Justification by faith : a charge delivered before the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio ..

Front matter

J jf T/

BISHOP McILVAINE"

J U S T I F I C A T I C) N .

Preface

It is due to the Convention, at whose request this Charge is published, to say that although, in its present form, it contains many pages which were not connected with it as delivered ; nothing has been added, in point of doctrine, which was not substantially before the Convention when the publication was requested. The unexpected delay in the issue from the press? has arisen from the desire of the author to make such arrangements with a publisher, as would relieve the Diocese from much of the expense of the edition. — It has been said that the Charge was directed against the Oxford Tracts. The fact is adverted to, because otherwise it might cause a misinterpretation of some detriment to the object of the writer. Doubtless the peculiarities of the recent Oxford divinity, on the subject

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of Justification, were often in view in the writing of the Charge ; and the author has no question that there is serious error enough in that divinity, on this one subject, to furnish subject-matter for much more than an Episcopal Charge ; but the reader will be disappointed if he expects to trace a reference thereto in every part of this publication. Distinctly to exhibit certain main truths involved in the great matter of a snner's Justification before God, and to point out certain main errors in that connection, has been the single object of the writer.

CHARGE.

Brethren in the Holy Ministry :

In considering by what means I might best promote the usefulness of our present Convention, I have been led to suppose that a Charge on some of the great duties of your high calling, would be seasonable and welcome. The selection however of some single and well-defined subject, has been the difficulty; not that appropriate subjects are scarce, but because from the fewness of the occasions on which we thus address you, those which seem importunately to claim a conspicuous introduction, are so numerous and various.

But in reflecting upon the duties of the Epi^^pate as exercised by that eminent example of all ministerial faithfulness, the Apostle St. Paul, his earnest charges to ministers as to their doctrine, occurred to my mind ; — such as those in which Timothy is directed to "give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine" to "rebuke and exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine ;" "in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity ;" especially that in which he is enjoined to " take heed" to his doctrine, as well as to himself, because in so doing he should both save himself and those that heard him. These, as well as similar passages in the Epistle to Titus, afford an impressive example to those who have succeeded, not indeed to the name, but essentially to the office of the Apostles, of the concern they should feel and the care they should take, that the ministers over whom they are placed in the Lord, should not only be well grounded in sound doctrine, but so faithful and well skilled in setting it forth, clearly, forcibly and fully, to the understanding and conscience and heart, that their hearers may be "rooted and built up in Christ and stablished in the faith." This example, I desire, my beloved brethren, as much as in me lies, to imitate. Feeling a very deep sense of the importance of having our several flocks accurately and firmly indoctrinated, as well for the consistency, fruitfulness and steadfastness of individual Christians, as for the permanent interests of true religion in the whole church, I would urge upon myself and you, the duty of giving great heed to Christian doctrine in general ; but most particularly to those prominent parts of the doctrine of Christ on which the spiritual life and power of the Church and her ministry most essentially depend; and this, not only that we may be well established in the truth and well furnished for its defence, with sound speech that cannot be condemned ; but that we may fully teach sound doctrine ; that our preaching may be decidedly doctrinal, as well as practical ; never • attempting to enforce christian practice without joining it closely with christian doctrine, as alone furnishing its reason and principles.

That I may contribute something to your furtherance in this, I have selected for the subject of this charge the doctrine of Justification by Faith; one which you all know is of the most vital importance in the system of Gospel truth, and should therefore receive the careful study of all whose office it is to teach the way of salvation. Not only do I most fully believe in the doctrine of Justification by Faith, as the Scriptures, on that subject, are interpreted in the standards of our Church ; but I do also believe that it is of the very highest importance to all efficiency in a minister, that he should exhibit it, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, sometimes at large, in some extent habitually, and always with reference to the enforcement of precisely those main points of the doctrine, on which the Church, in her Articles and Homilies, has most emphatically insisted. It is a great thing gained when a minister has acquired the knowledge and the skill, as well as the spirit, to do this. Always should he be studying the improvement of his ministry in this main branch of its message. Here may we all be learners, as long as the personal experience of the blessedness of divine truth shall have any more spiritual discernment to impart, or the personal observation of man shall have any more knowledge of the relative bearing of the gospel upon the varied conditions of the human mind and heart to communicate. Not counting myself to have already attained any thing on this subject, that may not be equally possessed by many of you, my dear brethren, who have had much experience in the ministry; feeling my mind indeed entirely settled in the doctrine, but desiring, as heretofore, so always hereafter, to be improving in the method of illustrating and enforcing it ; my whole object in this charge will be, not the teaching of what you may not be supposed substantially to know already; not the correction of any errors on this subject supposed to exist among you ; but, knowing your substantial agreement with the doctrine as declared in the Scriptures, and embodied in the standard writings of the Church ; my object will be answered if I can contribute to make any of you not only more deeply sensible of the relative importance of this doctrine in your ministry, and very earnest to get the clearest views of it in all its parts and connections ; but also more discriminating in your views, more lucid in your statements, more direct and impressive in your applications, more effective for the highest objects of your office, in your whole method of preaching to sinners, " the way, the truth, the life," "the Lord, our Righteousness"

