If it is said that faith does not, of itself, produce charity, yet is always accompanied by charity, it must be, then, that faith gives one a title to sanctifying grace and charity, so that, whoever makes an act of faith, receives an additional gift which makes him holy. In that case, every one who was once justified would be exempt from mortal sin while his faith lasts. If the first act of faith justifies once for all, then the believer can never again commit a mortal sin. If it justifies only for the time being, then while it lasts it preserves the soul from sin, and whoever sins proves that he has already lost faith. This is contrary to reason and experience. It is certain that men who have had faith and grace have afterwards sinned mortally. Therefore, faith does not, by its first act, bring with it an inamissible gift of charity. It is also certain that men do not always lose faith when they sin, or sin against faith first before they sin against charity. Many a man who believes firmly in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Saviour of men, and who hopes for salvation through his merits, commits mortal sin, and even lives for years in the habitual state of sin. It may be said that such persons have no saving faith, never did have it, or have lost it. But what is saving faith? What is the differentia of that faith which really justifies? It is evident enough that a certain kind of habitual belief in Jesus Christ and his doctrines, accompanied by a desire and hope of being saved through his merits and mercy, does frequently exist in persons who are living in habitual sin. If this is not genuine faith, or saving faith, there must be in saving faith some additional quality which distinguishes it from that faith which produces no fruits of sanctity. Is it made saving by its quality of supernaturalness, or as proceeding from the grace of the Holy Spirit? This is the same as saying that supernatural faith, as such, or because it is a grace of the Holy Spirit, necessarily brings with it sanctification. This is not so. The Holy Spirit may and does give men a firm belief in revealed truths, and a hope of obtaining mercy from God through Christ before they are actually forgiven and justified. This remains in them, often, after they have lost sanctifying grace by sin, as a disposition which facilitates their return to God. It does not, however, per se, produce the fruits of sanctity, or implant the principle of love, from which these fruits proceed, which is the very principle of union with God, and, therefore, the formal cause of justification. That quality which faith must have, in order to render it justifying faith, cannot be, therefore, anything else but charity, or the love of God, which makes it fides formata.
We are convinced that a great number of Protestants substantially hold the doctrines we have laid down. They believe that man has free-will; is bound to believe and obey the doctrine and precepts of Jesus Christ; is made the friend of God by sanctifying grace brought into the active exercise of Christian virtue by his own voluntary cooperation; is placed here to work out his own salvation; will receive heaven as a reward if he serves God faithfully, and will be damned if he lives in sin. Even those who hold the Calvinistic tradition either modify its tenets or hold more sound and rational opinions in juxtaposition with them, which really control their sentiments and conduct. It would be easy to show this by a multitude of citations. So far as metaphysical opinions and technical statements are concerned, we judge every work and every formula of doctrine by its obvious, objective sense, and accept every individual writer's statements respecting his own opinions. But in regard to the real, genuine ideas which form the true intellectual and spiritual life of men, we take the liberty of judging them more by the language they use in common life, by their indirect statements, and by the general spirit and scope of what they say and write, when not immediately intent upon stating their technical formulas, than from their technical formulas themselves. We have heard it said of the illustrious President Dwight that his real sentiments and conduct toward his fellow-men indicated a belief in the goodness of all men, whereas he held theoretically that all men were totally depraved. We have no doubt that President Edwards always acted on the belief that his children possessed the self-determining power of the will, against which he wrote so acutely, or that Bishop Berkeley was persuaded of the reality of the external world. Therefore, we still think that a large number of non-Catholics are more Catholic in their belief than they are aware, and that their rejection of what they suppose to be Catholic doctrine is frequently only a rejection of opinions attributed by mistake to the Catholic Church. In regard to this special question of justification, it is our opinion that the objection prevalent among the more orthodox Protestants is based on the supposition that the Catholic doctrine ascribes a justifying and saving efficacy to a mere intellectual submission to church-authority, and a mere external compliance with its precepts, without reference to the interior disposition of the soul toward God, or recognition of the merits of Christ as the source of all the supernatural excellence and value of good works. It is believed that the Catholic substitutes the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the merits of the saints, and his own merits, as an independent ground of justification, in lieu of the merits of Christ. Also, that merit is ascribed to mere external works, such as fasting, hearing mass, and performing ceremonial rites or penitential labors, on account of the mere physical nature and extent of the works done, without reference to the motive from which they proceed. The vague and timorous pastoral of the late Synod of Lambeth is explicit and bold only on this one point, of condemning the substitution of the Virgin Mary as a mediator in the place of Christ. For this reason, we think that the simple statement of the genuine Catholic doctrine is the surest way to remove objections against it, and that most of these objections fall away of themselves as soon