"Nothing Between" / The Special Doctrines Vindicated at the Reformation as Bearing upon the Spiritual Life of the Church

“The Special Doctrines Vindicated at the Reformation as bearing upon the Spiritual Life of the Church.”
A PAPER
READ AT THE FIRST CONFERENCE OF THE CRAVEN EVANGELICAL UNION HELD IN LEEDS
UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF RIPON,
MARCH 22nd, 1881,
BY THE
REV. EDWARD HOARE, M.A.,
Vicar of Holy Trinity, Tonbridge Wells, and Hon. Canon of Canterbury.
London: Hatchards, Piccadilly. Leeds: R. Jackson, 16, Commercial Street.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
It is a glorious subject that your Committee has entrusted to my care, and I consider it no small privilege to have been led by your invitation to study it. At the same time it is not without its almost overwhelming difficulty, for our conflict with Rome extends along the whole line of truth, so that almost the whole of Christianity is included in the special doctrines of the Reformation. The struggle is between Christianity paganized, and Christianity pure; and the real conflict lies between the whole system of the one, and the whole system of the other. It reminds me of a conversation between a Protestant clergyman and a Romish priest. The clergyman, in order to illustrate the spirit in which Christian brethren should hide each other’s faults, told a story of an artist who, in painting the Emperor of Russia, put the finger to the face in the attitude of thoughtfulness, and so concealed an unsightly blemish, on which the Romish priest said, “And why do you not do the same towards us?” To which his friend replied, “We would if we could; but we cannot; for in your case it is blot all over.” So the taint is all over the teaching of Rome.
Yet there is one class of subjects in which our conflict with Rome is more especially prominent, viz., that which concerns the application of the great salvation to the individual. That salvation may be compared to a chain reaching down from heaven. Respecting the higher links, such as the nature of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of the Son, the humanity and the purpose of his death, there is no direct collision between us; but when we come down to the last link of all, the application of the whole work to the sinner, it is then that the real battle rages. The great struggle of the Reformation was a struggle between the divine application and the human; between the simple principle of gift as revealed by God himself, and the man-made system of merit as constructed by the Church of Rome.