London: Hatchards, Piccadilly.
Leeds: R. Jackson, 16, Commercial Street.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
THE SPECIAL DOCTRINES OF THE REFORMATION AS BEARING UPON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHURCH.
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.
To illustrate this point let us study four particulars, which may be likened to the four corner stones of our citadel, and consider them in the order in which they stand in our Articles; the sufficiency of the Scriptures; justification by faith; the spirituality of the sacraments; and the final completeness of the one propitiation.
(1.)—The Sufficiency of the Scriptures.
It is the fashion to say that the Articles were intended as a compromise; but that nothing can be further from the fact may, I believe, be proved without the slightest difficulty. The Council of Trent met in the year A.D. 1546, and then drew up some of its most stringent dogmatical decrees. It was in direct opposition to these decrees that the Articles were framed six years afterwards, as containing the clear, well-considered, and uncompromising testimony of the Church of England. This may be proved even by their omissions, for there are some things which we might wish to find in them, but which have been passed over in silence, for the simple reason that respecting them there was no collision with Rome. Such, e.g., is the inspiration of the Scriptures. If we were called to draw up the Article now, the subject of inspiration would be the first to be considered. But no error had been taught by Rome respecting it, and therefore it did not appear on the battlefield, and was not mentioned in the Article. The Article referred only to the new position defined by Rome in the Council of Trent, and that new position involved the insufficiency of the Scriptures. Rome taught two errors, first, that there are two parallel lines of truth, “written Scripture and unwritten tradition,” and declared that both must be received “with equal sense of piety and reverence”; and second, Rome placed the Church as an interpreter between the Scriptures and the individual, and decreed that no one should “dare to interpret the Scriptures except according as the holy Mother Church has held, and still holds, and also according to the unanimous consent of the fathers, even though their interpretations should never at any time have been brought to light.” It was in direct opposition to this decree that the Sixth Article on the Sufficiency of the Scriptures was drawn up six years afterwards. It declared Scripture to be sufficiently full and sufficiently clear: sufficiently full, for it contains all things necessary to salvation without any supplement from tradition; and sufficiently clear, for, without the aid of either Church authority or the unanimous consent of the fathers, it speaks right home to the heart and understanding, so that whatever “is not read therein, or may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the faith.”
(2.)—Justification by Faith Alone.
“How should man be justified with God?” has always been the first grand question for an awakened conscience. Thus those who know what it is to be justified through faith, will not be surprised at Luther’s memorable statement that the doctrine of justification by faith is the test of a standing or falling church, for we all know that in the case of individuals it is the turning point between a life of fear and a life of peace; may I not add between even death and life itself? Now on this point we are in direct collision with Rome. The conflict turns upon a single word. How can it be of such overwhelming importance, some will say, if all turns upon a word? But one word may make all the difference between truth and error, between peace and anxiety. There was a time when the whole controversy respecting the divinity of our Blessed Saviour turned on a letter, the little letter ι in the word Ὁμοιουσία, which made all the difference between oneness and resemblance. The turning point in this controversy is the one word “only.” In 1546 Rome decreed “if any man shall say that men are justified by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ only, or the remission of our sins only, and not by grace and charity, which is infused it their hearts by the Holy Scriptures, and is inherent in them, let him be anathema.” That anathema the Church of England boldly challenged when in A.D. 1552 she drew up her Articles; and with distinct reforms to the “only” of Rome’s decree, she said exactly that on which Rome had pronounced her anathema, “we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ,” and that “we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine.” Such an Article does not look like a compromise. It was the direct and open acceptance of Rome’s challenge. “If any man says only, let him be anathema,” says Rome. We say it, says the Church of England, for we know it to be the truth of God, and, knowing that, we defy your curse.