as the misapprehensions of the doctrine are removed. This is no private fancy of our own, but the judgment of some of the ablest theologians of the world, Protestant as well as Catholic. Leibnitz, the greatest philosopher among Protestants, found nothing to object to in the doctrines of the Council of Trent respecting justification. Dr. Pusey, one of the most learned men of the age in scriptural and patristic theology, has publicly expressed his adhesion to the same doctrine. It is easy to ridicule that movement in the Anglican church, of which he is the head; but it would be much more sensible for those who do it to study his elaborate and profound writings, and much more difficult to refute them. Protestantism has produced nothing, at least in the English language, which can approach the great works of the High-Church divines of England. These works contain the elements of all the theology of Catholic doctrine respecting the justification of man, in the ascetical, spiritual, and sacramental aspects of the question. All the life of Protestantism in England is centred in the Catholicizing movement. On the continent, that orthodox Protestantism which is derived from Luther and Calvin is a nullity. The real issue of the world, as we have repeatedly said, is about the fundamental principles of Christianity. The question between Catholics and those Protestants who hold with us these fundamental principles is not, as many of them suppose, respecting the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, but respecting the deductions to be derived from them and their due development. That God is revealed in Jesus Christ, as our sovereign teacher, our sovereign Lord, our sovereign redeemer and mediator, the sovereign author of our spiritual and everlasting life; that we are bound to render him the absolute homage of our faith and our obedience, is admitted by all. The only question is, by what method or means can we ascertain with certainty the exact and complete sense of the doctrine he has commanded us to believe and the law he has commanded us to keep. This is a question to be decided by evidence. The sooner the prohibentia in the way of examining carefully and candidly this evidence are removed the better. This is the only point we have been aiming at—the only result we desire to reach. We have endeavored to remove some of the obstacles in the way of a fair hearing of the claims of the Catholic Church, arising from à priori conceptions of her doctrine, which are thought to authorize a foregone conclusion against them. We have also presented some of the reasons specially urgent at present, why the basis for unity which the Catholic Church offers should be carefully and studiously considered by all those who desire the union and welfare of Christendom, its victory over every form of anti-Christianity, and its universal extension in the world. The fides formata, or faith working by love, which we have set forth as the vital principle of spiritual life in the individual, must also be the principle of unity in the Christian society. Whoever has faith implicitly believes all those revealed doctrines which, without his own fault, he does not explicitly know to be revealed. Whoever has love has the principle of obedience to those laws whose existence he does not know. Therefore, we say that whoever has fides formata is justified, and, of course, spiritually united to the true church. But whoever remains culpably in error respecting essential doctrines and precepts, or refuses to believe and obey what is fairly presented to him as the revealed truth and will of Jesus Christ, cannot have fides formata. It is evident, therefore, that we are all bound to strive after as great a certitude as possible respecting the important question at issue between the Catholic Church and Protestants.
Translated From The French.
The Story Of A Conscript.
VI.
The mairie of Phalsbourg, that Thursday morning, January 15th, 1813, during the drawing for the conscription, was a sight to be seen. To-day it is bad enough to be drawn, to be forced to leave parents, friends, home, one's goods and one's fields, to go and learn—God knows where "One! two! one! two! halt! eyes left! eyes right! front! carry arms!" etc. etc. Yes, this is all bad enough, but there is a chance of returning. One can say, with something like confidence: "In seven years I will see my old nest again, and my parents, and perhaps my sweetheart. I shall have seen the world, and will perhaps have some title to be appointed forester or gend'arme." This is a comfort for reasonable people. But then, if you had the ill-luck to lose in the lottery, there was an end of you; often not one in a hundred returned. The idea that you were only going for a time never entered your head.
The enrolled of Harberg, of Garbourg, and of Quatre-Vents were to draw first; then those of the city, and lastly those of Wéehem and Mittlebronn.
I was up early in the morning, and with my elbows on the work-bench I watched the people pass by; young men in blouses, poor old men in cotton caps and short vests; old women in jackets and woolen skirts, bent almost double, with staff or umbrella under their arms. They arrived by families. Monsieur the Sous-Préfet of Larrebourg, with his silver collar, and his secretary, had stopped the day before at the "Red Ox," and they were also looking out of the window. Toward eight o'clock, Monsieur Goulden began work, after breakfasting. I ate nothing, but stared and stared until Monsieur the Mayor, Parmentier and his coadjutor, came for Monsieur the Sous-Préfet.
The drawing began at nine, and soon we heard the clarionet of Pfifer-Karl and the violin of great Andrès resounding through the streets. They were playing the "March of the Swedes," an air to which thousands of poor wretches had left old Alsace for ever. The conscripts danced, linked arms, shouted until their voices seemed to pierce the clouds, stamped on the ground, waved their hats, trying to seem joyful while death was at their hearts. Well, it was the fashion; and big Andrès, withered, stiff, and yellow as boxwood, and his short chubby comrade, with cheeks extended to their utmost tension, seemed like people who would lead you to the churchyard all the while chatting indifferently.