he was a man of strong religious earnestness, it is only natural again that much which is true and even edifying should be found in his writings. Whatever spiritual life men have is really nourished, under the least favourable circumstances, by the truths they (often unconsciously) hold, not by the errors they have added to them. But it is not difficult to gather from Luther's writings the leading characteristics of his system, which are summed up in the catechism and other symbolical documents he composed or sanctioned for the standards of his new community. I can understand, and in some degree share, Mr. Campbell's personal respect for the man, but for his novel theory of justification I can feel none, intellectual or moral. Both in itself and in its practical results, which soon began to show themselves, it seems to me most literally to deserve, if I may borrow for once the favourite phraseology of its professors, the name of a "souldestroying heresy."

In his Second Edition Mr. Campbell has inserted a Note to his Chapter on Luther, which I may be expected to notice, as some parts of it directly cut across statements of my own. While condemning "the forensic character of the systematic theology of the Reformers" as inadequate, he yet insists on the im

portance of their protest against "the general and doubtsome faith of the Church of Rome," though it is admitted that this general and doubtsome faith "prevails in Protestant as well as in Roman Catholic countries;" I should have thought much more so. The point insisted upon is, however, that it is "alone logically possible" on Catholic principles, because "the doctrine that the Atonement had special reference to original sin, while satisfaction for personal sin remained to be made in the form of penance, precluded the possibility of peace with God as an immediate result of faith." He adds, oddly enough, that the fact of our penances being connected with the sacrifice of Christ, and accepted for His sake, "does not alter the case." In another Note he speaks still more strongly, and with express reference to my book, of the Church "limiting the relation of the Atonement to sin to original sin," while the Reformers held it to apply equally to actual sins (p. 408). As no authorities are given for this strange version of Catholic doctrine, and it is seldom safe to hazard a universal negative, I will only say that I know of no single Catholic theologian who teaches it, and that it certainly is not the doctrine of the Church.

The Catechism of Trent, in explaining "the reasons

why the Son of God endured His most bitter Passion," asserts that "the principal cause consisted in the crimes and vices which men have perpetrated from the beginning of the world till now, and shall perpetrate henceforth to the end of time; for in His death the Son of God, our Saviour, contemplated the Atonement and obliteration of the sins of all ages, by offering for them to His Father a full and superabundant satisfaction." So little is the Atonement said to have special reference to original sin that original sin is not specifically mentioned at all. The charge might, indeed, with far greater force be urged against the Reformers themselves, and especially Luther, whose novel and highly exaggerated doctrine of original sin, which will be found noticed in its place in this volume, connected the atonement more exclusively with it, and undermined the sense of moral responsibility for actual sins. St Bonaventure and other Scholastic writers say, no doubt, that by atoning for original sin Christ won grace for men, whereby they are enabled to make satisfaction for their own actual sins, and that His Passion accordingly acts more fully in the Sacrament of baptism, which (in the case

Cat. ad Paroch. Pars. I. cap. v. Q. 11.

of infants) remits original sin only, than in the Sacrament of penance which remits actual sin. But this simply means that, until the bar placed by original sin had been removed, there was no room for the pardon of actual sin or grace to subdue it; and that what poor satisfactions we ourselves may offer are accepted by virtue of the full atonement for all sin, original and actual, made on the Cross, and in union with it.

This is not the place to enter on the strong arguments from Scripture and natural reason in favour of the Catholic doctrine of satisfaction. Conscience alone would tell us that personal sin deserves personal chastisement, and the instinct of contrition would urge the pardoned sinner to do all in his power to make reparation—even with zeal, indignation, and revenge, as the Apostle words it-to the Love he had so cruelly outraged. What is important to observe here is, that it is a complete misapprehension of the doctrine to suppose that it makes forgiveness and peace of conscience dependent on our own acts of satisfaction, and thus diverts the attention of the penitent from his Saviour to himself. Pardon is complete and instantaneous, whether given in absolution or through an act of true contrition without it, and with pardon is necessarily united the infusion of grace. Satisfaction,

whether voluntary or involuntary, and whatever shapes it may assume, comes afterwards, and is accepted precisely because it is offered by one who has already been reconciled to God. But it is not in this matter that the root of Luther's contention against the ancient theology is to be sought. It lay rather in his substitution of faith, in the sense of fiducia or personal assurance-the laying hold of the merits of Christ by an act of trust-for the fides formata, or faith working by love, to which alone the Catholic dogma ascribes a justifying power; and the consequent change introduced by him in the meaning of justification, which he regarded as a bare act of acquittal, not as the infusion of sanctifying grace, whereby God does not simply repute but makes us just. And this again springs from his novel and most immoral theory of original sin, and the denial of free will which is its result. The new doctrine had its practical convenience in dispensing with the need for priesthood and sacraments, but it had also its attendant inconveniences, which were not long in displaying themselves, in practically dispensing with the obligations of the moral law.1 Luther Luther may not

Those who wish for evidence of this statement in an easily accessible form, may consult the extracts from Luther's writings given by Hallam (Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 299,) in reply to Archdeacon Hare. The following well