Mr Marshall was too much at home in the White Bear to need announcement. He tapped softly at the parlour door, and opened it. “Mrs Gertrude, I don’t care who saith it! it’s a wicked heresy!” were the first words he heard, in the blunt tones of Temperance Murthwaite. “And it’s not true to say we Puritans teach any such thing. It’s a calumny and a heresy both.—Mr Marshall, I’m fain to see you. Do, pray you, tell this young gentlewoman we hold not that if a man but believe in the merits of Christ, he may live as he list, and look for Heaven in the end. ’Tis a calumny, I say—a wicked calumny!”
“A calumny as old as the Apostle James, Mrs Murthwaite,” answered Mr Marshall, as he turned from greeting Lady Louvaine. “Some in those days had, it should seem, been abusing Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith, and said that a man need but believe, and not live according thereto.”
“Why, Mr Marshall, I have heard you to say a man may believe and be saved!” cried Gertrude, who sat on a velvet-covered stool beside Lady Louvaine, having run in from the next door without hood or scarf.
“That I doubt not, Mrs Gertrude, and yet may, since you have heard Paul, and John, and the Lord Himself, to say it in the Word. But, believe what? Believe that a man once lived whose name was Jesus, and who was marvellous good, and wrought many great works? That faith shall not save you,—no more than believing in King James’s Majesty should. It is a living faith you must have, and that is a dead.”
“Mr Marshall, I thought Puritans made much of the doctrine of imputed righteousness?”
“You thought truth, Mrs Gertrude.”
“Well, but what is that save believing that Christ hath wrought all goodness for me, and I need not work any goodness for mine own salvation? Look you, there is no need, if all be done.”
“No need of what? No need that you should attempt to do what you never can do, or no need that you should show your love to Him that did it for you at the cost of His own life?”
“Well!” said Gertrude in a slow, deprecating tone, “but—”
“Mrs Gertrude, you mix up two things which be utterly separate, and which cannot mix, no more than oil and water. The man whom Christ hath saved, it is most true, hath no need to save himself. But hath he no need to save others? hath he no need to honour Christ? hath he no need to show forth to angels and to men his unity with Christ, the oneness of his will with His, the love wherewith Christ’s love constraineth him? You mix up justification and sanctification, as though they were but one. Justification is the washing of the soul from sin; sanctification is the dressing of the soul for Heaven. Sanctification is not a thing you do for God; ’tis a thing God doth in you. There is need for it, not that it should justify you before His tribunal, but that it should make you meet for His presence-chamber. It were not fit that you should enter the King’s presence, though cleansed, yet dressed in your old soiled clothes. But you make a third minglement of things separate, when you bring in imputed righteousness. The righteousness of Christ imputed unto us justifieth us before the bar of God. It payeth our debt, it washeth our stains, it unlocketh our fetters. But this is not sanctification. Justification was wrought by Christ for us; sanctification is wrought by the Holy Ghost in us. Justification was completed on Calvary; sanctification is not finished so long as we be in this life, Justification is quick and lively; the moment my faith toucheth the work of Christ for me, that moment am I fully justified, and for ever. Sanctification is slow, and groweth like a plant. I am as entirely justified as I ever shall be, but I am not as sanctified as I ever shall be. I look to be more and more sanctified—‘to grow up unto Him in all things,’ to be like Him, to be purified even as He is pure. I pray you make no mingle-mangle of things that do so differ in themselves, though ’tis true they come all of one source—the union and the unity of Christ and the believer.”