“The Parsonage, Werrington, Peterborough, July 7, 1875.
“My dear Sir,—In your comment on a former letter of mine you acknowledged (a) that the Gospel which I endeavour to [[235]]preach—Be persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives—is eternally true and salutary, but, because I have joined with you in condemning a doctrine opposed to this, you have rather hastily assumed (b) that I have ‘eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh Article of the Church of England,’ to which Article I have given, and not withdrawn, my public assent.
“You have of course taken for granted (c) that the Eleventh Article teaches the ‘pleasant and supremely false gospel’—Let His life be instead of your lives; you may be saved by faith without righteousness. But does it?
“The Article says:
“ ‘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 or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.’
“This teaches, in simple English enough, that there is but one righteousness in God’s sight—the righteousness of Christ and that this righteousness becomes ours by faith: so that faith alone sets us right with God.
“Before the court of public opinion (d) men may be accounted righteous for ‘works and deservings’ of their own, like those which were so eminently satisfactory to the Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray; but before God, whose judgments are true, the only merit for which any man is accounted righteous is the merit of Jesus Christ. The Publican ‘went down to his house justified’ because of that faith in God which led him to hunger and thirst after a righteousness higher than his own, and in due time to be filled with it.
“A man is ‘justified by faith only’ because by faith only he accepts the righteousness of Christ, not instead of, but for, (e) his own. He is therefore accounted righteous before God [[236]]because, in His sight, who sees the end from the beginning, he is righteous.
“But, while the righteousness is verily his own, he confesses that, in the deepest sense, it is not his own, for the source and efficient cause of it is Christ—the merit is His.
“From all this it will appear that what I repudiate is not the Eleventh Article, but the eternally false and damnatory doctrine which has seemed to you to be set forth therein.
“I cannot think that the Article was intended to teach that a man can be accounted righteous before God without righteousness—that faith will serve as a substitute for it, since I read in the Homily in which the doctrine of the Article is ‘more largely expressed’ such words as the following:
“ ‘This true Christian faith neither any devil hath, nor yet any man who, in the outward profession of his mouth, and his outward receiving of the Sacraments, in coming to the Church, and in all other outward appearances, seemeth to be a Christian man, and yet in his living and deeds sheweth the contrary.’
“I am, my dear Sir,
“Very faithfully yours,“John Ruskin, Esq. “Edward Z. Lyttel.”
(a): My correspondent cannot quit himself of the idea that I am his antagonist. If he preaches what is true, I say so—if what is false, I say so. I congratulate him in the one case, and am sorry for him in the other; but have nothing to ‘acknowledge’ in either case.
(b) and (c): “You have rather hastily assumed.” “You have of course taken for granted.” Compare Mr. Headlam’s “I fancy that, on consideration, you would like to withdraw,” p. 176. These clerical gentlemen, who habitually and necessarily write without consideration, and as habitually and necessarily ‘take for granted’ the entire grounds of their profession, are quaintly [[237]]unable to enter into the mind of a man who for twenty years has not written a word without testing it syllable by syllable; nor taken for granted one principle or fact, in art, science, or history,—having somewhat wide work in all three.
In the present case, I am very sorry to have to tell my correspondent that the last thing I should ‘take for granted’ would be the completeness and accuracy of his own account of himself. What his words actually mean, my twenty years’ study of English enables me to tell him with authority;—but what he means by them he only knows!
(d): Who is talking of public opinion? Does my correspondent suppose that in any—even among the rudest or most ignorant—debates on this subject, ‘righteousness’ was ever supposed to mean worldly credit? The question is, was, and will be—simply how men escape being damned—if they do.
(e): It is no part of my duty in Fors to occupy myself in exposing the verbal, or probing the mental, sophistries by which the aerial ingenuity of divines may guide itself in gossamer over the inconveniently furrowed ground of religious dogma. There are briefly two, and two only, forms of possible Christian, Pagan, or any other gospel, or ‘good message’: one, that men are saved by themselves doing what is right; and the other that they are saved by believing that somebody else did right instead of them. The first of these Gospels is eternally true, and holy; the other eternally false, damnable, and damning. Which of them Mr. Lyttel preaches, matters much to himself and his parishioners; but, to the world, considerably less than he seems to suppose. That the Eleventh Article of the Church of England teaches the second, “in very simple English,” is as certain as Johnson’s dictionary can make it: and that it (the said sweet message) is currently preached with unction, and received with gladness, over the whole of England, and of Protestant France, Switzerland, and Italy, by the most active and influential members of the Protestant [[238]]church, I take upon me to assert, on the grounds of an experience gained, (while Mr. Lyttel was, by his own account, “occupied from day to day in stuffy rooms among ignorant and immoral people”) by the carefullest study of the best Protestant divines, and the hearing of sermons by the most eloquent pastors, in every important city of evangelical Europe. Finally, I must beg Mr. Lyttel to observe that I only printed his first letter because it expressed some degree of doubt, and discomfort, which I hoped to relieve. His succeeding letters show him, on the contrary, to be supremely confident and comfortable;—in which enviable state I must here take leave of him. For my challenge (as yet unanswered) was to his Bishop, and not to the clergy of the diocese; nor, if it had been, has Mr. Lyttel offered any evidence that he is their accredited champion.
I think I do Mr. Lyttel more justice by printing his kind and graceful last words on my impatient comments, than I should by disarranging my types and altering my letter; which, indeed, I have no time to do.
“My dear Sir,—It is both my fault and misfortune that you have taken parts of my letters ‘clean from the purpose of the words themselves;’ and I write at once in hope that you may be able to erase two unserviceable paragraphs, which my want of simple English, or some other misdirection, has produced.
1. If you will allow me to substitute the word ‘said’ for ‘acknowledged’ in my letter, it will save paragraph (a).
2. Then I should like to assure you that the feeling which called forth my first letter also produced the rest, and no one who knows me well would think of attributing to me ‘supreme [[239]]confidence and comfort.’ Moreover, I have throughout spoken for myself alone, and have not for one moment pretended to be the ‘accredited champion’ of any one. So that if you can spare the latter part of paragraph (e), beginning with ‘Finally,’ I think neither you nor I would lose anything by the omission.
Other parts of your comment I am sorry for, but I have not the same reason to object to them as I have to those I have specified.
“I am most faithfully yours,
“Edward Z. Lyttel.”
Some slips of newspaper have been forwarded to me, containing an abstract of a sermon by the Bishop of Manchester, in which some reference was made to ‘Fors’: but of course I cannot take any notice of expressions thus accidentally conveyed to me, and probably reported with inaccuracy. The postscript to the following interesting letter of Mr. Sillar’s may perhaps receive from the Bishop of Manchester more honourable attention:—