The main endeavour of this discourse will be, to illustrate the doctrine of Scripture, as interpreted and declared in the standards of our Churchy on the mon prominent topics involved in the Sinner's Justification before God.

On no point of doctrinal confession, are the declarations of the Church more full, more reiterated, or more earnest. There is first, an Article, entitled, " Of the Justification of Man," in which the doctrine is summarily declared, in these words : " We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Faith, and not for our own works and deservings" And then on the subject of i(our own works and deservings," as rejected from Justification, we have two more Articles ; the one entitled, "Of Works done before Justification," which excludes them from all efficacy to make men meet to receive grace, or deserve it "of congruity," because "not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of Faith in Jesus Christ, and have the nature of sin;" the other, of "Works which are the Fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification ; " declaring that though the necessary results of a lively faith, and pleasing to God in Christ, they "cannot put away our sins"

Thus have three distinct Articles been expended on this subject.

But the Framers of our Confession were not content with this. They regarded the doctrine of "Justification, by which, of unjust, we are made just before God," as "the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion" * The history of all the subtle devices by which Satan had in every age endeavored to undermine that "rock," was before them. The war, then at its height, with the corruptions of Romanism; the Council of Trent, then sitting and fulminating its Anathemas against the holders of the truth, secured their due remembrance of that history. It taught them the necessity of greater minuteness of declaration than was contained in the Articles above named. Homilies were therefore used for larger exposition. The Article on Justification refers the reader for a fuller view of the faith of the Church, to "the Homily of Justification" The Homily

' Homily of Salvation, Part ii.

entitled "On the salvation of mankind, by only Christ our Saviour" is, by universal acknowledgment, the one referred to; though it is not known by what means, or when, its title was changed from that given in the Article. But this is not the only homiletic exposition bearing upon the subject. The doctrine of the Church on Faith, and also on Good Works, is essentially connected with that of Justification. We have therefore a standard Homily on each ; so that there are three Homilies or Sermons, each in three parts, all asserted in our 35th Article to "contain a godly and wholesome doctrine;" "all of which together compose and make a treatise on Justification, and all of which are to be referred to for explaining the sense of the Church in her Article on that subject." *

Now, with these combined and minute expositions, so remarkable for precision of language and perspicuity of illustration, formed too with particular reference

* Ridley's Life of Ridley, p. 344.

to the very points on which errors have arisen, it would seem impossible that the sense of the Church should be mistaken.

But a recollection of the particular models and men, most referred to in the construction of these formularies, as well as of those particular corruptions of the truth against which they were aimed, if it may not make their meaning more obvious, will at least render it more emphatic and impressive.

Of the Articles which were framed in 1551, and which, on the subjects involved in this discourse, the changes in the reign of Elizabeth did not materially affect, "Archbishop Cranmer must be considered as the sole compiler." * Of the first book of Homilies, with which chiefly we are concerned in this Charge, the same Reformer is believed, by the best authorities, to have been the chief composer, as was Jewell of the second. But the Homilies on Salvation, Faith, and Good works, to which the Article of Justification is espe-

* Soamc's Hist, of the Reform., vol. iii. C48. Strype's Life of Cranmer, b. ii., c. xxvii.

cially related, are without a question ascribed exclusively to Cranmer.* Now it is well known that a frequent correspondence on the most important matters ot the Reformation was kept up between him and the continental Divines, especially Melancthon. The latter was particularly consulted on the subject of the Articles, and is known to have urged, for a model, the Confession of Augsburgh.t Hence the Articles of the English Church "chiefly derive their origin fromLutheran Formularies. Some of them are drawn from the Confession of Augsburgh, others from that of Wittemberg, known as the Saxon Confession, and professedly drawn up in strict accordance with that of Augsburgh. "t " The truth of the matter is, (says Le Bas,) that the English Reformers framed their Articles not as a wall of

* Tomline's Elements of Theology, ii, 535. Soame, Hi. OX Todd on the 39 Ait. pref. p. xi. Strype's Cranmer, b. ii. c. in.

