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who contemplate it through an indistinct medium, appear to obscure its lustre, there will be little occasion of dwelling upon that, which our own Church maintains in the same sense and on a similar principle. Both in their object and tendency perfectly accord; but the latter is, if possible, more guarded than the former against the obliquities of Enthusiasm. Our Church asserts, "that we are accounted righteous "before God, for the merit of our Lord "and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and "not for our own works and deserving;" and then adds, that "justification by faith "alone is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as is more largely

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expressed in the Homily upon that sub'ject." By referring to the Homily alluded to, we find the obvious meaning of the Article to be, that we are esteemed righteous in the sight of God solely for the sake of Christ, and not rendered perfectly so in point of fact, as the Papists held, by our own virtues, which we are told "are "far too weak, insufficient, and imperfect, "to deserve the remission of our sins;" and that we are thus reputed righteous, not on account of the act but the object of faith, on account of him, in whom alone

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we are to trust, yet in whom we are not entitled to trust, except upon a previous condition, except we truly repent, and "turn to God unfeignedly."(16) For when we are said, as the same Homily remarks, to be justified by faith only, it is not meant "that this our own act to believe in "Christ doth justify us, . . . . . for "that were to count ourselves to be justi"fied by some act or virtue that is within "ourselves, ..... nor that the said justifying faith is alone in man without true

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repentance, hope, charity, the dread and "fear of God at any time and season;' but the purport of such expressions "is to "take away clearly all merit of our works, "as being unable to deserve our justifica"tion at God's hands, Christ him"self only being the cause meritorious "thereof."(17)

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To enter into a minuter examination of the doctrine, which our Church inculcates on this point, after what has been advanced, seems unnecessary. It ought not however to be omitted, that the very definition, which she gives of the word Faith in another Homily composed at the same period, is admirably calculated to preclude the worst of errors upon the most important

topic of Christianity; it is defined to be a trust in God that our offences are obliterated by the blood of Christ, not when we believe them to be thus obliterated, but "whensoever we repenting truly return to “him with our whole heart, stedfastly determining with ourselves through his

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grace to obey and serve him in keeping "his commandments."(18) It is likewise worthy of observation, that in our office for the Visitation of the Sick, the Minister, after rehearsing to the person visited the Articles of our Belief, is directed to require of him, not to ascertain what some in the present day would perhaps think preferable, whether he ever possessed a consciousness of that saving principle, which when once obtained is supposed never afterwards to be lost, or whether he feels an internal confidence, that his name is written in the book of life, but "forasmuch as after this "life there is an account to be given unto "the righteous Judge, by whom all must

be judged without respect of persons, to "examine himself and his estate both to"wards God and man, so that accusing “and condemning himself for his own "faults he may find mercy at our heavenly "Father's hand for Christ's sake, and not

"be accused, and condemned in that "fearful judgment." Indeed through every part both of our Homilies and Liturgy the necessity of something more is enforced than a bare persuasion of faith: but no where with more perspicuity and energy, than in the following passage. "Where"fore, it is said, as you have any zeal for "the right and pure honouring of God, as 66 you have any regard to your own souls, "and to the life that is to come, which is "both without pain and without end,

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apply yourselves chiefly above all things "to read and hear God's word, mark di"ligently therein what his will is that you "shall do, and with all your endeavour apply yourselves to follow the same."(19)

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To conclude, from a retrospect of the whole it appears, that the great point in dispute was this: Whether he who sincerely repents of his past, transgressions should trust (for affiance must be somewhere placed) in the efficacy of his own merits, or in that of his Redeemer's. But while our Reformers, like the Lutherans, pertinaciously contended for an affiance of the latter description, they never dreamed of imputing to it any mysterious operation, or of investing it with a higher character of

certainty, than what it derives from the stable foundation, upon which it rests. Without reserve or hesitation they declared, that he, who contemplates it as an act of the mind in itself capable of justifying him, disregarding all internal change of disposition, and external emendation of life, only trifles with God, and deceives himself (2o). Repentance and amendment they inculcated as no less necessary to a state of acceptance, than faith, not indeed as meritorious, but as requisite conditions, as conditions, without which it is neither to be obtained nor preserved. Never therefore should it be forgotten, that when they spoke of justification by faith alone, they solely opposed the scholastical system, so frequently alluded to, which attributed to our merits the expiation of crime, and a readmission into the favour of God; this, with an inflexibility not greater than the occasion demanded, they constantly laboured to annihilate, and to restore in its stead the plain doctrine of a perfect propitiation and satisfaction for sin by the death of Christ a doctrine which had been lost to the world during centuries of intellectual darkness, and with which had disappeared the genuine splendour of Christi

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