the opinion of Luther been more misrepresented than upon this. For, unmindful of that, with which only it ought to have been contrasted, some have ascribed to it a solifidian tendency, if not of the most enthusiastical, at least of the most unqualified, description. It must however be confessed, that the cursory reader of his works is at all times liable to mistake him, in consequence of the involved construction of his style, too frequently confused by a verbose circumlocution, which, as he was him

self fully sensible, oppressed the exuberance of his conception, and the energy of his expression (10). When therefore we find, that particular passages have been selected from his voluminous productions, (productions often republished, but never revised,) and wrested from their true meaning, although we may regret the perversion, we cannot be surprised at it.

But upon the question before us, 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,

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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."

In contemplating therefore the tenet of the Lutherans, we ought never to consider it as detached from penitence. 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 (1). Far was it from their intention to encourage the presumptuous or fanatical sinner in a false security; their object was very different and more 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 (12). 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. When therefore they urged a justification by faith alone, they meant not to exclude repentance, and every good disposition connected with it; but merely to oppose that, for which their adversaries principally contended, and which, in their conception, struck at the very root of Christianity, the obliteration of crime by the merit of the individual, instead of the atonement of a Saviour (13).

But although they stated penitence to consist only of the two parts alluded to, when they strictly defined it as embracing, according to the idea of the Schools, the means and immediate effects of justification,

yet when they considered it, as a general rule of Christian duty and a total conversion, they added a third part, actual obedience(1). In this point of view, and in this alone, 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 denomi nated, 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. The terms then of acceptance on the sinner's part they held to be Contrition, (or as in modern language it is more usually termed, Repentance,) and Faith connected with every devout affection; devout affection; the necessary consequences as well as proofs of this state of acceptance, good works, or external acts of obedience; and the rule of retribution in the world to come, the whole of man, including both his inward impressions and outward demonstrations of holiness (15).

After having thus endeavoured to remove from the doctrine of the Lutherans those dark spots, which in the eye of some,