t Strype's Life of Cranmer, b. iii., c. xxiv. A son of Justus Jonas, the friend and fellow-labourer of Luther and Melancthon, resided with Cranmer and seems to have beer his chief medium of correspondence with the Lutherans. -— Laicrcnccs Bampton Lectures, p. 210.

t Soame, iii. p. 652.

partition between Protestant and Protestant, but as a bulwark against the perversions with which the scholastic theology had disfigured the simplicity of the Gospel. — The only key therefore which can readily unlock the true sense of the Articles, is a knowledge, not of the opinions which afterwards rent the Protestant community into fragments, — but of the papal doctrines against which the main struggle of the reformers had been carried on from the very first/' "If any person could but sit down to the perusal of our Articles, in utter forgetfulness that Europe had ever been seriously agi. tated by the Calvinistic dispute, and with nothing in his mind but the controversy between Reformed Churches and the Church of Rome, he would then clearly perceive that those Articles were constructed for the most part on the Lutheran system and principally as a rampart against the almost unchristian theology of the schools."* This was emphatically

* Le Bas' Life of Cranmer. See also Lawrence's Bampton Lectures; Blunt' s Reformation in England.

the case as respects the doctrine now under consideration. Thus we have two very important auxiliaries, in case of any difficulty in understanding the precise meaning of our standard compositions on this subject. The writings of Luther and his associates, especially of Melancthon, together with the Augsburgh Confession, which the latter composed, from materials prepared by Luther, are one of them. The doctrines of the Church of Rome, on the subject of Justification, are another, and not the least to be relied on. From the first, we may draw some collateral aid in this discourse ; the latter we now proceed to employ.

What then was that doctrine of Romanism, on Justification, against which our Church protested? In the authentic summary of the decrees of the Council of Trent, it is declared that we are justified, not by a Righteousness accounted or imputed to us, and which otherwise would not be ours ; but by a Righteousness, "inherent in us;" and because inherent, a righteousness which is distinctly called, by the Council, "our own proper Righteousness" and with the works of which, the justified "can satisfy the divine law" and "truly merit the attainment of eternal life" But this inherent righteousness, though thus "our own proper righteousness ," "is not so determined to be our own, as if it were from ourselves," but is also "the Righteousness of God, because it is infused into us of God, through the Merit of Christ"*

Thus "our own proper Righteousness" inwrought and inherent in us, is the meritorious ground of our Justification before God, according to the Church of Home. It is wrought in us indeed by God, and in that sense is not our's, but His. But quite as much was the righteousness of Adam, before he fell, wrought in him of God. Nevertheless, had Adam continued unfallen, he would have been justified in the strictest sense, by works, by his own merits and righteousness. To

* Concil. Trident, sess. vi. c. 16.

speak therefore of "our own proper righteousness" as being God's, because He made it, does not in the least protect the Church of Rome from the charge of maintaining that our own righteousness or merit is, in the strictest sense, the efficient cause of our Justification before God.* Hence the great dividing line between Protestants and Romanists, on this subject, is thus stated by Bishop Hall: " The Papists make this inherent righteousness the cause of our Justification ; the Protestants, the effect thereof. The Protestants require it as a companion, the Papists, as the parent of Justification, "t To the same purpose speaks Archbishop Usher: "The question between us and Rome is not whether we are justified by faith, but whether we are justified at all. There are two graces ; righteousness imputed, which implies forgiveness of sins ; and righteousness inherent, which is the grace of sanctification

* For furtiier evidence see citations in Usher's Answer to e. Jesuit, c. xii. \ Works, 8 vo. ix. p. 46-7.

begun. They utterly deny that there is any righteousness, but righteousness inherent. They say forgiveness of sins is nothing but sanctifi cation. A new doctrine, never heard of in the Church of God till these last days, till the spawn of the Jesuits devised it."* Let us hear the judicious Hooker on this head. — "Wherein (he says) do we disagree?" [with Romanists.] " We disagree about the nature and essence of the medicine whereby Christ cureth our disease ; about the manner of applying it; about the number and power of means which God requireth in us for the effectual applying thereof to our souls' comfort. When they are required to shew what the righteousness is whereby a Christian man is justified, they answer that it is a divine spiritual quality ; which is termed Grace. This they will have to be applied by infusion; that as the body is warm by the heat which is in the body, so the soul might be righteous by inherent Grace ;

* Uslier's Sermona on Justification.

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which Grace they make capable of increase, that as the body may be made more and more warm, so the soul, more and more justified, according as Grace should be augmented ; the augmentation whereof is merited by good works, as good works are made meritorious by it. Wherefore the first receipt of Grace, in their divinity, is the first Justification; the increase thereof, the second Justification. If they work more and more, Grace doth more increase, and they are more and more justified." This is Hooker's account of what he calls " the mystery of the man of sin" and "Babylon " and which, he prays, may fall before God's truth, "as Dagon before the Ark."# This it was which, in the great revolt of the 16th century, against the usurpations of Popery, combined the whole Protestant host in one array of indignant opposition. "This (says Usher) is that doctrine of merits, which from our very hearts we detest and abhor, as utterly

* Discourse of Justification, § v.

repugnant to the truth of God and the common sense of all true-hearted christians."* This was the head of Antichrist against which the Articles and Homilies of the Reformed Church of England so earnestly levelled their solemn protests, and repeated declarations ; this explains their emphatic earnestness whenever the subject of human merit or of the righteousness of God, by faith, occurs, and is to be borne prominently in mind, by all who would take the full force of our doctrinal standards on the subject before us. Here it is well to observe, distinctly, that what aroused the solemn protest of the reformed churches of Europe, was not that the Church of Rome, in her doctrine of justification, had gone so far as professedly to renounce all reliance upon the merits of Christ, and substitute the inherent righteousness and merits of the sinner, without a pretence of any thing better. This furthest reach of heresy she did not venture. The merits of

* Answer to a Jesuit, c. vii-

Christ and the office of faith were professedly retained. And while she did declare that "the righteous can satisfy the divine law by their oivn works, and may truly merit the attainment of eternal life ;y and that "our own proper Ilighteousness, inherent in us, is that for ivhich we are Justified" she took care to qualify her language by saying that the works by which the righteous satisfy the divine law " are performed in God;" that our inherent and justifying righteousness, "is the Ilighteousness of God, because infused into us by God, through the merit of Christ " and that it should be "far from a christian that he should either trust or glory in himself and not in the Lord ; whose goodness to all men is so great, that what are truly His gifts, he willeth to be estimated as their merits."*

Here indeed were specious words, for the deceiving of the unwary ; but regarded by the Reformers as a mere drapery

* Trident, sess. vi., c. 16, p. 54.

of pious form cast over a foul body, to hide its more odious deformities. It was the single pretence of the sinner's own merits or righteousness ', entering into the justification of his soul before God, that kindled their united and stern hostility. To tell them that only a part of justification was assigned to the sinner's own merit, and the rest to Christ, was of no avail to turn the edge of their remonstrance. It was enough that human merit, in any degree, however obtained, was permitted to come into the least connection with justification. "To say that a man 'for his meritorious works receiveth, through God's grace, the bliss of everlasting happiness/ is to speak flat contrarieties, and to conjoin those things that cannot possibly be coupled together. For that conclusion of Bernard is most certain : ' There is no place for grace to enter, where merit hath taken possession/ because it is founded upon the Apostle's determination : 'If it be ofjrace, it is no more of works ; else were grace no more grace' "* Such was the doctrine of the Reformation every where. The professed union of the merit of man with that of Christ ; this pretended sewing of the new garment of the Saviour's righteousness to the old polluted thing of the sinner's own, they unitedly regarded as a virtual rejection of all the saving benefits of the Saviour's love, and a perfect exclusion of grace from the way of salvation. In their view, it was a direct and sacrilegious reversing of the method of St. Paul. He said " not having on mine own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness ivhich is of God, through faith" The Church of Rome said, on the contrary, not having on the righteousness ivhich is through the faith of Christ, but that ivhich is "our own proper righteousness," inherent in us, by which we truly merit eternal life, and which is the righteousness of God, only because it is wrought in us by God.

• Usher's Answer to a Jesuit, c. xii., p. 472.

Thus was " the cross of Christ of none effect." For says Hooker to this very point, "whether they speak of the first or second Justification, they make the essence to be of a divine quality inherent; they make it righteousness which is in us. If it be in us, then it is ours, as our souls are ours, though we have them from God and can hold them no longer than pleaseth him ; for if he withdraw the breath of our nostrils we fall to dust, but the righteousness wherein we must be found if we will be justified, is not our own ; therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality."*

And here, let it be well observed, that this doctrine of Justification by inherent righteousness, and of Justification increased by the good works proceeding therefrom, and increasing more and more as good works increase ; this was regarded, not as only a part of Popery ; as one of the numerous deformities of that system, which our Church does not scruple

* Discourse of Justification, $»i.

to treat with the name of Antichrist ;* not a mere companion of her purgatory, and her indulgences, and her imageworship, and such like ; but by the great lights of the Protestant world in the days of the Reformation, it was considered as the great sin, the parent sin, the head and heart of Antichrist, out of which all her unholy desires and bad counsels and unjust works did proceed. Thus, in the sight of Luther, the doctrine of Justification was the one great point to be made for Reformation of the Church from the corruptions of Romanism: "the Article by zvhich a Church must stand or fall" i Calvin maintained " that if this one head might be yielded safe and entire, it would not pay the cost to make any great quarrel about other matters in controversy with Rome."! Our own Homily, on this subject, is of the same mind as to the prime offence of that Church, declaring that

* Homily of Good Works, Part iii.

t See Luther's extraordinary assertion of this Doctrine, in Scott's Continuation of Milner's Church History, vol. 1, p. 98.

|Bp. Hall's Polemical Works, 8vo., p. 44-5.

to be " the greatest arrogancy and presumption of man that Antichrist could set up against God, to affirm that a man might by his own works take away and purge his own sins, and so justify himself."* And in proof of all this, Hooker gives us the legitimate pedigree of this " mother of abominations," showing how the various generations, in the house and lineage of Romish corruptions, have all their parentage here, and without this would never have been born. He begins with the tivo Justifications of Popish divinity— the fir sty taking place on the first infusion of inherent righteousness ; the second, on the increase thereof in good works. Then he says that, as this Justification may be increased by good works, diminished by venial sins, lost by mortal sins, so that it is needful in one case to repair it, in the other to recover it; "the infusion of grace hath her sundry after-meals ; for the which cause they make many ways to apply the infusion of

* Homily on Salvation, Part ii.

grace. It is applied to infants through Baptism, without either Faith or Works. It is applied to infidels and wicked men in the first Justification, through Baptism without works, yet not without faith ; and it taketh away both sins actual and original together, with all whatsoever punishment temporal or eternal, thereby deserved. To such as diminish it by venial sins, it is applied by Holy Water, Ave Marias, Crossings, Papal Salutations, and such like, which serve for reparations of grace decayed. To such as have lost it, through mortal sin, it is applied by the sacrament, as they term it, of Penance, which sacrament hath force to confer grace anew," yet it only changes the punishment of sin from eternal to temporal here in this life, if there be time ; but if not, to temporal punishment hereafter, "except it be lightened by Masses, Works of Charity, Pilgrimages, Fasts and such like, or else shortened by pardon of term, or by plenary pardon quite removed and taken away. This is the mystery of the m

Man of Sin. This maze the Church of Rome doth cause her followers to tread, when they ask her the way to Justifi cation."* This, we add, is the Babel of wood, hay and stubble, whose top reaches unto heaven, and invokes the anger of God against the builders who have so set at nought " the head-stone of the corner," and despised " the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets."

But stronger still is the author of our Homily and Article on Justification. No where does Archbishop Cranmer exclaim with such indignation against Popery as when he remembers her doctrine of human merit. PI ear his solemn condemnation! "O heinous blasphemy and most detestable injury against Christ ! O wicked abomination in the temple of God ! O pride intolerable of Antichrist, and most manifest token of the son of perdition, extolling himself above God, and with Lucifer, exalting his seat and power above the throne of God ! For he that

• Discourse of Justification, $ v.

taketh upon him to supply that things which he pretendeth to be imperfect in Christ, must needs make himself above Christ, and so very Antichrist. For what is this else, but to be against Christ, and to bring him into contempt? As one, that either for lack of charity would not, or for lack of power, could not, with all his blood-shedding and death, clearly deliver his faithful and give them remission of sins ; but that the full perfection thereof must be at the hands of Antichrist of Rome and his ministers."*

But, my Brethren, it is not for any attack upon the Church of Rome, that I have recalled these things ; but because it is salutary sometimes to renew the impressions they are so calculated to make as to the main point of evangelical truth for which our fathers of the Reformation contended, and thus to revive our sense of responsibility for the safe keeping of the truth which they were made the hon-

* Cranmer's Book on the Sacrament. 3 oured instruments of rescuing from the devices of Satan,

What the human heart under the instigation of the great Adversary of the Gospel, has once done against the truth, it can do again. Justification by inherent righteousness or human merit, was no invention of Romanism. It is indeed the peculiar distinction of the Church of Rome, to be the first and only one of the great sections of Christendom that has embodied into formally professed declarations, the fiction of such a righteousness ; and especially, that has pronounced anathema upon whoever should profess the opposite;* but in this as in all her other corruptions of religion, "the spirit of Romanism is substantially the spirit of Human Nature. Its errors will be found